Meditation: A Miraculous Way of Healing for Elderly

In this modern world, we have come so far out of our lives that we have forgotten the peace and power of our true mind. Gently, these stresses can disbalance our mental, emotional, and physical health, and can also put everyone in diseases, especially to the elders.

Consequently, due to the rush of modern life, meditation has become extremely important, especially for the elderly. If one wants to stay physically healthy along with stress and anxiety-free life, then start practising meditation immediately. The best and simplest way of meditation for growing elders is through yoga asanas or other methods. You won’t believe it but even five minutes of regular meditation can fill your life with positive energy and good health.

Understanding Meditation

Meditation is a kind of relaxation. It is not just the concentration of one’s thoughts on something but a constant process of relaxation in itself. By meditating, elders can easily get rid of daily distractions and calm their life to lead a happy and healthy life.

The Scientific Reason Behind Meditation

Meditation is not only related to spiritualism but it is also related to science. The body benefits from its regular practice. Science has also accepted this and through scientific researches, it has been confirmed that regular meditation makes the mind healthy and sharpens the memory. It also eases health conditions like dementia, depression, etc.

Why Meditation for Elders?

Why meditation? What happens if elders stop sleeping? Sleep makes one feel alive again, right? In the same way, meditation makes elders aware of this vast universe. It increases the energy around elders. Meditation empowers elders to understand and see better. Senior people can become strong spiritually by being in the witnessing sense. It creates a lyrical relationship between their body, mind, and soul. Their perspective of seeing and thinking will be very different from others.

Overall Benefits Of Meditation

Do you want to know what are the benefits of meditation? Just scroll down and have a look!

1: Reduces stress

A study involving more than 3,500 adults showed that meditation is immensely useful for stress reduction. Generally, mental and physical stress causes an increase in hormone levels, stress produces many harmful effects and leads senior citizens towards serious health issues. The main symptoms of stress include effects on sleep, depression, anxiety, increased blood pressure. Research has shown that meditation improves stress-related conditions, including irritable bowel syndrome, stress disorder, etc.

2: Controls anxiety

Meditation also reduces symptoms of anxiety disorders, such as phobias and panic attacks in old-adults. Meditation is helpful in controlling anxiety related to high-pressure environments.

3: Increases self-awareness

By practising meditation elders can achieve enlightenment. A study conducted on 21 women with breast cancer found that when they participated in the meditation program, they performed better than those who participated in social support sessions.

4: Improves Concentration

Meditation increases the strength and endurance of meditation. Even practising meditation for a short time can benefit the elders. It calms the mind and helps the elders to concentrate on things for a longer period of time.

5: Improves Memory

The clarity that meditation produces in one’s mind, helps keep the mind young. Meditation is helpful in age-related reminiscence, and meditation can at least partially improve memory in patients with dementia.

6: Brings kindness in nature

Meditation arouses positive feelings towards. For example, Meta is a kind of meditation that develops compassionate thoughts and feelings. Through practice, people learn to forgive. In other words, the more effort you put into Meta meditation, the more positive emotions you will experience in life.

7: Helps in quitting bad habits

It helps self-control grow and also helps in releasing addictions. Research has shown that meditation helps to redirect attention, increase willpower, control emotions and impulses, and understand the causes of addiction.

8: Improves Sleep

About half of the population is affected by insomnia. Being proficient in meditation can help control thoughts, waste thoughts, that cause insomnia.

Top 5 Health Benefits Of Meditation For Elderly

Apart from the above mentioned common benefits of meditation, meditation also improves the overall health of the elders. With meditation, the body goes through special changes. It brings significant changes in the internal activities of the body. Regular meditation fills every cell of the body with Pranatattva (energy). With the increase of spirituality in the body, communication of happiness, peace, and enthusiasm also increases. Here we have listed down the top 5 health benefits of meditation for the elderly:

• Decreased hypertension, reduced lactate in blood, reduced urination/distraction.
• There is less pain in the body related to stress. It also eases headaches, insomnia, muscle pain, joint pains, and wounds.
• Meditation promotes the production of serotonin hormone which helps with good mood.
• The immune system improves.
• Energy level increases due to advancement in the internal source of energy.

