Beauty Benefits of Meditation You Didn't Know

How Spirituality & Beauty are Positively Correlated

Now, this is probably going to be the weirdest part of a beauty blog, so I was giving a second thought before writing this one down. If you think it’s not worth, you can freely skip this article but I highly recommend you to please read this, maybe it could manifest some solutions to your problem that’s not resolving despite of you working like a machine on it 24x7. Its 10 p.m. here now & I’m really not in a mood to write an article (so tired) but I thought I should start it anyway because I’m quite sure this is going to take real long. Before we begin, let me tell you a few short stories/situations in life of mine, & maybe you’ll even find some similarities to at least one situation here.

Situation 1: I was 25 years old, & due to a diagnosis of endometriosis (polycystic ovarian symdrome) 4 years back, I was suffering really hard. The periods bought me long hours of pain that no sympathy could heal. I was scared. I was on oral contraceptive pills that were supposed to help my pain but it did not do much. To make things worse, I was having serious acne on my face what I thought was a reason of hormonal imbalance/ PMS etc. I’d apply tretinoin, glycolic acid or anything I knew with 0 results. I sometimes felt desperate but it made my problems even worse. It was awful.

Situation 2: I was 13 years old, studying hard for my first board examination next year. I had to go to school regularly wearing a uniform that left my arms & legs exposed to sun & pollution & with the wisdom of a 13 years old., I couldn’t help but got tanned. I’m genetically predisposed to be severely tanned upon sun exposure & I didn’t give a shit. Tan is supposed to be good, right? It protects our skin from cancer & it’s considered beautiful in the west. But smack!!! I’m in India & most here consider lighter skin to be beautiful, which I soon realized. I was the ‘ugly dark’ girl in my class despite of me being one of the brightest students there. I started having serious self esteem issues & my confidence was seeping deep.

Situation 3: This is not my situation, think of it as Ms. X or Mr. Y’s life. Mr. Y/Ms. X is apparently living a good lifeà nice mansion, great income & greater bank balance, 3-4 credit cards in the wallet, owns fine cars. Ms. X is the reason of her envious neighbors’ wrinkles lol!!! But that doesn’t change the fact that she has a great deal of wrinkles on her forehead along with fine lines & expression lines that don’t seem to go away even with the best anti ageing creams & expensive treatments. They temporarily fade a little but they come back very soon. She is trying her best, going to the best gym in the town, drinking green tea religiously. She is well aware that this could be a reason of immense stress she has to handle in both her workplace & family life. There are times when even anti depressants don’t help much with your stress.

Now, why am I talking about these? 

Because these situations I’ve mentioned above is so common that we’re fine tuned to ignore them & if you’re a woman, I’m sure you’ll probably never recognize them as problems, it’s okay, we all face it. In our society it’s the liability of a woman to conform & we’re taught from the very beginning that it’s the woman’s job to put up with everything, even if it’s wrong because it’s common. Time has changed but with a little advancement on our side. My point here is simple,

                   I’m aware it’s a beauty blog, but we can only afford that luxury to concentrate in our beauty if everything else is fine, at the least okay. You do not expect someone with higher stress (situation 3), low confidence (situation 2), dealing with physical pain but medical help has come to a dead end (situation 1) to look beautiful. They’ll ooze more negativity & with zero confidence on their looks, I’m sure even with expensive products they won’t look good.

 It’s also about body confidence, like think about a young girl at the prime of her life bullied by her peers for being ‘fat’. It’s not about being fat here, it’s about not conforming to beauty standards our society has put for us. Being overweight to obese can have dangerous health implications like diabetes, gynaecological issues, higher cholesterol, heart disease etc but she’s not advised to tone down for heath, issue remains the same, a person’s worth is only limited to his/her looks & we have judging eyes everywhere telling us ‘hey!, you’re not perfect, you suck!!!’

And it’s also about accepting the laws of nature, we age with time. No doubt, there are wise old ladies mentioned everywhere in our ancient texts. Ageing with grace is rare, women struggle to look younger, trying every cream out there, letting the face becoming a battleground for surgical knives is an issue you have to acknowledge first. With age, we look different; but it doesn’t have to be ‘ugly’. Different is NOT ugly, it’s unique. However, we still struggle with the idea of associating old-age with negativity, ugliness.

