Be Mindful: The health perks of meditation and sound healing
MONTEREY COUNTY, Calif. (KION-TV) -- As many people know, meditation has significant health benefits, both mentally as well as physically.
Quieting the mind and getting still with your breath can produce life-altering affects, according to Dr. Benjamin Korsmo, Clinical Psychologist with Montage Health.
"Nine minutes a day significantly alters your brain for the better," said Dr. Korsmo. "[It helps with] better memory, stress management, better blood sugar control... every system of the body is improved by meditation."
Dr. Korsmo says that the electromagnetic brain waves produced by meditation can be felt immediately.
"An immediate affect is a change in brain waves," he said. "When one meditates and practices meditation, they're able to achieve brain states that would be focused alertness or a calmness but with the ability to perform very well."
These brain waves can be triggered through both meditation as well as certain different types of sound called binaural beats.
"The left side of your brain and the right side of your brain--we call them the hemispheres, the left and the right hemisphere--they have this kind of dance that can be influenced by certain music and rhythms in both ears," said Dr. Korsmo.
Meditation and sound healing do more than just evoke brain waves that stimulate focus, calm and alertness. It can also reduce the levels of stress we experience as well as overall relax the nervous system.
"Meditation slows the release of cortisol," said Dr. Korsmo. "We see lower rates of cortisol in people, and then we start to see the signs of the parasympathetic nervous system being active and engaged when people are meditating."
Paul Hokemeyer, licensed marriage and family therapist, says that there are three different types of meditations, aimed at producing three different outcomes:
"There is something called mindfulness meditation, which is where we sit with ourselves and we track what's happening in our brain or we track what's happening with our body sensations. With transcendental meditation you come up with a personal saying that you repeat over and over again. The third one is related to that and it's called meta meditation, or loving and kindness meditation, and what we do is when we're sitting in meditation we focus our attention on being as loving as kind and as gentle as we can."
For people wanting to start a meditation practice but unsure about how to begin, both Dr. Hokemeyer and Dr. Korsmo say not to overthink it.
They agree that just sitting quietly for five minutes and focusing on the breath is a great way to start.