Top 3 Spiritual Benefits Of Meditation For Elderly

Meditation has no religion. People from any ideology can practice meditation and enjoy its health benefits. If the elderly want to indulge in some kind of spiritual activity, meditation can be a good option for them. Here’re the top 3 spiritual benefits of meditation:

• Regular meditation helps elders to consider themselves to be the indivisible character of the infinite universe.
• In the state of meditation, elders are in the expansion of happiness, peace, and infinity. This is the quality that the environment provides, thus they feel established in harmony with the universe.
• Meditation can truly bring personal changes in the elderly. The more elders know about themselves, the more naturally they will discover the aim of life.

Mental Benefits Of Meditation

Meditation brings the pattern of brain waves to alpha level, which increases the speed of healing. The brain becomes more peaceful, beautiful, calm, and tender than ever. Meditation cleanses and nourishes the brain from within. When elders feel anxious or emotionally disturbed, meditation helps them to stay balanced. To know more about how to reduce anxiety in elders, check here. Here are the significant mental benefits of meditation.

• Improve emotional stability.
• Increase in happiness.
• Improves focus.
• Increase creativity.
• Reduced anxiety.
• Instinctive development.
• Ultimate relaxation.
• Mental peace and clarity.

8 Types Of Meditation & Their Benefits for Elderly

Meditation helps elders learn to live in a heavenly moment and get rid of the worries of the future and past. As a combination of concentration and awareness, meditation allows them to focus. Elder people need to keep doing various types of exercises to keep the body healthy. Likewise, senior citizens should meditate to stay mentally healthy. Here we’ve listed down various types of meditation along with their many benefits.

1. Vipassana Meditation

Vipassana meditation is a scientific method to make the mind healthy, calm and clean. It is an effective method of introspection. This results in self-purification. In other words, it can be called an exercise of the mind.

Benefits of Vipassana Meditation

• By doing this, elders stay mentally healthy and also learn to control themselves.
• Constantly practising this increases blood circulation in the body and relieves tension, brings facial beauty.
• With its regular practice, it calms the mind and increases confidence hence it is necessary for growing people who often lose self-confidence with age.
• This is one of the very best ways to increase concentration. By practising it regularly, concentration increases and attention is focused towards the goal as well as brain development.
• This type of meditation generates more positive thoughts and helps elderlis to eliminate negative im and around.
• The mind and brain remain completely calm.
• There is always peace in the mind.
• Siddhis are proven automatically.
• By regularly doing, all the old-age diseases will disappear on sight.
• Along with the diseases of the body, your mind will also become calm.

2. Rajyoga Meditation

Rajayoga is a journey towards the inner world. It is a journey to know yourself or simply to identify again. Rajayoga means taking a little time out of your runaway life and sitting in peace to observe yourself. By taking such time, elderly people return to the heart of our consciousness.

Benefits of Rajyoga Meditation

• Rajyoga meditation ensures ultimate peace of mind for the elderly. It relaxes their body.
• It helps the elderly to have a positive perspective towards life and respond better to situations.
• This kind of meditation promotes happy and positive relationships.
• It promotes concentration and increases clarity.
• It develops a sense of self-worth and increases confidence.
• Help them find a purpose in life.

3. Metta Meditation

This is commonly referred to as ‘Loving-Kindness’ Meditation, as the term Metta is derived from Pali language which means kindness, goodwill, and interest in others. Metta Meditation involves silent repetitions of phrases that promote happiness or other things directed at someone you imagine. Metta Meditation is said to improve positive emotions and compassion, as well as helping treat psychiatric disorders like depression and anxiety. It is also an effective way of meditation to help in chronic pain, PTSD, and schizophrenia, as it increases feelings of love and compassion for oneself. Therefore it is one of the best meditation practices for elders.

