In nearly any other post you can read the tip "meditate!", without any explanation why people should meditate or what the benefits of meditation are.

As I am reading the book "The power of habit" by Charles Duhigg and being into meditation myself for roughly two years now, I thought that maybe a list of some of the benefits which come along with meditation would make a good read:

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  • Awareness-Training (most important benefit IMO)

According to the aforementioned book a habit consists of a cue, which leads to a routine followed by a reward.

Example:

a) Boredom (cue) leads to

b) playing video-games (routine)

c) followed by a dopamine-hit (reward)

Meditation is a good method to train yourself to become aware of your actions/thoughts and thus is a great tool to break negative habit-loops. Let's say for example you meditate each day for 20 minutes by sitting or lying down and are focusing on your breath and the sensations you feel in your body and thereby train your ability to be aware of your actions and thoughts. Over time this will cross over to other parts of your life aswell and will help you to get rid of negative habits.

Regarding our example this means if you are bored, you are a) aware that you are bored b) because you trained yourself by meditating to focus on your thoughts, you can actively decide what you want to do next, instead of being a slave of your habit and playing video-games.

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  • Breathing correctly

Most of us breathe in the wrong way. Instead of breathing into our bellies, we tend to only breathe into our chests. This means we don't use our full potential to fill our lungs with oxygen. By meditating and focusing on our breathing we learn to breathe the correct way, taking in more oxygen and as a consequence, allow our bodies to perform better. This is especially important when doing sports. The more oxygen you take in, the better your performance will be.

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  • Reducing stress

By focusing on your breath you switch your brain off. I think everyone in this forum can attest that your brain can be annoying as hell when it feeds you unwanted thoughts. By focusing on your breath you don't think. You just accept whatever is going on in your body. You don't think of the tasks you have to take care off tomorrow or later in the day. You are present and enjoying the moment. This also leads to better sleep, because you don't think about all the problems when it's time to go to bed.

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  • The likelihood of getting sick decreases

Studies have shown that people who meditate on a regular basis are 40-50% less sick, than people who don't meditate. My educated guess would be probably because of the reduced stress that comes with meditation. (I haven't been sick for over a year now, maybe because of meditation?).

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There are many more benefits to meditation, but this would go beyond the scope of the post. If I got you interested in meditation I can recommend Michael Sealey for guided meditation (Just look him up on youtube; I find he has a very soothing and relaxing voice).

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Tl;dr: "Meditate! (Lift! and so on...)" (to parrot the gym-bros)

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Edit:

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/harvard-researchers-study-how-mindfulness-may-change-the-brain-in-depressed-patients/ (there are some studies linked in that article aswell)

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/feeling-it/201309/20-scientific-reasons-start-meditating-today (studies linked in this article aswell)

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118221

https://healthybutsmart.com/meditation-benefits-research/

Many more studies can be found on google.