If you are on a spiritual path an important tool is meditation. Often, people take to meditation when they hit their down-cycle, and leave it by the wayside when things get better. While meditation is not for all, it is not because they cannot meditate but rather because they will not. Many believe they will begin after retirement when they have nothing else to do and to them I say don’t bother, because meditation is a tool to help you face life, and is better learned when you are young, before life’s difficulties hit you. Take to meditation, to pranayama and knowledge in the up-cycle. That way, the down-cycle will not affect you as deeply. Meditation is easy and effortless if you are guided into it skilfully and then, like any other technique it grows with practice. Here are some positive effects of meditation.

1. It stops unnecessary mental chatter: Meditation clears the monkey brain and gets you less involved in thought ladders. Thoughts are very common in meditation, the crucial difference  is that you become aware of these linked thoughts.(thought ladders) Once you are aware and you break the cycle and climb back down into your meditation, you sink into peace. This has the dual effect of  calming agitated thought loops and creating awareness about the quality of thoughts that typically pop up.
2. It fills you with enthusiasm:  Breath and prana must not be confused. While breathing begins in the nostrils, prana ascends from the base of the spine and on its journey upward through the 7 chakras it affects different emotions and energies.  Activity through the day causes prana to descend making a host of negative emotions reign supreme. Meditation causes a reversal of prana and this rising prana fills you with enthusiasm especially as it passes the Swadishthana (2nd) Chakra.
3. It wipes out accumulated karma and prevents illness:  Negative emotions like jealousy, envy, greed, anger, lust, grief etc cause aural vibrations in the body which get absorbed by the chakras. In other words, chakras store accumulated stress and depending on which chakra we store stress, illness develops accordingly(a heart attack for one, pneumonia or cancer for another) Certain meditations that focus on chakra cleansing, clear out glitches within the system which translates to less illness. More importantly, connecting to the source automatically clears past impressions which are your karmic roots. If you think back before the onset of a cold or stomach flu, you can most often recall a period of mental disturbance and elevated stress.
4. It energizes you through the day: Deep rest while fully awake refreshes and energizes you. Meditation is the fourth state of consciousness, the other three are wakefulness, sleep and dreaming. Meditation is a cleansing process that is the only true rest you can give to the mind. Through the day the senses receive hundreds of images and impressions which get embedded in the brain, revealing themselves as thoughts and emotions during wakefulness and dreams and nightmares at night. While sleep gives the necessary rest for the body, it does not give complete respite for the mind. The mind does get periods of involuntary rest during non-REM sleep,  different than meditation because it is rest with no awareness whereas meditation is rest with awareness. In deep REM sleep, the mind is most active and you are likely to awaken with elevated blood pressure and pulse rate. Meditation is as necessary for the mind as sleep is for the body. It rejuvenates and energizes the body and mind, allowing you to have an active and fruitful day.
5. It makes you more responsible: To have thoughts and sensations and do nothing trains you for life situations, where you respond with full awareness rather than react. Measured response to a situation has shown better long term results, forging deeper and better alliances and relationships. It puts into practice many axioms one knows about changing situations, acceptance and surrender.
6. It lowers blood pressure:  While the body is considered as being merely the instrument to access the mind. the act of relaxing the body completely has the physical consequence of lowering systolic blood pressure significantly almost as if you popped a calming pill. If one chooses to become the long-term meditator you can actually replace anti-anxiety pills with this much healthier option.
7. It fills you with love therefore no hate or fear:  One of the real benefits of meditation is that it brings awareness of thought and once this understanding is sharp,  you cease to be a puppet of your mind. The mind continually throws habituated thoughts of past and future fears. As long as you buy into your conditioned mind you will live in constant fear with resultant anxiety. Hate is nothing other than a bi-product of fears as the mind grapples to protect its deepest fears. At your source there is only love and when you access love you cannot feel hate or fear at the same time. It’s that simple.
8. It taps into your creative source: The period right after meditation can be your most creative as you tap into that silence; the birthplace for ideas. Studies have shown that meditation increases the density of grey matter in the brain which may result in clarity of thought and idea. The period right after meditation is usually your most creative, as concepts originate intuitively from your inner self; and most often those are the best ideas. In memoirs of all great inventors, their groundbreaking ideas were an expression arising from their source. Almost all of them express this spontaneous revelation of truth as sprouting from pure intuition.
9. It brings balance into your life: All emotions begin as sensations within your body. The more you meditate, the more you realize your inner state seeks outer validation. If you feel angry, then you search for a situation outside of yourself to validate that emotion. Once you are aware of the continual rise and fall of emotions you are then able to merely observe them while maintaining an inner balance at all times. You understand that your outer reality is nothing other than a reflection of your inner feelings. This is how meditation keeps you free from the opposites: cravings/aversions, pleasure/pain and leaves you with a centered, balanced attitude crucial for decision -making.
10. It allows abundance to flow in your life: Perhaps the most important side-effect of meditation is that of grace which flows like a river of honey in your life. No other spiritual practice can bring in this state of well being so quickly and so efficiently.  This happens because you slip into the present moment more easily  and this PMA(Present moment awareness) is like a flowing river going from moment to moment . As long as you sail down this river, you live free from the burden of life.  With PMA you realize that happiness is your birthright and in the moment all you need is a fistful of faith, courage and gratitude. The results can be life-changing.