Meditation helps reduce stress, blood pressure and anxiety, promotes emotional health, increases self-awareness and improves sleep. UN marks first-ever World Meditation Day Health
Saturday, December 21, marks the first World Meditation Day, which the UN General Assembly proclaimed earlier this year to raise awareness of the practice and its benefits.
Benefits of Meditation
The most widely accepted definition of meditation generally describes it as a practice in which a person uses techniques such as mindfulness, focused attention, or concentration to train the mind and achieve a state of mental clarity, emotional calm, and physical relaxation. There are different types of meditation, each offering unique approaches to achieving calm, clarity, and balance.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes the significant benefits of meditation, especially mindfulness meditation. According to the WHO, meditation can be a powerful self-care tool to support treatment and improve overall well-being, especially in combating symptoms of anxiety.
Meditation helps reduce stress, blood pressure, and anxiety, promotes emotional health, increases self-awareness, and improves sleep.
Global Practice
It is estimated that between 200 and 500 million people meditate worldwide. Technology has made meditation even more accessible, with apps and online platforms making it possible to practice anywhere and anytime.
In addition to its individual benefits, meditation promotes empathy, collaboration, and a sense of shared purpose, contributing to collective well-being. Recognized for its universality, meditation is practiced in all regions of the world by people of all ages, backgrounds, and lifestyles.
Meditation has a special place at the United Nations, as exemplified by the Meditation Room at UN Headquarters in New York. Opened in 1952 under the leadership of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, this “room of silence” symbolizes the vital role of silence and introspection in achieving global harmony. In this house, intended for work and discussion for the good of the world, Hammarskjöld said, “there must be one room devoted to silence in the external sense and stillness in the internal.”