Nofap and meditation are two terms that always go hand in hand in some cases. A lot of people on the nofap forums report that they were able to go longer on nofap when they started meditating.
Achieving nofap is a thing of the mind and if you could be able to cultivate the habit of having control of your mind, your chances of success have increased dramatically.
What you will learn
Porn thoughts are the origin of most relapses in nofap
The environment is very crucial in breaking any addiction.
If you’ve taken care of your physical and outer environment by deleting porn stashes around you and staying away from explicit contents, the only environment left to be taken care of is your MIND ENVIRONMENT.
Your mind environment is an internal environment. Your mind environment is simply the thoughts that come into your heads daily, the ones you choose to acknowledge and the ones you choose to act on.
The brain is filled with flashes of porn scenes that had been watched over the years and when you stop watching porn, these flashes would often come and this is normal because the brain is detoxing from years of pornographic programming. It takes some time to get these thoughts out of the head.
The thing is that if you indulge these thoughts, they can quickly multiply and escalate into cravings, whereby one thing would lead to another and before you know it, you are at your computer searching for porn.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a mental state that when it is achieved, one is AWARE of the thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and emotions of the present moment.
The key words in that definition are; aware and present moment.
It’s funny how most of us just wander through life, day in day out without paying attention and being aware.
We are constantly getting lost in our train of thoughts. Being mindful of our thoughts helps us be in control of our emotions and those things that we choose to act on.
Constant meditation helps to become more mindful
The best and easiest way to become more mindful is to meditate CONSTANTLY.
Constantly can mean every day, three times a week consistently, or every other day. It has to be a consistent practice.
The benefits of meditation are reaped after the practice is done regularly for a stretch period of time.
According to this study, the benefits of meditation are experienced after six weeks of constant meditation.
Meditating normally has been shown to improve mindfulness, but there is a form of meditation called mindfulness meditation which is tailored to improve the act of being mindful.
When I first started mindfulness meditating, I would just sit there and nothing would seem to be happening for about two weeks.
This is the case for most people and you might be thinking that it is not working but believe me, it is.
With time, you start being aware of the thoughts that are coming into your mind which is just one among a host of different benefits you derive from being mindful.
Scientifically proven neurological benefits of mindfulness meditation
The list of neurological benefits of meditation is very long and it keeps increasing as more researches are going into this subject.
Some big companies like Google, Bank of America, and some other industry giants are now incorporating mindfulness meditation into their culture by training their staffs in the art to increase productivity and effectiveness.
For the purpose of this post, we would look at some of those benefits of meditation that has to do with nofap
Mindfulness meditation increase concentration and helps to be more focused
By starting with the obvious of them all, constant meditation helps to be more mindful and the ability to notice our thoughts is increased with time.
Most meditation practice is centered on noticing one’s thought as they come and go.
And with repetition, one gets proficient at doing this. With time, the possibilities of noticing how we are presently feeling, what thoughts are giving us those feelings is also increased.
When we start choosing the thoughts that we want to focus on after we’ve noticed them, concentration and focus in day to day activities are also increased.
According to this study conducted at the University of Santa Barbara, participants who went through two weeks of mindfulness meditation found it easier to concentrate on tasks despite all the distractions that they were constantly being exposed to.
Mindfulness meditation reduces depression, physical and mental stress and anxiety
The stress hormone known as cortisol is found to be sharply reduced in regular meditators according to this study.
Stress is something that can’t be avoided as long as we continue to live in this world. Events, which are expected or unexpected will come up that might raise our stress levels from time to time.
With constant meditation, the ability to handle stress increases dramatically.
The same has also been found for depression and anxiety.
Mindfulness meditation increases the volume of grey matter in some region of the brain
A group of researchers at UCLA, in a study, used MRI to scan the brain of meditators and non-meditators. They observed that there is difference in the volume of brain matter in the brains of these groups.
The meditators had a larger volume of tissue in the orbito-frontal cortex, the hippocampal tissue, the thalamus and the inferior temporal gyrus.
These areas are areas that are responsible for cognitive functioning, emotional responsiveness, and the ability to concentrate.
In another study to check the effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) on neural mechanisms, it was found that participants who went through the eight-week program had an increase in gray matter concentration in their posterior cingulated cortex, the temporo-parietal junction, and the cerebellum.
Mindfulness meditation helps increase dopamine levels
According to this study where the effects of meditation are tested, it was found that meditation modulates the levels of neurotransmitters like GABA, serotonin, and dopamine.
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that is commonly associated with the reward, motivation, and social anxiety circuits in the brain.
In another study, it was found that during meditation, there was a staggering 65% increase in endogenous dopamine levels.
Just as you work-out your body in order to stay healthy, sharp, and build those muscles, it is now a consensus among scientists that if you want a mental work-out, then, meditate. Meditation is now dubbed the new push-up for the brain.
