What is meditation?
Despite the fact that there are many different kinds, meditation may be summed up as the discipline of being wholly present in the here and now. People have been meditating for thousands of years in an effort to achieve spiritual enlightenment and consciousness, but this is not the only advantage of meditation. Meditation also helps people focus their attention and improve their ability to concentrate. According to the study, it can help to deepen sleep even in people who do not have difficulty sleeping in the first place. Thank goodness, it doesn’t cost anything, and you don’t need any particular gear to practice meditation. In addition to this, it is possible to do it pretty much everywhere.
Can meditation help you sleep?
Can’t sleep? Contemplate meditation. Decades of studies in the field of science have shown that this time-honored method can improve one’s ability to sleep and fight off insomnia. Through consistent meditation practice, you can condition your mind to enter a state of calmness. Studies that examine brainwaves, hormone release, cardiovascular activity, and oxygen consumption suggest a strong beneficial association between meditation and the quality of sleep that one experiences.
What are the benefits of sleep meditation?
Similar to how a good night’s sleep can refresh and reinvigorate the mind and body, meditating can do the same. There are many physiological parallels to be found between meditation and sleep. Both of these things lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol while simultaneously elevating vital hormones like growth hormone and DHEA. Even the activity of your brainwaves is stimulated in a similar manner, leading to an increase in the waves that are connected with sleep and relaxation (α, θ, and δ) while simultaneously leading to a decrease in the waves that are related to cognitive burden (β).
How to Assess the Effect of Meditation on Your Sleep Patterns
Because meditation techniques usually integrate mental activity with physical features such as deep breathing, meditation is recognized as a sort of mind-body treatment. This is due to the fact that meditation is thought to be beneficial to both the mind and the body. The goal of sleep meditation is to generate a state of general relaxation that assists the body in getting ready for sleep by treating both anxious thoughts and the physical stress symptoms that accompany them.
Additionally, the physical relaxation response, which is the opposite of the tension reaction, is intended to be induced through meditation. Perspiration, a high heart rate, faster breathing, tense muscles, and an increase in blood pressure are all symptoms of the stress reaction, often known as the fight-or-flight response. Each of these symptoms makes it more difficult to fall and stay asleep. In addition to relaxing respiration, the relaxation response brings about a decrease in heart rate, a drop in blood pressure, and a slowing of brain waves.
If you want to increase the quality of your sleep by trying meditation, you need to give your body at least a week to adjust to the new routine. During this time period, the NexRing sleep ring will give you the opportunity to monitor your body’s response to meditation in real time. This includes your heart rate, heart rate variability, skin temperature, and sleep latency.
By referring to the metrics available in your NexRing app, you can assess the impact of meditation on your sleep patterns.