Benefits Of Metta Meditation

• Metta meditation promotes self-compassion among the elderly.
• As it includes reciting kind words to oneself, it also increases confidence.
• It is beneficial to get rid of chronic depression, anxiety, and negative feelings towards oneself.
• This kind of mediation is also believed to be very effective in reducing different types of physical pain.
• As elders grow, their telomeres naturally shorten and cause faster ageing. But with the regular practice of Metta meditation, longevity increases.

4. Mantra Meditation

Before knowing the mantra meditation you should know what ‘Mantra’ means. Mantra is a Sanskrit word consisting of two words mana which means “brain” or “think”, and “trai”, which means “to protect” or “to get free from”. Therefore mantra means to free your mind or to free thinking. It includes reciting mantras and listening to them. Sometimes these are repeated fast, sometimes at a slower pace. However, when it comes to meditation, mantras are aimed not just at chanting but by paying attention to your breath and increasing concentration.

Benefits of Mantra Meditation

• Mantra meditation reduces thoughts that distract your mind and increases the quality of life.
• It helps you relax by calming the mind and also relieves stress.
• With the practice of Mantra Meditation, you begin to know how your brain works.
• This meditation can help to relieve stress, anger, jealousy, and other negative states of mind.
• It calms the nervous system, as well as its practices make elders understand the importance of self-care.

5. Zen Meditation

Zen meditation, also known as ‘zazen meditation’, is extremely popular as a meditation practice of Chinese Buddhism. Zen was first introduced by the popular India ‘Bodhidharma’. It was initially practised by Buddhist monks in monasteries. Many people are shocked when they see the living culture of Buddhist monks and how to obtain so much material despite limited resources. This is the reason why they specialize in peace. This kind of meditation is extremely beneficial to attain peace in the senior years of life.

Benefits of Zen Meditation

• It is a simple meditation technique, but with major benefits. It not only helps to calm the elders mentally but is also helpful in healing physical stress and pain that they experience with growing age.
• This is nothing less than a remedy for those who constantly deal with stress and are trying to get rid of it.
• Spiritually, Zen meditation is a way to reconnect the mind and soul in order to attain clarity about life with growing age.
• By practising this meditation regularly, elders can reach a state where they feel less than expected, meaning thereby, they reach a state of calmness. This is the point when life’s worries will end.

6. Transcendental Meditation

Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a technique for experiencing deep levels of awareness and promoting a state of balanced development. Late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has taken esoteric meditation from the ancient Vedic tradition of India. According to reports, doing TM twice a day for 15-20 minutes can reduce the underlying stress and fear in elders. Transcendental meditation is arguably the most researched meditation technique, especially for elders.

Benefits of Transcendental Meditation

• Practising TM relieves at least five different symptoms of hyperactivity (loss of focus, sleep problems, depression involvement).
• According to meta-analysis, anxiety disorders (panic attacks, anger, stress) decrease ‘rapidly and truly’ within the first few weeks of Transcendental meditation practice.
• Practising TM regularly increases the body’s ability to fight diseases by potentiating immune cells fighting viruses, bacteria and toxins.
• Improves the functional capacity of various heart problems/heart failure patients.
• Reduces the risk of heart diseases by thirty per cent, and deaths due to stroke by forty-eight per cent.
• TM helps the elderly body to fight stress, leading to living a calm life naturally.
• It helps to look attractive by making the skin beautiful and shiny.
• TM helps reduce and deal with psychological problems in people.
• TM enhances efficient mental activities in elders.
• TM helps elders in getting sound sleep.

