Meditation is important for anyone that has a busy, hectic lifestyle, is under lots of physical, mental, and emotional stress, is feeling tired, weak, and overwhelmed. These kinds of stressors can lead to anxiety, depression and excess inflammation. Meditation and mindfulness can help reduce stress and improve the way you feel, increase focus and concentration, clear a foggy head, improve your productivity and most of all teach you how to chill out when you need it.
Health benefits
Meditation
can also give you a sense of peace, increase your confidence with achieving
your goals, improve your energy levels and give you a better quality of sleep.
It can give you positive self-reinforcement and empowerment.
Mindfulness
which is akin to meditation can be used to guide you through most challenges
that life bring you. If you meditate regularly, you may find that most of your stress
goes away or seems smaller, takes up less of your time and attention. Bringing
meditation into your daily life in the form of mindfulness can help your moods to
also improve. Just that lift you may need. Meditation can be practised on your
own or in a group. It helps you to respond consciously and reflectively,
instead of reacting instantly to your circumstances.
When
you meditate your oxygen consumption drops automatically by 10 to 20%
giving your entire physical body a rest. This creates increased physical energy.
It also creates a drop in blood lactate, which is a toxic substance that
builds up in your muscles. These build ups can cause you pain and fatigue. It helps
decrease heart and respiration rates, increases
melatonin and decreases cortisol. This is why it helps your
sleeping habits.
Meditation for a busy Lifestyle – how to do it
You
may be thinking that there isn’t enough time in your day to meditate but no
matter what skills you use to achieve mindfulness, it should fit your daily
routine and make you feel incredible. Meditation cannot be done in less than
twenty minutes no matter what people tell you.
Reasons
for this is that to start meditating you first need to find a place to sit
comfortably. Rest your hands on your legs with palms totally separated to let
the energy flow through. This is not the classic hand positions for meditation
you see in pictures. Those pictures you see are not for beginners and hand
positions are important in terms of what type of meditation you are doing and
why you are doing it. Be sure your spine is straight and your chin down a bit. Remember
to put on a guided meditation on your phone or IPad. Don’t just listen to music
and don‘t just sit and listen to your breathing. For beginners it is not enough
to capture your restless mind. You need a trained therapist guiding you as to
how your specific mind works if you want to do this properly. So don’t just
download anything on the internet and go for it. That’s not how it works
despite what you may read elsewhere. You will also find the first five minutes
is spent working out if you are too hot, too cold, does your toe twitch or your
knee hurt etc. Then another few minutes goes pulling your mind in away from
what stresses you. If you are just meditating for five minutes your time is up
– totally wasted. So the ancient sages teach that minimum 20 minutes is a must.
Once you have got you position just focus on what the download you are listening to from your therapist is telling you to do and breathe. Once you have practiced a bit you can focus on your breathing or if you are stressed out at work or in a public place then count each inhalation and exhalation and be slightly aware of the action of breathing. Inhale to a count of one, but exhale for a count of two. If you are already a meditator in most situations this action will calm you down somewhat.
If your mind does wander in meditation don’t worry just re-focus on your download and see where it is guiding you. You will have thoughts and feelings flooding your mind but don't hold on to them, just let them go. The more you practice, the better you're going to get at controlling your thoughts when you aren't meditating. The skill you are now learning will be with you the rest of your life as a wonderful tool for you to use when life starts to get on top of you. Over time, you'll begin to notice you have less stress, more focus, and a younger, healthier, and stronger body just to name a few things.
Need help? We are here
We
teach meditation and mindfulness at the clinic here. With a course you can pick
up the knack in a few weeks and give it 6 months and you will be an expert.
Practice makes perfect so to speak. Give us a call today to find out how you
can start with just a few short lessons for an hour a week and practice at
home. We do online and face to face.
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