Now please read below only if you recognize & acknowledge that being ‘fat’, being ’old’, being ‘dark’à are not signs of ugliness, being overweight only means you need to go to the gym for your health’s sake. Exercising regularly would make our hearts stronger, life longer, & as an added benefit with healthier body you’ll be stronger & confident. Good creams will make your skin shinier, pores tight & face less scarred with pimples & gift you a healthier skin & health is good, health is desired. So before you undergo treatments, make sure why you’re doing this for your skin’s overall health, & not because your neighbor thinks you’re ugly or your husband thinks you’re not beautiful because you’ve gained a few extra inches around your midriff. If you have to cut something off your life because of such lame reasons, you’d be healthy to cut those malicious relationships off before you cut off a few years from showing on your skin or a few inches from your waistline. If you do agree, read further.

There are such situations when we feel desperate, tired, and lonely with zero confidence & find nowhere to go. 

What can we do to resolve the situation?

Most such physical issues will take long to resolve with professional help & probably test your patience but until it actually heals, you need to keep your sanity. In this case, Meditation is the best solution you can offer yourself. You must be wondering by now, what took me this long to come to such a simple solution you’ve been advised like million times? Well yeh, it’s simple & at the same time, the most complicated thing I’ve ever known & why I’m documenting it in my beauty blog is another thing.

    Meditation is related to beauty just as fitness is related to beauty. Fit is beautiful & meditation contributes to it. How? In simplest terms, by giving you confidence to face the brutal world everyday, elevates mood (works much like SSRIsà selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or anti-depressants), relieves you from over thinking & over analysing things, gifts you a calmer mind & a confident woman is the most beautiful.

    There is also a new school of thought emerging that says, listening to some specific binaural beats can encourage your DNA to repair the damage & thus can heal skin problems & give you an overall healthy skin. Some say, it also has anti-ageing benefits, as we know mature skin is far more prone to damage or more damaged already than younger ones due to day by day lessening of skin cell turnover. 

                            The normal cycle of your upper skin cell layer to shed & the inner layer to get on top to stratum corneum (top of epidermis) is about 30 days, but as the skin matures this cycle lengthens, as we tend to lose our capability of initiating cell cycle (telomere shortening of the chromosomes). Enough of nerd talks, in short, as the cell turnover rate lengthens, our skin is less repaired on time & thus wrinkles, fine lines, expression lines start appearing. So if listening to a specific tune can help repair the damage directly, you’ll be benefitted with a youthful skin.

However, even if it does not directly encourage skin cell turnover, it still helps indirectly. As regular meditation relieves stress, it instructs your body to make less cortisol (the stress hormone), & serum cortisol is directly influences cell damage (thus, stress causes wrinkles) & now as you have less of it, you’ll be repaired sooner & it’ll diminish those fine lines & wrinkles. So, in short, regular meditationà less stressà less cortisol à faster cell repairà amazing anti-ageing benefits.

At this point, if you think you’re too young to worry about anti-ageing, let me remind you, a few months back, our capital New Delhi was on top of pollution chart & my home city Kolkata is being an amazing competitor of New Delhi in pollution these days. Together with sun exposure (pollution already damaging the ozone layer enough) it’s a matter of days before these concerns hit you & as we all know ‘Prevention is better than cure’.

So, about meditation, how do we meditate?

 Without making things complicated, we should begin with simple Chakra Activation process before we move further to skin repairing binaural beats & all. At first you can simply practice deep breathing for 10 minutes a day in a reclining position or in Padmasana (lotus position) or any way you feel the most comfortable. Unlike the Eastern School of Thoughts, I prefer lying down on my bed while meditating; it moves me faster to a more comfortable state.

What are chakras & what do they mean?  

You’ve heard thousand times about healing or balancing chakras. Here I’m giving a short overview on them. Maybe in future, we’ll discuss in depth but now to avoid any more lengthening of the article, we’ll make it short. You always have Dr. Google anyway to know more if you find this interesting.

Chakras are energy centres of human body. Energy flows through the chakras in an upward motion from base to crown. 

