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World Meditation Day

Sunday 21 May 2023 is World Meditation Day. A day of self-care, relaxation, and a chance to escape the worries of everyday life.

Meditation Practice

The practice of meditation can be described as a set of techniques that an individual uses to attain a heightened sense of awareness reaching a calm stable state, mentally and emotionally 1. Meditation originated thousands of years ago in Asia, only becoming widespread in the west in the early 20th century 1. Today, meditation is  recognised globally as a universal technique to help achieve wellbeing.

Benefits of Meditation

There are so many perceived benefits to meditation, including improving your overall wellbeing.  It is a way to de-stress, can help with anxiety, and may even help relieve depressive symptoms 2. Better yet, it’s free and available to everyone, requires little to no equipment, and is very beginner friendly – so how about trying it out for yourself today?

As this is a day of self-care and reflection, why not use this as an opportunity to give your gut some love? Your brain and your gut are in constant communication, this link is known as the gut-brain axis3. There is now a growing body of evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of non-dietary approaches to improving gut health. These approaches include practices such as meditation (Sun et al., 2018). Meditation stimulates the vagus nerve which connects the gut and the brain, activating the parasympathetic nervous system and potentially improving gut symptoms  4.

Love Your Gut

Love Your Gut’s Dr Maxton Pitcher advises that stress can play a major role in influencing the working of the gut, so this World Meditation Day why not take some time to relax and love your gut!

https://loveyourgut.com/getting-gut-healthy/lifestyle-tips/

References

  1. National Today. 2023. WORLD MEDITATION DAY – May 21, 2023 – National Today. [ONLINE] Available at: https://nationaltoday.com/world-meditation-day/#why-we-love.
  2. uk. 2023. Mindfulness – NHS. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/self-help/tips-and-support/mindfulness/.
  3. Berding, K et al., 2021. Diet and the microbiota–gut–brain axis: sowing the seeds of good mental health. Advances in Nutrition, 12(4), pp.1239-1285.
  4. Sun, Ying, Peijun Ju, Ting Xue, Usman Ali, Donghong Cui, and Jinghong Chen. “Alteration of faecal microbiota balance related to long-term deep meditation.” General Psychiatry 36, no. 1 (2023): e100893.