How does meditation help in achieving mental and physical relaxation?

At its most basic, meditation is a mental exercise that helps you achieve deep relaxation of mind and body. It begins with deep breathing and purposeful physical relaxation, one body part at a time. This progressive relaxation leads to slower, deeper breathing, which in turn promotes further mental and physical relaxation. Finally, as your mind becomes even more relaxed, the chatter of your monkey mind subsides, which leads to a deep healing state.

Meditation helps you circumvent the “fight-or-flight” response, a set of involuntary bodily reactions that include increased adrenaline production, heart rate, and blood pressure. Originating from the same “old” part of the brain as the unconscious mind’s survival instinct, these physiological reactions developed to prepare our prehistoric ancestors to “fight” a threat to their existence or to take “flight” and run away from it. Psychological researchers have discovered that stress and other negative emotions, such as fear, anger, and anxiety, produce the same physiological, neurological, and endocrinological changes in your body that the fight-or-flight response does. Furthermore, when you endure stress for a long period, or when you live in a constant state of fear, anger, or anxiety, you experience a sustained fight-or-flight reaction, which is not good for you. The fight-or-flight response was hardwired into our brain for short-term use only. Frequent or extended adrenaline surges and increased heart rate and blood pressure can lead to serious health problems. Biofeedback studies have demonstrated that meditation produces physiological changes that are the opposite of the fight-or-flight reaction, including reduced heart rate and blood pressure and regulated production of adrenaline. These physiological changes are also associated with mental and physical relaxation.

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