Meditation is to help you navigate COVID-19

In last few months you have seen an unprecedented increase in mental tension, anxiety, and fear spanning the globe. With the  reaching pandemic proportions and new cases being reported each day, this is a crisis unlike anything most people have experienced in their lifetime. While government and local agencies are working tirelessly to contain the outbreak, you might find yourself being swept up in a pandemic of another kind—FEAR.

News stories and posts on social media may be flooding your awareness with the mind-polluting contagions of worry, anxiety, and panic about what the next few weeks will hold for cities, nations, and individuals. It’s nearly impossible not to get caught up in the rip current of uncertainty, negativity, and doubt that drags you into the sea of worst-case scenario thinking.

Times like this can indeed feel overwhelming. Fortunately, however, one classic mind-body practice is unparalleled in its value during crises such as these: MEDITATION.

meditation is far more than just a way to relax and has profound benefits that will help you navigate COVID-19.

 

1. Meditation Manages and Reduces Stress and Anxiety

Meditation is a powerful antidote to this prolonged stress response. Each time you sit down and close your eyes to meditate:

• Your heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration lowers 


• Your endocrine system relaxes and normalizes 


• Muscle tension is released thereby freeing up more energy into your system 


• Your thought traffic begins to slow down, emotional tensions start to level out, and you can see things with more clarity
  
  

  The beautiful thing is that this reversal of the stress response happens to some degree every time you meditate. The great news is that the more regularly you practice meditation, the more your nervous system learns to stay calm more of the time, so stressful situations don’t hit you so hard.

  
  

  2. Meditation Helps to Strengthen Your Immune Function

  
  

  Knowing that the COVID-19 virus is in the environment, it behooves you to make sure that your immune system is functioning at the highest level possible. You can help support your immune function in several ways including eating nourishing foods, getting enough sleep each night, exercising regularly, and consuming supplements or foods rich in antioxidants. However, in addition to these steps, practicing meditation can have a powerful immune-boosting effect. 

  
  

  3. Meditation Builds Compassion

  
  

  Whether through a simple mantra or mindfulness practice, or a more specific technique, regular meditation helps to foster expanded states of compassion, kindness, and love. As your mind begins to settle, the perceived boundaries between yourself and others start to soften. You recognize that everyone shares a common destiny; everyone has loved, laughed, felt pain, and suffered. You’re able to feel the suffering of others as well as your desire to relieve it. Your ego is more willing to take a back seat as you find opportunities to serve and heal others.

  
  

  Especially in challenging times such as these, learning to care for others, to offer support, a helping hand, or ear to listen helps you to not only feel more fulfilled by serving others, but sends a powerful message that kindness, hope, and compassion are strengths, not weaknesses. The more regular you become in your meditation practice, the more drawn you are to help others in whatever way you can. 

  
  

  4. Meditation Levels-Up Your Consciousness

  
  

   

  
  

  When you find yourself caught up in a frightening situation, it can often feel all-encompassing. This is because fear, worry, and anxiety resonate within a primal state of consciousness that keeps you trapped in its force field. Everything you experience is filtered through this lens of fear, making the world appear terrifying, desperate, and hopeless.

  
  

  Meditation (the restful awareness response) is uniquely suited as a time-honored method for the evolution of consciousness. With regular practice, your awareness expands, allowing you to gradually ascend, rung by rung, the ladder of higher consciousness. As you do, you experience ever-increasing states of peace, harmony, joy, fulfillment, wholeness, and love. And since consciousness is a field, every step toward higher consciousness you take contributes to the whole, eventually shifting the collective consciousness of humanity out of a state dominated by fear and into one of healing, happiness, peace, and equanimity. In other words, by practicing meditation, you’re not just benefitting yourself, you’re bringing healing to the entire world.

  
  

  So, if you’re feeling anxious and helpless amid this crisis, know that through the practice of meditation you have more power to affect healing, transformation, and change than you imagine. And if you haven’t learned to meditate, there may never be a better time to learn than now to become a beacon of light, healing, and awakening in the world.       (web collection)