8 Meditation Styles to Boost Your Anti-Aging Fitness Plan

By Soriyya Bawa

You may have tried a variety of anti-aging exercises, but the best exercise may be the one that involves the least amount of movement. Meditation has always been regarded as one of the best means of maintaining a healthy mind, but it’s also great for the body, making it perhaps one of the best ways to engage in anti-aging exercise.

When performed as an anti-aging exercise, meditation can increase melatonin in the body by 98% to 300%. Besides helping you sleep better—which means reduced bags under the eyes—melatonin also acts as an anti-aging agent, immunoregulator, antioxidant, and anti-depressant, while also slowing cell damage and inhibiting the growth of cancer cells. Meditation as an anti-aging exercise can also decrease skin-thinning cortisol by 47% and increase production of DHEA, a powerful anti-aging hormone, by 44% to 90%.

Here are eight different meditation styles that are easy to incorporate into your anti-aging exercise routine. You should have no problem finding one that works for you!

1. Mindfulness

Validated by science, mindfulness is an anti-aging exercise that focuses on breathing. It allows you to greatly reduce and better handle stress, thereby avoiding its aging effects on the body. It also helps to increase energy, lower blood pressure, and manage both physical and emotional pain.

2. Zazen

Zazen, or simply Zen, is about focusing the mind using proper posture. Research has found evidence supporting Zen meditation as an anti-aging exercise because it can reduce cognitive decline that occurs as a part of aging by protecting the grey matter from shrinking. Zen meditation also reduces stress, which can speed up the aging process, making this meditation an ideal anti-aging exercise.

3. Transcendental Meditation

A technique designed to promote awareness while evading distractive thoughts, transcendental meditation offers a variety of benefits as an anti-aging exercise. It’s been proven to lower blood pressure, as well as slow the biological aging process; studies have shown people who have practiced transcendental meditation as an anti-aging exercise for at least five years are physically 12 years younger than their actual age.

4. Kundalini

Kundalini is a concentration of energy located at the base of the spine—this practice tries to spread that energy throughout the body. As an anti-aging exercise, Kundalini meditation can remove toxins from the body through deep breathing and can balance brain chemicals by producing melatonin, serotonin, and y-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Kundalini meditation as an anti-aging exercise is also said to be able to improve the senses, and has reportedly been used to even repair nerve damage.

5. Qigong

Qigong meditation is about the regulation and improvement of the body’s life force, or “qi.” This anti-aging exercise involves stances, movement, breathing, and self-massage from multiple positions. Aside from the mental and spiritual benefits, Qigong meditation depletes tension, improves lymphatic and blood flow, improves nerve conductivity, strengthens your immune response, and boosts longevity.

6. Guided Visualization

This anti-aging exercise involves focusing on a specific place or thing and letting your mind wander there; for example, focusing on a swimming pool and imagining the feel of the water and the smell of chlorine. This form of meditation can boost the immune system, improve the body’s ability to heal, and reduce physical pain.

7. Deep Trance

You might think of a performer hypnotizing someone just to put on a show, but this anti-aging exercise is essentially a form of self-hypnosis that reduces stress hormone levels and improves brain function, allowing for improved awareness and mental health. And a healthy mind is a must for anti-aging exercise.

8. Heart Rhythm

This practice seeks to coordinate our breathing with our heartbeat, creating balance between the heart, mind, and emotions. As an anti-aging exercise, heart rhythm meditation strengthens the heart by regulating heartbeats; irregular heartbeats have been linked with stress and increased chances of heart disease.

This article originally appeared on Agein.com.