Hello today i am here to speak to you about something that may improve your life. A hobby that is worth implementing into your day-to-day life. Meditation!

Now, if you have never heard of meditation before, which is quite schocking if you haven't, it is a form of mind and body practise which has countless health benefits such as increased calmness. And even better, it is generally considered to be safe! 

Still not convinced? Well, did you know meditation is a majour control for anxiety? A meta-analysis that included up to 1300 adults had found that meditation helps to decrease anxiety. In fact, the effect of anxiety reduction was extremely noticable with people with higher levels of anxiety, even better!

If you thought that was great, hear this. Meditation can even helps to improve mental health and quality of life. In 2011, a NCCIH-funded study of 279 adults who participated in an 8-week 'Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction' programme. From this, it was seen these people went through noticable changes in spirituality changes along with an improvement in, as mentioned before, their mental health and quality of life.

Along with these positive mental health changes, there have also been proven positive changes to physical health.

Now that we have gone through some positive changes meditation could bring, you may be wondering one thing. How can I do it and why should I do it? Let me go over a technique you can use to start of why you should do it and a short history behind it.

I would like to talk about a technique, popular in the west, mindfulness meditation. It is said to have originated more than 2500 years ago. Mindfulness meditation is a form of meditation that you can use to understand how your mind works. It serves as a starter to a winning battle of overcoming intolerence, dissatisfaction, greed and a few other negative traits.

As said by Proffesor Mark Williams, the former director of Oxford's Mindfulness centre, its a way of directly knowing what is going on inside and outside of our bodies, moment by moment. 'It's easy to stop noticing the world around us. It's also easy to lose touch with the way our bodies are feeling and to end up living in our heads' he says. 

Now, how do you do it? As stated by the NHS, mindfulness meditation involves sitting silently and paying attention to thoughts, sounds, the sensations of breathing or parts of the body, bringing your attention back whenever the mind starts to wander. You have to make sure to keep it consistent in order to notice changes, no matter how long you take.

In my experience, meditation has helped me in improving myself and it has especially helped me in coping with the stress of GCSEs. I highly recommend trying it out whenever you get the chance.