There are 7 major chakras in humans starting from Base Chakra to Crown Chakra. Each major chakras are related to certain organs & their functionality & together just like the organs of our body are connected, these chakras are connected. A well established connection between these energy centres is associated with life energy or Prana & promotes health & well being. But there are times, the function of these chakras are disrupted. We call this chakra blockage which has health implications & are also associated with mental health issues. The uniform energy flow through the chakras is supposed to promote homeostasis & disruption to this is highly not desired & should be addressed immediately.

What is 7 Chakra Meditation? How to perform chakra meditation especially for beginners?

There are 7 major chakras in humans:

·        ·         Root chakra or Muladhara: Situated at the end of vertebra, coloured Red, Root chakra defines grounding & maintains our relationship to mother earth. I’ve heard somewhere, when root chakra is activated, we tend to gain weight. It’s at the end of the pelvis, so it has also sexual implications if disrupted.

·         Sacral Chakra or Svadhishthana: At the level of pelvis, coloured Orange, it defines sexuality, pleasure, desire.

·         Solar Plexus Chakra or Manipura: At the level of naval, coloured Yellow, relates to power & energy, as being dominated by the element fire. I’ve seen it’s also associated with digestive system & a little bit disruption can result in massive digestion-issues like acid reflux etc.

·         Heart Chakra or Anahata: At the level of heart, coloured Green, it defines our emotions & actions towards others. A blockage can result in massive emotional rollercoaster & mental health issues. A balanced heart chakra can help the subject to forgive & love.

·         Throat Chakra or Vishuddhi: At the level of throat, coloured Aqua, throat chakra defines how we communicate. A well balanced throat chakra will promote you to voice your true feelings (truth) in a straight forward manner & its disruption can also promote fear, anxiety. To a certain extent, it also promotes good intuition. Many also say people with blocked throat chakra suffer from frequent respiratory tract infections.

·         Third Eye Chakra or Ajna: Situated between the brows, coloured indigo blue, third eye chakra rules intuition, promotes ESP & clairvoyance. People with activated third eye are gifted with the power of telepathy. This chakra is directly related to pineal gland, & a calcified pineal gland may result in a more or less permanent blockage of the third eye.

·         Crown Chakra or Sahasrara: Situated on top of the head, in the middle point, coloured Purple is associated with completeness, spiritual powers & heightened awareness of mundane feelings.

Energy flows from Root to Crown & in our texts, chakras are imagined as lotus with petals open when balanced. Only third eye chakra is not a full lotus, rather with just two petals horizontally situated. 

You can simply sit in padmasana or recline in your best comfortable position & visualize each chakra in its colour opening like a lotus flower at its specific level from root to the top. There are a lot of youtube videos that will guide you step by step in this chakra balancing journey.

What I do is I acquire my best comfortable position & first take a few deep breaths. Then when I feel comfortable enough, I start visualizing a red round energy centre below my pelvis, as the root chakra which then forms a vortex & slowly moves the energy like electricity to the Sacral chakra, which looks the same but in orange colour & this further connects to solar plexus & so on ultill it reaches on top of my head where the fireball is purple, the crown chakra & then I resume deep breathing, slowly getting out of this trance like state. 

After practicing a few weeks, you will start noticing that after a few minutes, your whole body would feel virtually weightless, or you may not feel your hands & feet anymore. Sometimes, you may even feel like the positions of your fingers have changed like your limbs have been dismantled. This is the turning point. This signifies its working.

Above information is just to give you an insight about what spiritual superpower we already are & upon unlocking, it can actually change your life. Balanced chakra can promote stability & check your mental health issues through the ups & downs of life & a balanced person is confident & confidence is beautiful. It’s the eternal truth of beauty benefits of meditation we tend to ignore & can only be realized upon attaining this balance.

Rest, I’ve also encountered mp3s of binaural beats that are tuned in to DNA repair promoting frequency. Just 10 minutes a day can do immense help regarding your skin issues regardless of age, gender or even race.

 If Self esteem is heightened, life energy is heightened & the person develops self respect if it’s lacking & such healthy & lively person is what we all want to be & think is beautiful.

There is the reasoning behind a message on spirituality in a beauty blog (in order to attain beauty through meditation) because without our human spirituality, there is no beauty that exists.

***If you have any complain about any of my articles, you’re free to contact me & please do not forget to stick around for a while.

Thank you for reading.

Peace !!!.........