7. Tratak Meditation

Trataka meditation is a higher level of trataka yoga. Here you focus your attention on a certain point. By avoiding the things of the world, ones body and mind focus only on a particular point. One tries to concentrate their attention at that particular point by relaxing the muscles and nerves of your body and by slowly trying to go to the depth of this process. With trataka meditation, elders not only cure their eyes, but also keep the entire body away from diseases.

Benefits of Tratak Meditation

• Tratak makes the eyes clear and bright.
• This type of meditation is useful in the treatment of eye disorders, which is opted usually by elders.
• It helps eliminate the lethargy of the eye.
• Tratak also develops spiritual powers and is beneficial in brain development.
• It ignites the inner light.
• It increases memory and concentration.
• By its practice, alpha waves rise, which are indicative of the brain being in rest. In this state certain parts of the brain stop functioning and the brain processes stop, thus the brain gets the necessary rest.

8: Imagination Meditation

It is an old way of meditation which is proven by various modern scholars too. During this meditation, the doer needs to imagine that the limitless energy of the universe is entering the body on the way to the top of the head making every organ healthy and hygienic. It makes elders feel that all the diseases are eliminating your body. Meditation increases concentration, which increases memory.

Benefits of Imagination Meditation

• It helps elders to get rid of various chronic illnesses.
• Positive imagination turns your view of things and fills your mind with positivity.
• You will be able to focus your scattered powers.
• Good hormones are produced by feeling good so that health remains strong.

Meditation is of many types. While the above mentioned types of meditation are the prime ones, there are other types of meditation too that are being practiced all across the globe, such as Mindfulness Meditation, Yogic Meditations, Self-Enquiry and “I Am” Meditation, Taoist Meditations, Qigong (Chi kung), Christian Meditation, Sufi Meditation, Guided Meditation, etc.

Some Important Tips Before Starting With Meditation

Meditation can be done anywhere. But if elders adopt these suggestions, then they will benefit quickly from meditation. These suggestions are:

• Choose a quiet environment to meditate.
• Morning is considered best for meditation.
• For meditation, your stomach should not be empty or full.
• Choose a comfortable position for meditation, in which you can sit for a long time. But the backbone should always be straight, so choose accordingly.
• Initially, do meditation for four to five minutes. Later extend it to half an hour to an hour.
• While meditating, there should be a smile on the face and a positive feeling towards oneself.

Meditation: A Miraculous Way TO Heal From Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Meditation acts as a medicine for the elders who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders. However, if they are also undergoing treatment, meditation cannot replace medicines but can support their health. There is no need to go join any special course for meditation, it can also be done sitting at home.

So far, one thing can be said clearly on this basis, that meditation helps in relieving stress. But how effective it is for our overall mental health, it is difficult to say, as it majorly depends on a regular practice.

How to experience meditation benefits?

People often complain that they are not able to experience the benefits of meditation, and forget to understand the reason behind this. Let us tell you that to enjoy the ultimate benefits of meditation, it is necessary to do it regularly. No one can experience the benefits of meditation by doing it once or twice in a week. It is necessary to do it on a daily basis, with determination.

It only takes a few minutes per day. Meditation becomes the best part of the day once you assimilate into the daily routine. Meditation is like a seed. When you grow a seed with love, it blossoms as much. So in the senior age, just going to infinite depths and enriching life with meditation is imperative.

Conclusion

After reading this, you must have understood the importance of meditation for elders. Based on research, many types of meditation therapy have been started. If you’re not able to promote your beloved elderly to meditate on a daily basis you can also opt for home-based professional care for them where professional caregivers will help them meditate regularly and will also assist them in other daily life activities, promoting good health and happiness among elders. For this, get connected with trusted organisations like us, at Emoha.

At Emoha, we take care of elder’s each and every requirement, problems, and issues, and also come up with solutions for the same. May it be related to health, or doing daily chores, we are claimed to be a one-stop-solution for elders, by several elders. So get in touch with us at eldersfirst@emoha.com or schedule a call with us at 1800-123-445555.