Mark Dalliston

Meditation Mark Dalliston

I felt less stress soon after starting to meditate. Less inclined to anger as well as feeling more at peace. These benefits were a highly positive start to my practice. For us with health issues, there is further good news. Our daily practice engages the immune system. The corresponding brain regions show increases in electrical activity. This increase happens in the prefrontal cortex, the right anterior insula, and the right hippocampus. These parts of our brain that control positive emotions, awareness, and anxiety. When stimulated, these areas make the immune system function more efficiently. When your immune system is operating effectively, there are advantages for all of us. This includes those of you with chronic illness. Information about your thoughts, moods, and expectations broadcast via our immune cells to your body. Practising creates a positive mental environment for the immune system to flourish. My experience since meditating is that I sleep better. I have a few ideas about why this is. If I don't practice too much, which hasn't happened yet to me, then I give myself the greatest opportunity to sleep well. More importantly, I sleep better due to being more relaxed and not having thoughts racing through my head. There are few things worse than tossing and turning much of the night due to a speeding mind. Eventually, our aim is to control the content and pace of our ideas. We may use neuro-linguistic programming to label our thoughts. We may believe it's useful to flag desirable and undesirable ones. That way we may reinforce those that are worth keeping. Those labelled undesirable are best judged unworthy and cast aside.