Mindfulness helps reduce stress

Top Ten Tips For Meditation: Tip 9

How Does Meditating Help To Balance Emotions?

A lot of the time, people use meditation techniques to lower their stress levels, increase productivity, or even heal chakras, but does it actually balance emotions? In a nutshell, when you think about the different intentions you set, for your meditation practice, whether it’s lowering stress, tackling anxiety and depression, or even for motivation, you’re essentially counteracting the imbalance in your psyche.

How it works

  • Emotional balancing is about creating awareness of our emotional state and learning how to exert control over it.
  • With control we also develop tolerance to stress because we can objectively accept difficult situations.
  • Mindfulness is one of the most effective meditation techniques in achieving emotional balance because it reduces distractions and encourages focus.

So, yes, meditation can help to balance your emotions, but how it does that depends on you. Sometimes it can be noticeable, like a revelation or a solution to a previously difficult problem. Other times it can be more subtle, where you feel a little more detached from a situation, or you feel a little more clarity in your decision-making abilities. Here are a few ways meditation can help balance your emotions.

What Is Emotional Balancing?

In its most basic sense, emotional balancing is a process of regulating our emotions and developing a tolerance to stress.

On a day-to-day basis, we aren’t really fully aware of our emotions, beyond whatever is at the surface level. We tend to allow emotions to happen, without actually acknowledging that we are feeling a certain way and trying to understand why. Without a conscious effort to explore the emotion and understand its impact on us, we are simply along for the ride.

We need to cultivate a practice of emotional regulation, whereby, we can observe the emotions we feel, without becoming overwhelmed by them and meditation is the perfect way to achieve this. The calmness and clarity that meditation brings, can be used highly effectively, to delve into our minds and properly analyse those feelings.

Developing a tolerance to stress is also important, as it teaches us to accept the current situation, however unpleasant it may be, without judgement of ourselves. There are times when we will feel stresses from a whole range of events and circumstances, but we can learn to build up our resilience and ability to cope, through acceptance. This doesn’t mean we agree with, or are happy with the situation, but we consciously choose to accept it, even though we don’t like it.

Meditation is the perfect way to develop both emotional regulation and improve stress tolerance, as it gives us a clear and honest dialogue with ourself, where we are have the opportunity to see everything from a different perspective.

Mindfulness Matters

One of the most effective meditation techniques is mindfulness. In fact, it’s usually the first technique beginners use, when stepping into the world of meditation. All you really need to do is sit down in a quiet space and focus your mind on the here and now. What it demands of you is that you don’t let your mind wander or drift to whatever problems you’re facing, or whatever memories haunt you from your past. Instead, you need to focus on what is going on around you in the here and now. Listen to the birds in the trees, or the traffic on the roads. Listen to the quiet hum of the appliances around you. Listen to your breathing and focus on the act of taking air into your lungs and expelling it as well.

By practicing mindfulness, and focusing on what’s physically around you, you may not initially forget about whatever it is that stresses you out, but you can at least have a clearer look at the narrative. So, for example, if you’re having an argument with your partner, take out a few minutes to practice mindfulness, and when you come back to the situation, you won’t be so charged up, and you’ll be able to see a different perspective to that argument. That’s why mindfulness can help balance your emotions. It not only decompresses your charged emotions, but it’ll also help in expanding your consciousness, to see the bigger picture that surrounds your situation.

Start Balancing Your Emotions

There are many more ways in which meditation can help balance your emotions, but mindfulness is a great starting point for beginners, or for that matter, experienced meditators, especially when their daily stress levels are high. So, if you’re ready to start, try out mindfulness techniques first. They’re foundational and can help with more advanced meditation practices, as you become more experienced and adept.

Remember this – your emotions exist only within your mind. They have no physical form; they are purely thought energy. It’s your mind, they are your emotions and therefore, the person best placed to balance them, is you.

Dedicate a little time each day to your meditation and mindfulness practices and you will soon feel better equipped to deal with whatever life throws at you.