High Blood Pressure and Meditation

What Does Meditation Have To Do With Your Blood Pressure?

Let’s talk about meditation and what it can do for your blood pressure. High blood pressure is becoming a serious and very common issue in first world countries and those that have adopted the “Western diet” throughout the world. For decades, we were told to exercise more and watch our diet. We’ve reduced our salt intake and have taken blood pressure reducing medication in record numbers. What if there was a better solution that’s easy to do and doesn’t carry any dangerous or unpleasant side effects. The solution you’ve been looking for, to lower your blood pressure, may just be meditation.

That’s right, something as simple as sitting quietly in a state of thoughtless awareness can help lower your blood pressure and thus aid in the prevention of heart disease and stroke. All it takes on your part is a little bit of time and an open mind. Isn’t that worth trying to greatly improve your health and your quality of life?

The pharmaceutical industry is doing its best to suppress the information, but study after study shows that participants who meditate regularly have lower blood pressure than their non-meditating counterparts. If your blood pressure is getting up there, or you’re at a point where you’d like to get off or at least reduce the blood pressure medication you’re taking, meditation may be well worth exploring. It goes without saying that if you currently suffer from hypertension, you should consult your physician and should never stop taking your medication without his or her consent and regular supervision. That being said, meditation is something you can do in addition to everything else your doctor has you do or medication that you take right now.

Read up on simple breathing meditations, or follow a guided meditation through a recording or smartphone app. While your blood pressure may lower during your meditation as soon as you get to a point where you can comfortably meditate for a short amount of time, the real benefit is in making this a daily habit. After a few weeks of meditating daily and being able to get into a fairly deep meditative state, you should start to see a drop in your overall blood pressure even when you’re not meditating. That’s the end goal and one well worth striving toward. While this may not be something you can do quickly, being able to improve your health and reduce medication make the effort well worth it. As an added bonus, you get to experience the other positive “side effects” of regular meditation including improved focus, concentration, mental clarity, and even an improved immune system.