What this means to the fapstronaut
You are able to catch porn thoughts early thereby saving yourself from a relapse
This is the first benefit that the person that meditates while doing the nofap challenge enjoys. As I have pointed out earlier, porn thoughts are the origin of most NoFap relapse.
If you are avoiding triggers and explicit materials all day, and at the end of the day, porn thoughts still enter your mind, the thoughts if allowed multiplies and before you know it, you are searching furiously online for pornographic contents.
As a meditator, you’ve learned how to listen to your thoughts and separate yourself from those thoughts. So, when a porn thought creeps into your mind, you immediately catch it by noticing it.
Armed with the knowledge that you are not your thoughts, you are able to step back and separate yourself from those thoughts.
This will immediately reduce the urges you might get from the thoughts and this ultimately saves you from relapsing easily.
This is why most people report that they feel like they can go for a long time on their nofap challenge.
Stress reduction and management
Have you ever had a stressful day?
I mean a REALLY stressful day?
Have you noticed the way that the stress affects your decision-making process?
Well, that’s one of the side effects of stress.
When you get stressed, the region of the brain responsible for willpower physically gets impaired.
Stress itself is not what causes the problem that is perpetuated; it is the way we react to those stressful situations,
When we get stressed, we are likely to easily slip into the limbic part of our brain for decision-making duties and this side is compulsive in nature and can easily give in to naturally HOT temptations like watching porn for instance.
It has been shown by researchers that stress is a prominent source of relapse in addicts.
Constant meditation would not only help to bring down stress levels, it will also equip you with the way to react to stress positively instead of going to your system and relapsing.
Meditation combats hypofrontality
A common denominator among most addicts is the reduction in the volume of gray matter in the frontal region of their brain.
Hypofrontality is the reason that most addiction cycle is very hard to break. Unless the individual exerts a very intense willpower, he just keeps moving in circles.
As we have seen in the previous section, meditators have a larger frontal cortex. In other words, meditation strengthens what porn and masturbation addiction have weakened over time.
What you mostly notice if you meditate constantly while on nofap is a general increase in your ability to resist porn and masturbation temptations as they come.
Meditation helps to speed up the brain rewiring process
One of the main aims of nofap is to rewire the brain. What rewiring entails is to rebuild the dopamine pathway in the brain.
The D2 dopamine receptors in the brain have been reduced due to the floodgate of dopamine you’ve exposed it to through porn watching.
What is found with constant meditation practice is that when this receptor and dopamine levels are increased, general enjoyment and happy feelings towards life is increased.
Since boredom and depression are pre-requisites to relapsing, the fapstranaut that is also meditating constantly stands a good chance of succeeding with nofap.
Pitfalls to watch out for in meditating while on nofap
There are two things that I have noticed that occurs when I am on nofap and also meditating during that time.
These are things that I noticed from my PERSONAL EXPERIENCE of nofap and I wouldn’t want to be misconstrued as saying that these things would happen to you also if you are meditating while you are on nofap.
People are different and our bodies react to things differently. I just thought they are things that are worth mentioning.
Don’t meditate when you are having sexual urges
This is when you are having a porn craving or sexual urge and in order to reduce the urge, you try to meditate.
What happens every time I do this is that I actually get hornier and the urges increase when I meditate. So, after the meditation, I always relapse.
Instead of meditating when I get urges, I take a cold bath or get out of the house and catch up with friends. These I have found to be better alternatives to meditating when it comes to reducing porn cravings and urges.
Your meditation practice should be at a stipulated time of the day. And in order to reap the most benefits……
Meditate early in the morning. Make it your early morning ritual
As I am a long-term meditator, I have experimented with different meditation times during the day and the best time I have found that I reap the most benefit is early in the morning.
At this time, the likelihood of being disturbed or interrupted while meditating is very small because the rest of the people in my household are still asleep.
Also, I am just getting out of bed and my brain is still very fresh out of worries. This increases my ability to focus which is one of the hallmarks of meditation.
A simple guide on how to do a 10-minute meditation
Get a place where you will not be disturbed if you can.
Get a timer on your smartphone (or an analog stopwatch), set it for 10 minutes and start it.
Sit down on a chair or lie down on your back on a sofa or bed.
Take a deep breath in through your nose, hold the breath in for 2 seconds, and let it out through your mouth.
Repeat this three times or until you start to feel your body sinking into relaxation mode.
Now, let the breath become natural and don’t try to influence it anymore.
Focus your attention on how the breath is going in and coming out.
When you get distracted by thoughts (which you definitely will), notice what the thought was and just return your attention to the breath.
Wait for the timer to CLING!!
Conclusion on Nofap and meditation
I hope with this post, you are able to know what meditation while on nofap will do for you. It is a very powerful thing to incorporate and with time, the effects are felt all around the centers of your life.