Thank you for the comments Mimet. Meditation does seem to help alleviate anxieties and worries, including those about loved ones. It’s not a magic pill. It’s more of a strategy to train your mind toward focusing on things that really are true at this moment, rather than things that might be true. Anxieties usually come from “what if?” types of questions in your mind. And those anxieties rarely play out in reality, so we waste our time on worrying about them. We are better off trying to appreciate all the actual sensory experiences and realities as we live them.

Meditation is different to sleep in that it is training your conscious awareness. Sleep and dreaming are less controlled processes — they simply unfold without your direction. But you do draw an interesting analog between meditation and sleep: sleep involves an automatic process of “tidying up” the experiences and memories accumulated in your brain during the day, while meditation involves a conscious process of focusing on present experiences and avoiding busying our minds with pointless distractions.

Hope that answers some of your questions. Have a great week!