Overview
Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years around the world for the treatment of a variety of health issues, including cardiac care, mental health care, and as an effective method for stress relief.  Many doctors today suggest meditation to improve blood pressure and help those with asthma to breathe easier. Stress relief is a major benefit of meditation, which offers overall benefits to health and wellness.

Benefits of Meditation
Meditation is a technique that uses concentration to relax the body, calm the mind, and alleviate stress. Meditation is a very productive and complementary therapy for treating such issues as insomnia and chronic pain. Some cancer treatment patients benefit from relaxation therapy as well as the practice of meditation. While meditation does not claim to cure cancers, it can help to reduce high blood pressure, posttraumatic stress syndrome, stress, anxiety and chronic pain.

It is believed that meditation may also help to reduce activity within the sympathetic nervous system, which is the part of the body that grows tense with stress and accelerates breathing and heart rates. Meditation is also believed to help increase reactions in the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps the heart rate to slow down and the body to relax.

Common Types of Meditation
The focus of most forms of meditation is to concentrate on deep, slow, rhythmic breathing that offers enhanced oxygenation to the body and promotes focus of your mind to what your body is doing and feeling those changes as they occur.

• Transcendental Meditation - involves repetition of a word or phrase. The idea behind this is that uttering sounds or words helps prevent distraction. This helps you strive for a quiet state of mind and offer the body restful relaxation.
• Mindfulness Meditation - encourages you to pay attention to perceptions, sensations and thought processes without feeling a need or any special demand to solve them right that moment. Mindful meditation encourages you to focus on what you're feeling during the meditation. It's believed that this type of meditation heightens your sense of awareness to body and soul.
• Concentrative Meditation - focuses on deep breathing while the mind concentrates on the flow of energy through the body. Imagine your heart beating and focus your attention on trying to slow down your heartbeat as you ease deeper into a state of relaxation. Concentrate on your breathing, working toward, long, deep and slow breathing patterns that are present during calm and composed times.

How Much do Yoga and Meditation Treatments Cost?
Meditation and yoga retreats, spas and treatment facilities around the world are growing as more health care professionals understand the correlation between physical, mental and spiritual health. In the U.S., yoga and meditation retreats are still pricy, with average stays of 3 to 5 days costing an average of $500 or more, with an average cost of $100 to $200 a day, sometimes up to $300-$350 a day including food and lodging.

Those traveling to locations in India can find deals of two-week stays for the same price, including food and lodging, meditation sessions, consultations with doctors or certified and trained CAM professionals, and yoga sessions.

Who Performs Instruction Regarding Medical Uses of Meditation?
Meditation is called an alternative form of medicine, also known as CAM. Often, meditation techniques are combined with Yoga and then used with conventional medical practices by medical doctors (MDs) as well as doctors of osteopathy (DOs). This combination of traditional and alternative health approaches help treat high blood pressure, osteoporosis, arthritis, and other bone and joint diseases. Physical doctors and physical therapists often adapt various methods of yoga and meditation into physical and recreational rehabilitative therapy programs.