People have always been fascinated with alternative methods of healing and overall self-improvement. Meditation remains the top choice of medical doctors and psychologists to aid their patients regarding their concerns about reducing feelings of stress and promoting relaxation.
A growing number of people are looking for other ways on how they can relieve feelings of anxiety and stress. The use of drugs for stress reduction have been growing in popularity in recent years, but addiction issues also sprang up as a result of excessive and unnecessary intake by patients. People resort to these stress reducing drugs even when they are not experiencing any anxiety attacks. This abusive intake threatens not only their physical well-being, but also affects their attitude towards various situations which they might face in the future, leading them to be emotionally and psychologically imbalanced.
A lot of people resort to psychiatric therapy. This is widely popular and advocated in Westernized countries. The main aim of this stress-reducing approach is for patients to communicate their feelings to their therapists in order for them to be relieved of anxiety. This method shows large and promising improvement on the behavior of patients, but this is rather an expensive way of relieving tension.
Meditation on the other hand, appears to be an inexpensive and non-addictive approach for relaxation and mental strain. It is being practiced by a lot of people from different religious backgrounds. Though its roots can be traced back in Eastern cultures and religions, it found its way to the Western world during the 1960s when there was so much religious and social unrest.
Since the early years of the 1960s, people in the United States and other Western countries used meditative approaches mainly for stress reduction. Yoga is one of those practices which employ deep thought and contemplation as a staple towards self improvement.
At present, there are millions of people who practice Yoga as a means towards restfulness and well-being. I have listed some benefits which people derive from the practice of Yoga and similar practices:
- Yoga encourages a peaceful state of mind. The main mission of Yogis from all across the globe is for its followers to achieve a higher state of being through deep thought and concentration.
- This discipline inhibits negative thoughts and feelings. Peacefulness is one of the pillars of this practice, it teaches students to trash out any negative thoughts. These negativities can be ridden off the system through a number of ways. Mastering deep breathing exercises is one method by which followers can dissolve all thoughts and feelings which are detrimental to achieving relaxation and restfulness.
- One of the primary goals of Yoga is to relieve a person of stress through meditation. This can be accomplished in a number of ways, one of which is verbal repetition of a mantra. Mantra helps a person in achieving deep thought, which eventually focuses a person’s mind and relaxes the body as well.
There is so much to Yoga than just a means of attaining a state of relaxation. People who have tried this discipline were able to attain much more than stress relief through meditation, but also found it as an effective and powerful means of achieving a well-balanced mind and body.
