35 Must-Know Relaxation & Meditation Benefits on BODi (Beachbody on Demand)

Today’s world is not an easy place to live in. One can get surrounded by several stressors that are difficult to deal with. Inevitably, we all need that sacred space where we can relax, reduce anxiety, and find calmness in a healthy way. Beachbody is all about holistic wellness and it has launched a rejuvenating new category that is already a part of your BODi (Beachbody On Demand) membership. Introducing…Relaxation & Meditation!

Get started today with some Meditation.

You know when you are stressed out when you feel tense or anxious like you have just absorbed all the negativity in the world. However, when you spend just a few minutes to pause, breath, and go through a meditation process, the negative feelings gradually go away. Consistent meditation can really help you relieve the pressure, calm you down, and allow you to refocus on the positive until you are able to achieve balance.

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Here’s your must-know on BODi’s Relaxation & Meditation channel and how meditation can benefit you:

1. Meditation can help you in a lot of ways and its impact on your well-being is powerful. Research has it that it reduces stress and anxiety while promoting physical and emotional wellness. It also enhances your self-esteem and helps improve your relationships.

2. What happens in meditation is that it forges a mind-body connection that is strengthened as it renews your energy and make you feel inspired and empowered.

3. The Mayo Clinic purports that meditation can help you clear off the information overload that often comes to you as an overwhelming and stressful experience.

4. Reducing stress is one common reason for people going to meditation for solace. It can help build your skills with stress management.

5. When you go through physical and mental stress, the stress hormones in your body called cortisol can increase and produce harmful effects including the release of cytokines that are inflammation-promoting chemicals. It becomes apparent in lack of sleep, depression, fatigue, high blood pressure and the like. A study has shown that mindfulness meditation was able to reduce that same inflammation response induced by stress.

6. The diminutive effect of meditation has been found to be strongest in people with the highest stress levels. Research has demonstrated that meditation can also result in the improvement of stress-related conditions like fibromyalgia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and irritable bowel syndrome.

7. Meditation is a form of mental discipline and regular practice can help curb some forms of addictive behavior. It helps you break away from your dependencies by strengthening your self-control and making you more sensitive to what triggers your addiction.

8. Addictive behaviors can be hard to resist but meditation allows for a tool that can help you redirect your attention, control your impulses, increase your willpower, and make you understand what causes you to give in to such addictions.

9. A study of 19 recovering alcoholics has shown the potential of meditative training to control their cravings and other craving-related stress better. This holds true for food cravings as demonstrated in a review of 14 studies where mindfulness meditation helped the participants tone down emotional or binge eating.

10. Meditation may be considered a mind exercise as it facilitates the advancement of a new perspective on otherwise stressful circumstances but it does promote emotional wellness. There are forms of meditation that leads to improved self-image and a more positive outlook in life.

11. A controlled study made a comparison of the electrical activity in the brains of individuals who do meditation and those who don’t. The results showed that those who practiced meditation exhibited measurable changes in brain activity especially in areas that are related to optimism and positive thinking.

12. Long-term practice of meditation can also result in a long-term decrease in depressive episodes. Apparently, the inflammatory cytokines can also affect one’s mood and eventually lead to depression. A review of the literature shows that meditation reduces depression by decreasing the cytokines in the body.

13. Some guided forms of meditation enhances your self-awareness so that you understand yourself better and help you develop into your most awesome self ever. Specifically, the goal of self-inquiry meditation is to help you achieve a greater understanding of who you are and how well you are able to relate with others around you.

14. Some other forms of meditation opens your mind and allows you to see your harmful or self-defeating thought patterns. When you become fully aware of this negative patterns, you will become more empowered to steer your thoughts toward healthier, constructive paths.

15. In another study, 40 senior women and men got into a meditation program while a control group were wait-listed. The results showed that the first group experienced a reduction in their feelings of loneliness as compared to the control group who have not undergone the meditation program yet.

16. Meditation also has the ability to sustain the brain’s youthfulness by reducing age-related memory loss, improving attention, and facilitating clarity of thinking. A method of meditation that involves combining a mantra with a repetitive finger motion helps with focusing your thoughts. In multiple studies, it has resulted in improvements in the participant’s ability to work on memory tasks.

17. Even in older study volunteers, different meditation styles helped in promoting mental quickness and increased memory. In patients with dementia, this translated to partial memory improvement and in return, helped with better coping and stress management in family members who care for them.

18. Pain management is another area that meditation can be very useful in. Apparently, pain can be elevated when you are exposed to stressful conditions and it is connected with your state of mind. In one study, some functional MRI techniques were used to observe their brain activity when a painful stimulus is applied. It was found those who have undergone meditation training had exhibited an increase in their brain’s activity specific to areas known to control pain. The participants also reported later that they experienced less pain sensitivity.

19. Habitual meditation clearly has an effect on pain. Both non-meditators and meditators experience pain but the latter suffer less from it. Meditation has been associated with decreased intermittent or chronic pain. Meditators are enabled to cope with pain better and even experience a reduction in pain sensations.

