9 Benefits of Vipassana Meditation for Your Health
For over the last few years, people across the world have heard several names for mediation practice. One of the meditation practices that has gained increasing popularity in recent years is Vipassana. Vipassana mediation is actually a traditional mediation that has been practiced by some people in the past.
But, Vipassana mediation gains more popularity since S.N. Goenka brought the technique to the West and added some modern style into it.
There are a lot of advantages of doing Vipassana mediation, both for physical and mental health. Here we have outlined 9 benefits of Vipassana meditation that you should not miss.
1. Access Inner Peace and Unconditional Joy
The basic practice of Vipassana meditation is about disciplining the inner mind so people can focus on a single point of exit and entry of the air as they breathe through the nostril.
This way, you can feel a sense of inner peace in your mind. Inner peace is something that not many people can have. This is an unconditional joy which is the main purpose of doing Vipassana mediation.
To gain your inner peace, it might take several times until you get used to it. But, once you do regular practice, you will be able to access inner peace and unconditional joy through command.
2. Live Your Life in the Present Moment
This might sound very simple and easy to do. But in real life, many so-called modernized people are failed to live their life in the present moment.
There are many things in life they want to achieve which make them eventually lost most of the things they already have. They compete with each other to gain materialistic goods and abandon the most valuable things they have in their own life.
Many people fail to live in the present moment because they only use their minds to arrange the schedule or solve a certain task. Doing Vipassana meditation is able to help you gain consciousness so you can increase your awareness of things around you. As the result, you can bring yourself into the present moment and enjoy every second of it.
3. Increase Your Confidence
For some people who are never really into meditation, doing Vipassana meditation can be really challenging.
It might feel a little uncomfortable in the beginning, but once you are able to push yourself into doing the meditation by sitting in silence, you will feel a sense of achievement.
The sense of achievement will help you to grow your confidence because you feel that you are actually capable enough to do something you never did before. The sense of satisfaction of successfully doing something new will become a massive booster for your self-esteem.
4. You Will Become More Grateful of Life
There are things in life that we might think we have failed to achieve. Many people often feel ungrateful because they keep on comparing themselves with others.
Social media nowadays has become one of the main reasons many people become more ungrateful. The sense of ungratefulness in life is the important factor that makes people fail to achieve inner peace.
One of the 9 benefits of Vipassana mediation is it will help people to appreciate things around them. It enables people to see the world with new eyes which eventually grow the sense of love and gratitude for things they already have.
Practicing Vipassana mediation regularly will shift your mind away from ego and desire into quieting the mind.
5. Bring Many Physical Benefits
Doing meditation will bring benefits for mental health as well as physical health. The benefits of Vipassana meditation for physical health might be quite unknown since people more focus on mental health.
Practicing Vipassana mediation is not only about sitting in hours of silence to gain your inner peace but also to change your regular diet.
Doing Vipassana meditation requires you to eat a plant-based diet and prevent you from eating instant food. Furthermore, Vipassana meditation also instructs the participants to cut the number of calories consumed dramatically especially in the evening. You can change your high calories diet in the evening to a light snack made of fruit.
Changing your high calories diet to a lighter diet will bring better physical health. It will help to improve your physical health such as reducing chronic disease, heart attack to weight loss.
Furthermore, many people claim that practicing Vipassana regularly is able to help them change their unhealthy behavior such as smoking and alcohol addictions.
6. Improve Concentration
Practicing Vipassana meditation is able to help people improving their concentration ability. It is strongly related to the fact that Vipassana meditation is more focused on increasing focus and attention on the tip of your nostril when you are breathing.
Of course, it is very difficult for a novice to gain one hundred percent of focus when doing it for the first time.
But, you can make yourself get used to it by bringing back your mind when you lost your focus. Every time you realize that your mind has wandered around, immediately bring your awareness back.
7. Recognition of True Self
Getting to know people might seem difficult, but actually, sometimes it will be more difficult to recognize your own self. Practicing Vipassana meditation is able to help you gain self–liberation.
This way, you can get to know yourself by realizing your true nature. The key to do this is by quieting the mind and gain more awareness of life.
8. More Time to Focus on Yourself
Life is not always easy for some people. You might sometimes feel a sense of loneliness, up and down, or even feel lost. Being in this state of the situation, it is actually better to isolate yourself in your own world.
Practicing Vipassana mediation in a calm and peaceful place will help you to focus on yourself more. This way, you can learn more about happiness in life.
9. Bring More Calmness in Life
Doing Vipassana mediation regularly is able to bring a new and more refreshing perspective about life. You will feel a much greater balance of mind. Eventually, it will bring more calmness into your life.