“There’s no substitute for the practice of meditation.”
Wayne Dyer, Psychologist
Advantages & Disadvantages of Meditation
Meditation has become quite popular over the past years.
There are millions of people all over the world who meditate on a regular basis.
Although meditation has some important advantages, there are also some issues related to it.
The pros and cons of meditation are examined in the following.
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Contents
Advantages of Meditation
- You can relax
- Meditation helps you connect to your inner self
- Can give you certain insights
- You may be able to mature faster
- May be a good measure against mental problems
- Meditation can help against sleeping problems
- Location-independent
- Meditation often goes along with switching to a healthier diet
- May help improve your creativity
- You may be able to improve your ability to focus on certain things
- Plenty of meditation material out there on the internet
- Improvements in emotional stability
- You may be better able to deal with anxiety
- May improve your overall health level
You can relax
One important advantage of meditation is that you will be able to relax from your stressful daily life.
Many people in our nowadays society work quite long hours in a demanding job and are quite tired on a regular basis. Some of them are also near burnout.
This is not only due to the stress at work, but also due to the additional private stress at home as well as due to the information overload we experience on a daily basis.
Therefore, it is crucial to take appropriate measures to lower our stress levels.
One way to do so is to meditate.
Meditation gives you the opportunity to unplug from your daily life since you will turn off your smartphone and will not be available for calls or other things that might bother you.
Moreover, through meditation music, you will feel a high level of peace over time, which makes relaxing quite easy.
Hence, if you are one of those stressed people who really want to lower their stress levels in order to significantly improve their quality of life, you should definitely try meditation.
Meditation helps you connect to your inner self
We as a society, especially in our Western world, have completely unlearned to listen to our inner self and our intuition.
We often listen to our brain instead of our hearts and this can lead to flawed decision making since your intuition often subconsciously tells you what’s right and what’s wrong and if you don’t listen to it, you might regret it later.
In order to make good decisions, it is not only important to listen to our brain, but also to focus on our inner self.
This means that you should always ask yourself whether your actions map your value system or not when it comes to important decisions.
Thus, connecting to your inner voice is crucial in order to make decisions that will make you happy in the long run.
Meditation is one way to connect to your inner self and your feelings and can therefore be considered as some kind of tool that unites our brain and our soul.
Can give you certain insights
Another advantage of meditation is that it often gives us certain insights about life and about our feelings.
It is important to understand that everything we experience is not an absolute reality, but just some kind of filtered reality that everyone of us perceives differently based on our past experience, our education and our value systems.
Meditation can expand our horizon in this regard in order to become more tolerant since it helps us understand that there is no absolute truth in many cases.
Life is just a construct that we perceive in a certain manner and this perception will change over time depending on our experiences and our cultural values.
You may be able to mature faster
Thanks to a better understanding of how the world works, you will also be able to mature faster if you regularly engage in meditation.
You will get certain insights regarding your belief and value system and you will also be able to figure out what you really want to do with your life.
Too many people out there actually have no idea what they want to do with their lives and just do what society teaches us is right.
This often means getting a job that we hate, work until we retire and then die.
However, this has nothing to do with life, it is just some kind of cultural norm people comply with.
Thus, through meditation, you will often be able to figure out what’s really important to you and can act according to that in all parts of your daily life.
May be a good measure against mental problems
Meditation may also help you to overcome mental issues of many sorts.
For instance, many people in our society suffer from depression or other mental problems without even knowing why.
Those mental issues usually develop if people do not have a purpose in life and are quite insecure regarding what they want to do in life and how their future may look like.
If you find your path and purpose in life, there is basically nothing that can stop you and your risk to suffer from mental problems will be much smaller.
Meditation can be a great way to figure out what currently bothers you and may also help you to make important changes in your life in order to become happier in the long run.
Of course, if you suffer from mental issues, you should always consult a doctor and speak with him about how to solve your mental problems.
Meditation should be rather considered as complementary measure to a profound medical treatment.
Meditation can help against sleeping problems
Many people in our current society also suffer from serious sleeping problems.
Many of us can’t fall asleep or wake up in the middle of the night on a regular basis.
This is often due to the fact that we worry about problems at work or in our daily life and we don’t know exactly how they turn out and what we can do to solve those problems.
Meditation can help us to reduce those insecurities regarding how the future might turn out for us since it shows us different ways how to deal with problems in a calm and yet effective manner.
Since you will better learn how to deal with emotional issues, chances are that also your quality of sleep will significantly improve since you will learn to unplug from your problems at nighttime.
