Feeling anxious? 10 minutes of daily meditation will help you cope!

New Delhi: Previous studies have effectively shown meditation to be healing and relaxing for the body as well as the mind.

It is a known practice that can help cleanse the body and soul spiritually and is also one of the top recommendations and advise given to patients by doctors.

Meditation has often been advised by many to curb stress and now, a study has found that the practice can help prevent your mind from wandering and is particularly effective if you tend to have repetitive, anxious thoughts – all it takes is 10 minutes!

Yes, just 10 minutes of daily meditation can help you get rid of anxiety!

The team from the University of Waterloo found that developing an awareness of the present moment reduced incidents of repetitive, off-task thinking – a hallmark of anxiety.

"Our results indicate that mindfulness training may have protective effects on mind wandering for anxious individuals," said Mengran Xu, researcher and PhD candidate at Waterloo.

The team also found that meditation practice appears to help anxious people to shift their attention from their own internal worries to the present-moment external world, which enables better focus on a task at hand.

As part of the study, 82 participants who experienced anxiety were asked to perform a task on a computer while experiencing interruptions to gauge their ability to stay focused on the task.

Researchers then put the participants into two groups at random, with the control group given an audio story to listen to and the other group asked to engage in a short meditation exercise prior to being reassessed.

"Mind wandering accounts for nearly half of any person's daily stream of consciousness," said Xu.

"For people with anxiety, repetitive off-task thoughts can negatively affect their ability to learn, to complete tasks, or even function safely," Xu added.

The study, co-authored by Waterloo psychology professors Christine Purdon and Daniel Smilek and Harvard University's Paul Seli, was published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition.

(With IANS inputs)