With many people feeling mentally stressed out due to the CCP coronavirus quarantine, it is necessary that proper care is taken to maintain psychological health in a good state. According to a recent article published by the Harvard Medical School, meditation and yoga can help deal with the situation.
The article, written by psychiatrist John Sharp, points out that meditation has a calming influence on people and that they can learn some simple techniques through apps like Calm or Headspace. Sharp even gives instructions to a simple technique called “square breathing.”
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“Visualize your breath traveling along a square. As you follow the instructions to inhale, hold your breath, or exhale, count slowly to three on each side. Try it now. Inhale up the first side of the square. Slowly count one, two, three. Hold your breath across the top. One, two, three.
Exhale down the other side of the square. One, two, three. Then hold your breath across the bottom. One, two, three. After a few minutes of this you should be feeling calmer and more centered,” he wrote in the Harvard blog.
4 Ways meditation can help during the lockdown
1. Relieve anxiety
Meditation focuses on rooting a person in the present moment. It encourages people not to fuss too much about the past or the future. This gives the practitioner the confidence to deal with isolation. They stop worrying about the numerous ways the virus can affect them. Instead, the practitioners keep their cool, follow the safety protocols to protect themselves, and turn their minds to doing something useful or fun.
A study on 2,466 subjects gave conclusive proof of meditation reducing anxiety levels. Another study gave training to 18 people and followed them for three years. The participants displayed lower levels of anxiety during the long term. An 8-week study of mindfulness meditation found that it minimized feelings of paranoia, social anxiety, panic attacks, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors among its subjects.
2. Strengthen the immune system
One thing you should focus on to keep yourself safe from COVID-19 is strengthening your immunity. In this regard, meditation can be very useful. “Meditation may be able to strengthen the immune system by positively impacting genes involved with the infectious cycle.
“Using regular self-hypnosis as a relaxation technique has had positive effects on Lymphocytes — a type of white blood cell which helps produce antibodies and destroy cells which could cause damage. Meditation’s capacity to reduce stress levels can have a knock-on effect in improving the immune system, given the fact that stress is associated with a diminished immune response,” according to Psychology Today.
3. Treating depression
Various studies on depression have shown that meditation is capable of reducing feelings of loneliness among people who suffer from this condition. Depressed people who practice meditation slowly recover from their low moods. A study of 400 Belgians discovered that their tendency for negative thinking, stress, and depression remained at low levels even six months after they were provided with meditation training.
4. Promote kindness
Fears about the CCP coronavirus can make people turn against each other. They can become uncaring, bitter, and paranoid about other human beings. When a significant population of society succumbs to such attitudes, it can become quite dangerous. Meditating can deal with the issue since the practice is known to trigger positive emotions and feelings of compassion. Meditating regularly makes people kind, which is something every society affected by COVID-19 seriously needs right now.
