Meditation can help maintain healthy blood pressure. It can also help lower high blood pressure, known as hypertension. Since high blood pressure / hypertension contributes to the major causes of disease and death, including heart disease, heart attack, stroke and kidney failure, anything that can help maintain a healthy blood pressure or can lower high blood pressure deserves consideration. And that includes meditation.

Because the body is in such a relaxed state during meditation, even within minutes of starting a meditation, it requires less oxygen – up to 20 percent less depending on the experience of the person meditating as well as the type of meditation. Walking meditation, obviously, is going to require more oxygen than sitting meditation where the body is held still. This reduced need for oxygen allows the heart to beat fewer beats, usually from 3 to 10 percent less. It also allows the blood pressure to go down.

Blood pressure is actually two measurements. The first, called systolic pressure, is the pressure of the blood against an artery when the heart muscle contracts, or beats. Because the heart has beaten, this measurement is the higher of the two. The second measurement, called diastolic pressure, is pressure of the blood against an artery between heart beats. Thus, it is the lower of the two pressures. A healthy blood pressure of 120 over 80 means that the pressure on the artery during a heart beat is about 50 percent more than the pressure on the artery between beats. A pressure of 225 over 100 is too high because too much pressure can cause damage to the artery walls (and elsewhere in the body) over time.