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Five ways to improve your resilience with meditation

You may have heard people say that meditation can help you build resilience and avoid burnout, or have read about the increasing numbers of scientific studies that back up these claims. But what exactly do these terms mean?

Charlotte Parr is a yoga and meditation teacher and the co-producer of The Music & Meditation Podcast on 大象传媒 Sounds. Here, she lists five ways that meditation can help you cope with stress and explains the concept of resilience, with help from psychologist and author Dr Julie Smith.

1. Meditation can stop us going into “fight or flight” mode – and staying there

Meditation can help break the stress response that we refer to as “fight or flight”: a physical reaction to a stressful or scary situation. As Dr Julie explains in episode four of The Music & Meditation Podcast, this stress response can be a useful tool for coping with short-term, high-pressure tasks. “But then your body needs to rest,” she says. “Burnout occurs when this stress reaction, which is meant to be a short term measure, carries on in the long term."

Burnout can happen when our natural reactions to stress are drawn out over a long period, leaving us "tired but wired"

“If you are constantly triggering that stress response and living in a stressful situation, but you’re not putting in the chance to rest and replenish inbetween so your body can recover, you develop chronic stress. Burnout is a term that’s often used when people reach that stage of chronic stress – when you’re really exhausted, tired but wired."

Meditation is a quick and effective way to press pause and break the stress response in our bodies. From there, we can start to improve what we call “resilience” in three key areas…

2. Meditation helps build physical resilience

Meditation gives your body the chance to recover from stress. Regular meditators will tell you that, over time, their ability to go the extra mile is improved. Practising meditation can also help you avoid the physical symptoms of burnout, like bodily aches and pains and jaw tension that can lead to headaches. Research has found that meditation can even boost the body’s natural immune response, making you better prepared to combat bugs and viruses.

3. Meditation helps develop mental resilience

Many people who meditate find that it helps them cope mentally with the demands of everyday life, even in times of stress. As Dr Julie says: ‘It’s not about forgetting everything in your life that’s stressing you out, or suddenly feeling deeply relaxed. It’s about being able to choose what you focus your attention on, and for how long.”

Regular meditation provides you with a window for calm focus during the day, which can help you develop greater awareness about the way your mind works. “It’s about flexing this mental muscle to be able to choose where you are focussing your attention,” says Dr Julie. “It improves your focus and it improves your self-awareness on how your mind is working, so it really has a profound effect on people who take it seriously and put it into their lives."

4. Meditation helps strengthen emotional resilience

By improving your ability to choose what you focus on, you’ll start being able to observe your emotions rather than automatically getting caught up in them. Introducing space between yourself and the whirlwind of your feelings can help you find a sense of stability and cultivate resilience, which can help you be less reactive to challenging situations.

Dr Julie Smith is a clinical psychologist, author and influencer who recommends mindfulness meditation techniques to combat symptoms of burnout

5. Meditation helps us stay relaxed, yet alert

Meditation can be very relaxing – which has its place, especially when winding down before bed! But ultimately, meditation can also help you achieve a state of relaxed wakefulness that will enable you to view situations with greater clarity and respond in a resilient way: making better choices and finding balance, even after being blown off course.

If all these reasons aren’t enough to give meditation a go, here’s a final word of encouragement from Dr Julie: “Of all the people I’ve worked with in therapy, of the people who have taken meditation seriously and put it into their lives on a regular basis, I don’t know any of those people who don’t say: ‘This has made a profound impact on my life.'"

Find out more about meditation and get started straight away with The Music & Meditation Podcast on 大象传媒 Sounds. Hosted by musician and meditation enthusiast NAO, each episode features a guest expert and a bespoke ten-minute guided meditation – all to a soundtrack of beautiful, relaxing music.