So, you think meditation is for the weak people and you don’t need it. You also think there are no benefits and it’s a waste of time. And you might finally think it’s a marketing tool. Alright, let’s talk about it.

First of all, we need to break it down into 4 areas: facts, science, how I meditate and my final thoughts.

1. Facts

According to the World Health Organization, more than 260 million people of all ages suffer from depression. This is a mental disorder and women are more affected than men.

Unfortunately, depression can lead to suicide. Every year, around 800,000 people die due to suicide.

There are some treatments to fight it but they don’t work for everyone and in countries where income is not high, having effective treatments is increasingly challenging. There are also cases regardless the income level where people are not diagnosed properly and they’re prescribed antidepressants.

Some places such as Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, part of the Department of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and affiliated with Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); are exploring mindfulness meditation to fight depression.

2. Science

It’s fair to say that mindfulness is becoming more and more accepted to be reviewed from a scientific point of view.

There are a number of studies showing benefits against mental conditions such as not only depression but anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders. However, many of these ones have been challenged due to the small samples or experimental issues.

A study worth highlighting was coming from a neuroscientist called Gaelle Desbordes working at the Martinos Center. This research was focused on the amygdala, a part of the brain where changes took place after 2 months of studying people meditating as well as performing everyday tasks.

Gaelle’s study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The difference with the regular MRI is that this one also records brain activity during the scan.

The findings suggested that meditation training might affect emotional processing every day and not only during those minutes allocated to meditation.

3. How I Meditate

My meditation. I usually do breath awareness meditation. It helps ease stress and anxiety, and calm the mind. It’s perfect when feeling anxious, tense, restless or overwhelmed.

My technique. It’s called “4-6” because it’s 4 seconds inhale and 6 seconds exhale.

My goal. To focus only on breathing and ignore anything else. Build a wall to any thoughts entering the mind.

My app. The name is Calm. You can try for free and explore breathing exercises, there are some guided/unguided meditation options and nature sounds too. Honestly, I’ve been using it for free for at least 6 months and there’s absolutely no need to pay. However, worth noting there’s a premium version and costs £29.99 ($39.99) per year. It’s only worth if you want guided meditations covering sleep, anxiety, stress, gratitude and other stuff. They also have a library with more than 100 sleep stories and some masterclasses.

4. Final Thoughts

Many people start meditating simply because they have a lot of stress or they are very anxious. This was my case and why I started it.

I never showed stress or anxiety in front of people. In fact, I always showed myself strong and pretending everything was fine and under control. I remember saying “meditation is for the weak”. How wrong I was!

Well, that’s my truth. I kicked this off early this year. I put an article in February about how I meditated 15 minutes every day for 30 days and then another one in April about how I did it for 100 days. Even recently when I talked about my objectives progress, I mentioned I was over 300 days. You can find all my related articles about meditation here.

At some point I’ll make a YouTube video about how meditation is transforming my life. This is just me sharing the fact that I see some changes.

It’s also important to mention that mindfulness is not a sprint but a marathon. It’s a life’s journey.

Finally, if you feel this sounds a bit like yourself, then you should definitely give it a go.