The Benefits of Meditation for Seniors

It’s easy to start a meditation practice, and you don’t need to take any pharmaceuticals, or to buy anything fancy to get started. Meditation for seniors can also have some tremendous health benefits.

It’s a way to calm the body and the mind. It can help you to climb out of the fight or flight response and relieve depression or anxiety. It can also have a positive impact on your body in several ways.

Meditation for Seniors Offers Many Benefits

• It slows your heart rate
• Blood pressure decreases
• Stress levels decline
• Digestive function improves
• Tension decreases

That’s not all. It can also preserve cognitive function, enhance short-term memory, and help with digestion and circulation. It can lower stress and even decrease loneliness, according to U.S. News and World Report.

Everyone, including seniors, can gain from these benefits.

Getting Started with Meditation

There are numerous types of meditation, but they all involve closing your eyes, and non-judgmentally observing the thoughts that pass through your mind in a given time window. Three popular types of meditation include:

Mindfulness – This is simply concentrating on the present moment without judgment. It’s most often accomplished by concentrating on the breath as you sit and close your eyes.

Transcendental – This type of meditation is simply focusing on a keyword or a sound that is repeated.

Body Scan – This offers a way to center your focus on various parts of your body and investigate the associated sensation.

For those new to meditation, it may help to start with guided sessions. You can find any number of guided meditations on YouTube, or by downloading a meditation app for your smart device. Some popular meditation apps include Calm, Headspace, Buddhify, Insight Meditation Timer, and others.

Meditation for seniors can have tremendous health benefit. In the beginning it may feel like it’s hard to sit still for any given amount of time, but with consistent practice you can experience the above benefits. It’s an excellent way to calm yourself from the stresses of everyday life.