Meditation As A Treatment From Depression

In western country, people with western culture, some of them said that meditation could be an alternative medication treatment for people who have anxiety or depression. Anxiety is one of the mental health disorders that related to the emotion. Anxiety is an emotion that indicates by feelings pressured, the worried thought, and an incline in blood pressure according to the American Psychological Association. People who have anxiety for long term can lead them to have depression but anxiety will not kill people who have it. People who have panic or anxiety disorder may feel like crazy, drowning, and having heart attack. Also if the anxiety is not treated well, it can lead to the negative consequences such as depression.

Depression is major depressive disorder that indicates feeling not in the mood, sad, stressed that last more than 2 weeks. It is only can be define by the mental health professional such as a doctor. People with depression usually have vicious cycle and usually facing negative thinking patterns and may stop doing their normal activities. There are some symptoms for people who facing depression like, negative self-talk, feeling numb, feeling hopeless, feeling help less, having bad thoughts on self-esteem and want to do suicide.

There is the example of a guy defeated his anxiety for 16 years and helped by meditation. He started to do meditation in his bedroom and after a month, he experienced a major paradigm shift, he learned to face the emotions that come through his mind and accept them the way it is. But he has not 100% recovered and free from anxiety, but through meditation people can learn to make peace with themselves, it is also helped him and people to be more compassionate, and he is happy now with the result of doing meditation. (Woo, 2017) From the article, it concludes that anxiety can really be helped by meditation.

Another examples for mindfulness meditation for the athletes, “meditation can be one of the crucial things to do in sport because it helps the athletes to be more living in the present moment. It helps them to think more positive and focus more in the present rather than thinking the bad sides and also teach them not to be judgmental. Mindfulness Meditation also help the athletes to clear their mind and allow them to focus on things that really matter ” (Heckman, 2018). “The research has found that basketball players 5 people who did meditation, they got self-knowledge. The players also said that they were able to feel less stress, worry, and anger.” (Burns, 2016) cited in Heckman, 2018.

From another article, it also said the benefits of meditation for athletic performance. It said that “Novak Djokovic, Olympian and professional tennis player also practice mindful meditation regularly for 15 minutes. Also another athletes in the basketball player such as Kobe Bryan and Lebron James, they do meditation.” Meditation is really beneficial for the athletes because it can help the players to “enhance their focus, and allow them to live in the present moment, because the noise of the crowd, the competitors’ team, and also past mistake can lead them to not focus. Staying focus in the game is very necessary and can help the athletes succeeded and then, meditation can help the athletes endure the pain according to the recent studies, it has proven that meditation can really help endure the pain by measured the participants responded to the pain after 4 days training. The results said 57% of the participant less unpleasant and 40% less intense, after the participants following all the trainings for 4 days. Also meditation help the athletes improve their sleep pattern, boost the immune system, and scale down the stress.” This article is showing that athletes can endure the pain with the meditation and also help them to push them through thick and thin moments in the game.

Other than for athletes, meditation also gives benefits to the kids. Meditation can increase the blood flow to the brain, give positive changes in decision-making area, and also help the immune system that helps kids to learn and their memories. Based on the research mindfulness meditation can help kids to be focus. “The evidence shows that kids with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder who learned meditation with their parents twice weekly in a clinic setting, and kept practicing at home, had better concentration at school, among other benefits. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for children (MBCT-C) has also been shown to help improve attention and behavior problems, and lowering anxiety in kids who have high anxiety levels.” (Walton, 2016)

From the other side there was a guy name Tuhina singh (Singh, 2015) from India said he tried so hard to learn meditate because he could not control his emotions and anger. He used to listen to the chanting mantras, tried so many different kind of meditation techniques. But he said that he did not found meditation help him to control his anger and emotions after two years of meditation. From this case, he said there was “no improvement after trying to do several techniques in meditation, meditation did help him to feel calmer, more peaceful, more accommodating of people, right immediately after the meditative exercise. But the benefits were truly short lived and made no impact whatsoever on his anger problem.” In this case, he is not really doing so well in meditation, he keeps focusing on the bad side, he has done meditation yet not everyday at the same time. Meditation is like a frequency; sometimes it’s up and down. Meditation needs to be done everyday so it become a habit after it become a habit it will help people to be more calm, open, and stay in the present.

By doing meditation people will realize that their mind is full of thoughts because people’s minds are like monkey mind; sometimes it goes everywhere they want. Monkey mind is our busy thoughts that never stops even when we sleep. Many people think that they are really meditation and focus when they have things in mind that goes from one to another. That is why people in this world need to learn meditation, because being free from monkey mind is not easy as it sounds, “meditation practice can help people keep aware with their surroundings and help people to find the answer from the bottom of their heart. By listening to our hearts, accepting the peace in the present, experiencing the monkey mind and aware of it, is the path of the freedom of the monkey mind.” (Cited in Bruce D, 2013)

Meditation in medical perspective, “it has proven by the Harvard medical school, they exposed that if our body in relaxes position it can change the chemistry in our body. Another proven test by US National institute of health, meditation can lowering stress level, drop in blood pressure and helping the hypertension. Also, meditation can help women in PMS and help the women control the mood swing while having Pre Menstrual Syndrome with the cramps, bloat, and muscle pains”

There are so many types of mental health in this world and the most common are anxiety and depression. The mental health issues and problems can be fixed and cured by meditation. As it was known from Indian culture and Buddhism, meditation helped Buddha achieve the final goal, which is nirvana. With meditation it can help people to control their mind and the desire. If people want to have a long lasting happiness, the only way to develop and maintain the inner peace is by practicing meditation.

Although, some of the people do not agree that meditation can really help the person to be more healthier and calm, there is no other way than trying so hard to learn meditation from 5 minutes a day, focusing in one type of meditation. The beginners should start learn from mindfulness meditation and loving-kindness meditation. Two of those are very basic but it is not easy to be focus all the time because the monkeys mind inside our head. It does not matter what religion people are, as long as they are willing to learn and want to have a better life and health, meditation can be one of the free and alternative solution. Meditation needs practice, it is not going to be easy, as it seems. It needs a lot of practice to be successful because without inner peace, outer peace is impossible. If we want to help people with mental health, they need to have peace inside their heart and mind, and then it can help them to cure the feelings of depression and anxiety. We also need to understand that happiness comes from inside not from the outside.

In conclusion, if people want to cure or help someone else fix their mental health issues, recommend them to do meditation because it is free and help them to accepting the world and just live in the present. If people really understand the nature of their mind, a correct understanding of the mind is very important.