Do you feel like you don't have enough time to meditate? Think again! Research has shown that meditation can be a great alternative to sleep. Instead of trying to fit it into your daily routine, you can try meditating instead of sleeping. Studies have found that during intensive meditation practices, such as multi-day silent retreats, people tend to sleep less. This is often seen as a sign of meditative progress.
Buddhist texts suggest that experienced meditators can get by with only four hours of sleep a night. In one study, researchers compared the amount of sleep and mental acuity of experienced meditators to a group of non-meditators. The results showed that even new meditators who started with short meditation sessions were able to reduce their sleep time. It's important to note that while sleep is essential for living, meditation is essential for living life in the best way.
High-resolution MRI brain scans of 100 people (half of whom had meditated between four and 46 years and the other half who had never done so) showed that meditators had lost significantly less gray matter in many regions of the brain than non-meditators of the same age. While sleep helps replenish your energy levels and heal your body, meditation helps reduce the stressors that lead to burnout in the first place. Bruce O'Hara from the University of Kentucky suggests replacing only half the amount of sleep with meditation. If you find yourself falling asleep during meditation, it could mean that your mind is releasing layers and layers of emotional charge, which is necessary before achieving a true meditative state.
A recent study published in the Journal of Business Venturing indicates that a little bit of meditation can have a positive impact on workers who are usually stressed and sleep deprived. It's important to remember that, as far as the body is concerned, meditation and sleep are two different things. People with anxiety disorders who took a mindfulness meditation course showed a dramatic drop in stress hormones and inflammatory responses when exposed to a stressful situation, compared to those who took a stress management course without meditation.
