Meditation For Anxiety & Stress Management

Anxiety doesn’t just make you feel bad, it actually changes the structure and function of your brain. It decreases the size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain considered the seat of the memory. Conversely, it increases the size of the amygdala, the area of the brain responsible for the fear response, causing you to become even more anxious and fearful.

Stress, fear and anxiety trigger the release of stress hormones and cause imbalances in neurotransmitters, chemicals that brain cells use to communicate with each other.

Meditation, like anxiety, changes the structure and function of your brain (but in a healthy, productive way). A regular meditation practice not only can reduce anxiety symptoms, it also can reverse the damage caused by anxiety.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University sifted through over 18,000 mindfulness meditation studies to determine its most effective uses.

They concluded that the number one use for meditation was anxiety relief. Other studies support that meditation benefits mental disorders of all kinds including generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, panic disorder, agoraphobia, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, binge eating disorder, bipolar disorder and addictions.