20. Focused-attention meditation is considered as weight lifting for the attention span. The more you meditate, the more your attention span is lengthened as it strengthens your ability to focus and concentrate. You will find yourself focusing on tasks longer than usual as you make meditation a regular practice. You will notice that you will begin to remember details of your tasks more easily than before as well.

21. What a meditative practice does is reverse the patterns in the brain which contribute to poor attention, worrying, and mind-wandering. This is true even if you have only meditated for a few days or a short period of time. Imagine what it can do if you meditate more regularly.

22. Less stress means less anxiety and this is how meditation helps in melting away negative emotions. Meditation helps reduce the symptoms of anxiety disorders like panic attacks, paranoia, social anxiety, and phobias. Over the long haul, it translates to lower levels of anxiety.

23. Various meditation strategies have been shown to reduce anxiety levels. This includes yoga as it combines physical activity with meditative practice – benefits are simply doubled. In a study of a group of nurses, a meditation program was found to reduce job-related anxiety in a high-pressure work environment.

24. One of the keys to creativity is meditation. Creativity is a whole brain function that is influenced by the amount of neural activity in the corpus callosum. Meditation increases creativity by cranking up the corpus callosum, making it stronger, bigger, and more connected – thus having your creative juices going.

25. A team of psychologists have found that meditation stimulates different kinds of thought processes such as divergent thinking, convergent thinking, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Divergent thinking refers to everyday but creative uses for objects such as a paperclip. Convergent thinking is involved in finding which solutions work best. Working memory is what keeps innovative ideas from quickly disappearing. And cognitive flexibility refers to openness in accommodating new ideas or experiences.

26. Meditation allows you an opportunity towards a brighter future through creative prowess. It sharpens your ability for intensive observation and attention to phenomena that passes through your mind’s eye or your subconscious. This in turn hones your imaginative competency that result in out-of-the-box thinking and creative problem solving.

27. The American Psychological Association conducted a study on nurses taking on high-pressure jobs and after 8 weeks of regular meditation, the participants experienced amplified self-compassion and an enhanced quality of life.

28. Almost half of the population struggles with insomnia at a certain point in life. Recent findings suggest how meditation can facilitate better sleep. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups – one group meditated while the other did not. The meditator group fell asleep sooner and was asleep for longer compared to the other group.

29. The skills that you develop with meditation can help you in redirecting the racing thoughts that typically result in insomnia. Meditation likewise helps your body relax, release tension, and bring you to a peaceful state which will eventually lull you to sleep.

30. Some forms of meditation are especially keen towards generating kindness by increasing positive feelings that move you to act more kindly to yourself and to others. This loving-kindness meditation starts by developing good-hearted thoughts about yourself. With continued practice over time, the kind feelings extend to others from one’s innermost circle of family and friends towards acquaintances and sometimes even enemies.

31. Meditation has demonstrated its ability to enhance internal and external forgiveness and compassion – the more you meditate, the more you experience the positive feelings. Based on a group of studies the same positive feelings can even extend its influence and result in the improvement of social anxiety and better management of marital conflict and anger issues. The benefits simply accumulate over time with continued practice.

32. A stark advantage about meditation as a practice is that you can easily do it even if you have not meditate ever in the past. It will not require any equipment or special skill from you. What you need to do is just literally sit back and follow the cues given. You will notice the difference immediately after 1 session and you will look forward to more. As you make your practice more regular, the benefits also increase.

33. Meditation is really as easy and as deliberate as breathing. It is considered the easiest workout with the most benefits that affect your whole being. It does not even require hours or long periods of sitting still. Just a few minutes per day and you will already feel the physical, mental, and emotional benefits to your health.

34. Relaxation & Meditation by Beachbody has many meditations that are less than 10 minutes and they are perfect to do at the start of your day, after you work out, or as you go to bed. You will find that these meditations are light and easy especially if you have never tried it before or think that it’s not for you.

35. If you are a bit skeptical about it, just remember that meditation does not have any religious underpinnings and is not some kind of mysterious endeavor. It is a well-established technique that helps you enhance your self-awareness, give you clarity of mind, and make you better equipped to face the waking life after each session.

The Relaxation & Meditation Channel on BOD has a lot of inclusions and a wide range of content that you can click on. It includes 4 Beachbody Yoga Studio meditations;13 Unplug app themed meditations; and 60 Elise Joan meditations based from her “I AM” cards. There’s also this guided program coming soon entitled Unstress: 21 Days of Meditation for Relaxation, Calm, and Less Anxiety. This is in partnership with Unplug, the premier meditation app.

Both the Unplug Themed Meditations and the Beachbody Yoga Studio are now available on BOD while the other meditations will be online soonest. For BOD members, this comes at no additional cost and they can access all content. If you are not a BOD member yet, you can simply sign up here.