Location-independent
Another benefit of meditation is that you can meditate from wherever you want. You don’t need a fixed location to meditate.
For instance, if the weather is good and you don’t want to sit at home, you can go outside and sit on a park bench and meditate there.
Thus, meditation also gives you a great level of flexibility regarding where to practice it since the location doesn’t really matter for the success in meditation practices.
Meditation often goes along with switching to a healthier diet
Many people also take meditation quite seriously and see it more as a lifestyle rather than just a way to relax.
This often also include switching to a healthier diet. It is quite fascinating how people can change their behavior if they are convinced of something.
There are many people out there who suffered from extreme overweight before they engaged in meditation.
After they started meditating, they completely changed their diet and in only a few months, they were able to lose plenty of weight.
Consequently, if you suffer from overweight and/or eat quite unhealthy, meditation may also help you to change your behavior towards a healthier lifestyle, which can greatly improve your overall health level as well as your life expectancy.
May help improve your creativity
People who meditate are often also much more creative.
It is no surprise that many artists practice meditation and use it as a tool when they suffer from a lack of creativity from time to time.
There are many theories out there about why meditation may improve our creativity levels.
Many people believe that this is due to the fact that through meditation, we are able to connect to our inner self and also able to feel certain things inside us.
People often want to express those feelings and ways to express yourself include painting pictures, making songs or writing lyrics.
Thus, meditation can also help us to regain our creativity.
You may be able to improve your ability to focus on certain things
Another advantage of meditation is that you will likely also be able to focus on certain things in a more profound manner.
We are all often distracted in our daily life by our smartphones or by other things since there is so much information around.
In turn, we will often not be able to focus on the things that are important to us in a sufficient manner.
By meditating, you can figure out what’s really important to you and can neglect all the other unimportant things that rather disturb you instead of doing any good for you.
Therefore, through meditation, we may get a better feeling regarding how we want to spend our precious time and through this understanding, we will be better able to focus on the things that really matter to us.
Plenty of meditation material out there on the internet
Since there is so much meditation material out there on the internet, you don’t have to spend any money on it.
You can just turn on your computer and start your meditation session right away.
This gives many millions or even billions of people all over the world the opportunity to meditate since no big initial investment is required for it.
Hence, through the invention of the internet, it is easier than ever to engage in meditation and to explore your inner self.
Improvements in emotional stability
Meditation will also greatly benefit you in the sense that you can improve your emotional stability.
Life is hard from time to time for all of us and in order to recover from different sorts of strokes of fate, we have to get to a state where we are able to deal with those bad events in our lives in a healthy manner.
Meditation can also help us in this area since we can learn how to deal with our feelings and if we are on our path and purpose in life, there is basically nothing that can stop us.
You may be better able to deal with anxiety
Many people are also quite insecure since they don’t know how to deal with insecurity and anxiety in their lives.
However, this is often due to the fact that many people are not connected to their inner self and their feelings.
If you have a deep connection to your inner being, there will not be much anxiety left since you will know how to deal with problems according to your value system and there will basically not much anxiety left after you figured out what you want in life.
Mediation can help us in this regard since it will give us the opportunity to connect to our feelings and to act according to them.
May improve your overall health level
Since we can mitigate many mental health problems through meditation, our overall health levels tend also to improve significantly.
Always remember that our body and our mind are connected and if one of the two is sick, the other will feel bad as well.
Therefore, it is crucial to stay emotionally healthy in order to also avoid physical health problems of many sorts.
Disadvantages of Meditation
- No magic pill to solve problems
- People may suppress their bad emotions
- You may need a teacher
- Meditation takes practice
- You have to do it on a regular basis to see success
- Meditation can be time-consuming
- Meditation may bring up bad memories from your past
- You have to put in the work
- Some people may give up too early
- Might be considered dodgy in some regions
- True effects may be hard to measure
No magic pill to solve problems
Although meditation has many upsides, there are also some problems related to meditation.
For instance, meditation is not a magic pill to solve our problems.
Sure, it can help connect us to our inner self and to get certain insights that make it easier to navigate for us in life.
However, once you figured out what bothers you in your life, you have to take action and meditation will not do that for you.
It is on you to put in the time and effort to achieve your goals in life and if you are not willing to do so, meditation will not be sufficient to reach your goals.
People may suppress their bad emotions
Another downside of meditation is that people may use it as a tool to suppress their bad feelings.
There are difficult times in life and there are different ways how to deal with problems.
