There’s no denying that there is a connection between life and stress. Nowadays stress is a common problem in modern life. Whether you’re a student, nine to five worker or a housewife, stress manages to infiltrate itself into your life and damage your wellbeing in the process.

It had been a rough couple of weeks when I myself decided to opt for meditation and mindfulness, but it wasn’t until I fully understood the meaning behind it that I could finally grasp its benefits.

Mentalhealth.org.uk describes stress as the body's response to pressure from a situation or life events. What contributes to stress varies from person to person. Anything from our environment to social or economic circumstances. Stress triggers a known response called “fight or flight” which helps us respond quickly in dangerous situations.

While some doses of stress have beneficial reactions, if pushed too far, stress can be the cause of major danger to your health. You can still prevent yourself and bring your mind and body back into balance.

Here are a few symptoms of stress to look out for :

Emotional Symptoms

Becoming easily agitated, frustrated, and moody

Feeling overwhelmed, like you are losing control or need to take control

Having difficulty relaxing and quieting your mind

Why meditate?

Experience a calm inner you.

"MEDITATION PROVIDES A WAY OF LEARNING HOW TO LET GO. AS WE SIT, THE SELF WE’VE BEEN TRYING TO CONSTRUCT AND MAKE INTO A NICE NEAT PACKAGE CONTINUES TO UNRAVEL. "

A common misunderstanding is that people often equate mindfulness and meditation with one another. Meditation and mindfulness have its similarities as they ultimately complement and support each other, but they are completely different things. Let's take a look

Meditation is a way to take back control of your emotions. While it may be good or satisfying even to let yourself feel these emotions, they should be under your control. Through meditation you learn to handle these emotions in a way that fits you best.

There are many different types of meditation that focus on awareness, opening the mind, inner peace and the list goes on. Here are a few examples:

Breath-awareness meditation

Loving-kindness meditation

Mantra-based meditation

Mindfulness

While mindfulness is as simple as to slow down and notice your surroundings, as you quietly pay attention to your thoughts, body and breathing, it activates all of your senses. By being mindful you're helping yourself maintain a moment by moment awareness. You learn to stop your mind from wandering and that can be see as the most difficult part of practising mindfulness, since we can't instruct the mind what not to think. And unlike meditation, can be practiced at any given time. Here are a few practices:

Mindfulness of body meditation

Mindfulness of breath meditation

Mindfulness of sounds meditation

Mindfulness is a way to clear the mind and refocus on the present moment and meditation is a process of training your mind to redirect your thoughts. Many may also see it as an effective way to reduce stress and develop concentration.

And even though it can look as if they overlap each other in many ways, meditation is simply one of the many roads to mindful living.