With the arrival of the New Year, millions of people resolve to get their bodies into better shape with exercise and diet. And while those are excellent plans, theres also increasing evidence that meditation can improve both mental and physical health potentially even reducing the recurrence of cancer.

Image courtesy Nickolai Kashirin via Flickr

Meditation can be done anywhere When meditation was first introduced to this country, it generally came wrapped in eastern religions. People felt they needed a guru to learn how to meditate. But now, the practice is coming out of the ashram to universities like UCLA, to medical clinics, and even to a storefront on Wilshire Boulevard in West LA, where the former executive fashion editor for Glamour Magazine, Suze Yalof Schwartz, has started her own meditation studio, Unplug Meditation.

Were so hyper-connected right now that people need to really just stop and give themselves a time out, so they can actually connect with who they are instead of doing, doing, doing, says Schwartz. We need to be human beings again.

The fact is, anyone can learn to meditate, and it doesnt require a guru. UCLAs Mindful Awareness Research Center offers guided meditation classes on the internet for free. And if you want a teacher you can talk to, studios like Schwartzs are increasingly popular.

My goal is literally to just teach everyone how to meditate. I dont care where they do it. We teach a traffic meditation. We teach a waiting online at Starbucks meditation. We want people to bring it into their lives, says Schwartz, Because it has incredible benefits for every single person that does it.

Healthier and happier Dan Harris, ABC News anchor and author of 10% Happier, attests to the power of meditation first hand. Its actually a skill. You can train your brain and your mind, just the way you can train your bicep in the gym. And by the way, another thing thats a skill is compassion. You can make yourself nicer. There is an enormous body of evidence that a specific kind of meditation called compassion meditation can make you happier, healthier, and nicer.

According to Dr. Michael Irwin, Director of the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA, studies have shown that meditation can reduce stress, reduce depression, decrease anxiety, and help alleviate insomnia. That all seems intuitive that meditation, or any technique that helps calm the mind, will naturally improve ones mental state. But what may be surprising is the extent to which the positive mental effects get transferred to the body.

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Mind/body connection People under a lot of stress are more likely to die earlier and die of cardiovascular disease, cancer, have rheumatoid arthritis, as well as depression, says Irwin. Mind/body interventions tai chi, yoga, meditation actually change how the brain is processing information, but more importantly, change how its regulating the stress pathways from the brain to the body.

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How meditation promotes health and happiness