Meditate

Meditation: The Fundamental Habit

Meditation is a form of contemplation and reflection. It’s a process to guide oneself to focus on your thoughts in a calm manner and think about them. Meditation involves thinking deeply and carefully about something for a period of time. Meditation can help produce a sense of calm, lower stress, find peace and overall balance which is so important for our emotional health and our general health.

Back to Basics: Meditation Feeds our Brains

Think about working out at the gym. The more repetitions of an exercise you do, the stronger a certain muscle becomes. In the same way, meditation builds your awareness and attentiveness muscles. Brain scans have shown that while we meditate there is an increased level of activity in brain regions that help to lower anxiety and depression and increase resilience and patience. Meditation improves memory, learning skills, attention and self-awareness and can help increase imagination and creativity.

Daily Planning for Meditation

There is no right or wrong way to meditate. There is no standard length of meditation sessions either. Be kind to yourself, even if your mind wanders when you start to meditate. Consciously plan time in your schedule to meditate. If you are new to meditation don’t enforce a strict period of time for each session. Even starting with just a few minutes is beneficial.

Practical Tips and Tricks for Meditation

• Choose a comfortable place and position and just relax to help train your mind and body to move into meditation.
• Tune into your body sensations. Breath, relax and connect to yourself.
• Feel your breath and try Box Breathing where you count to four while you inhale, hold that breath for a four count and then exhale slowly.
• Allow yourself to really feel the process.
• Reflect on yourself.
• Acknowledge your thoughts whatever they may be about.