While some people want to process them right away in order to get rid of their issues, others may want to suppress their emotions.
If meditation is used to suppress emotions, chances are that people subconsciously still suffer from those bad feelings and after a certain while, those emotions may reappear and may lead to serious mental problems.
Therefore, if meditation is used to suppress certain feelings, it can do more harm than good for your mental state.
You may need a teacher
While there are many meditation classes on the internet for free, you might also want to get a meditation teacher in order to get to the next level sooner.
However, those teachers are often not cheap and you may have to invest significant amounts of money for them.
Thus, you should really ask yourself whether you urgently need a meditation teacher since in most cases, you can benefit from meditation also without having a teacher by simply putting in the time and effort that is needed.
Meditation takes practice
It may also take you some time to get the full benefits of meditation.
You have to learn how to connect to your inner self, to let go of insecurities and so on.
You will likely not be able to learn all this overnight and you should be prepared that you have to practice quite a lot in order to get the full benefits of meditation that are waiting for you.
You have to do it on a regular basis to see success
Meditation is not a one-time practice.
It requires you to continuously practice in order to see true positive effects.
However, many people in our nowadays society do not have too much time and patience anymore.
Hence, if you are one of those people who do not want to practice on a regular basis, chances are that meditation may not deliver any positive effects in your case.
Meditation can be time-consuming
In general, meditation can also be quite time-consuming.
Depending on the spiritual level you want to get on, it may require you to engage in meditation for one hour or more every day.
Thus, you might want to have a fixed date in your calendar so that you don’t have any other things to do during your meditation time in order to stay consistent and do not skip your meditation on a regular basis.
Meditation may bring up bad memories from your past
In some cases, especially if you experienced really bad things in your past, meditation may bring up all those bad feelings, which may be quite overwhelming and may lead to serious mental problems for you.
Therefore, if you suffered from extremely negative things in the past, you may avoid meditation if you do not want to process and deal with those feelings right now.
You have to put in the work
Nothing comes free in life and the same is true for meditation.
In the beginning, you might have a quite hard time since you don’t know what you are doing and it will take time and effort to really get benefits out of meditation.
Hence, it is crucial that you put in the work on a constant basis in order to get better and more experienced in meditation to get the full rewards out of it.
Some people may give up too early
Some people may also be quite skeptical regarding meditation and if they don’t see any results after the first session, they might give up and claim that meditation is just a flawed practice that can do nothing good for us.
Yet, there are definitely some positive effects from meditation and you should not give up that early in order not to miss out on those positive effects that might be waiting for you.
Might be considered dodgy in some regions
Depending on where you live, meditation may also be considered to be quite dodgy and it might not be accepted in society at all.
Therefore, if you live in a rather intolerant region on our planet, you may even suffer from serious social isolation due to engaging in meditation.
True effects may be hard to measure
Another problem of meditation is that the true effects are often hard to measure in studies.
While many people claim that they feel better in the long run if they engage in meditation, studies on meditation come to quite controversial conclusions about it.
Therefore, some scientists might argue that meditation is basically useless while others might claim that it can have significant positive effects.
Top 10 Meditation Pros & Cons – Summary List
| Meditation Pros | Meditation Cons |
|---|---|
| Can help you calm down | Meditation is no magic pill |
| Meditation may improve your fitness | You have to put in the work |
| Health improvements | Meditation is time-consuming |
| You can learn about yourself | It takes some practice |
| You can figure out your goals in life | Long-term game |
| Helpful to mature faster | May bring up bad emotions |
| Meditation can help our creativity | May be considered socially awkward |
| Emotional stability | Effects may be hard to measure |
| You may learn to deal with anxiety | You might need a teacher |
| Meditation is location-independent | Can’t replace a psychologist |
Should You Meditate?
As we can see from the previous analysis, there are many advantages and disadvantages related to meditation.
In the end, you have to decide for yourself whether you want to engage in meditation or not.
I suggest you at least give it a try since you will be better able to judge whether it makes sense for you to meditate or not if you get some experience with it.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation
https://positivepsychology.com/history-of-meditation/
https://www.thegoodbody.com/meditation-statistics/
About the author
My name is Andreas and my mission is to educate people of all ages about our environmental problems and how everyone can make a contribution to mitigate these issues.
As I went to university and got my Master’s degree in Economics, I did plenty of research in the field of Development Economics.
After finishing university, I traveled around the world. From this time on, I wanted to make a contribution to ensure a livable future for the next generations in every part of our beautiful planet.
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