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Every religion has their own version and reason for meditation. From early 1500s, people were taught to meditate as a way to connect with a higher being, in some religions this is God. In other religions, this was Mother Earth. The Zen concept of meditation came from Japan around the 8th century. Traditional Chinese medicine teaches that no amount of medicine can cure you if you don’t have the right mindset. They would couple meditation with acupuncture so that all the pressure points would be relieved of binding energy. Medicines only treat symptoms and not the underlying cause. Even readers of the Bible are told to meditate on the proverbs because you are what your mind focuses on.

Somewhere between 400 and 100 BCE, the first writings about yoga appeared. The theory that you could bend your body so that your energy flow would be directed where you needed it developed into the eight limbs of yoga.

The interesting part of this is that on other sides of the world, it was believed that you could only reach the mind silencing state if your body was folded so that all your points interconnected. For example, your legs were on your lap with your hands on your legs.

In the 1960s, meditation came to America. It went along with the new wave of thinking. It was believed that if you could reach this higher state of mind, then you would become your own healer. As long as you could focus your energy you could accomplish anything that you wanted.

However, it wasn’t until the late 70s or early 80s that doctors and medical journals actually started to realize that your mindset, mindfulness and meditation really do have consequences on your health. Meditation can help your body to relieve stress. This stress relief can help your body to fight off stress, build your immunity and even aid in digestion.

Scientists actually took scans of Buddhist Monk’s brains while they were meditating and found that the balance of the mind was much different to that of those who did not meditate. The fact that both sides of the brain were equally active was enlightening because what that meant was that meditation helps you to use the creative side of the brain as much as the calculating side of the brain and that this leads to a happier balance.

Terminally ill patients are told that they should practice meditation as a way to focus their energy and keep their mindset positive. It is the idea that your body can create the energy that it needs to heal itself if you give it the chance to.