You’ve probably heard people talk about wellness breaks and meditation, but you may not have realized that incorporating meditation into your life might help you become a better student. Meditation is known to offer a host of benefits. It can help lower blood pressure, maintain sobriety, and improve your sleep habits. Beyond the physical, mediation can help with everything from reducing stress and anxiety to improving your attention span. No doubt you can see where we’re going with this—meditation may help you become a better student!
Nothing is destined when it comes to academic performance. Every measure of success applies only to some students, but certainly not all. However, several factors are known to help predict a student’s potential academic success or failure, as well as the level of degree they may one day earn. Everything from their family’s income to their breakfast eating habits can be a predictor of what their test scores and GPA will be.
Unsurprisingly, stress is one of the factors that can wreak havoc on academic performance. Also unsurprisingly, college and university students, especially those with families and work commitments, have many potential areas for stress in their lives. Whether the stress stems from financial woes, personal relationship problems, health issues, or even from the pressures of college itself, managing stress is an important factor in ensuring academic success.
That’s where meditation can really help. Studies indicate that meditation can indeed help reduce not only stress but its side effects as well. Meditation may also help alleviate and reduce anxiety. With those potential benefits, it’s no wonder meditation is gaining traction among students.
Another possible benefit of meditation is in improved concentration. Few mental aspects of study are more important than concentration. It can help you not only memorize but understand and then retain the information presented to you. A focus on mindfulness through regular meditation could, therefore, be a very valuable asset to any student who hopes to improve their academic performance.
For many, the idea of getting into meditation can seem intimidating, but many experts recommend starting small. Consider trying five-minute wellness breaks to help you get started. There are many beginning meditation videos available on YouTube, or there are apps you can download to help guide you into meditation. How you begin is not as important as the fact that you do begin to meditate. Consider meditation a learning process that never ends for as long as you practice it. Even experts learn new tips and techniques from others, or simply from trial and error.