Meditation offers a multitude of benefits that can profoundly enhance various aspects of our lives. By incorporating meditation into our daily routine, we can experience lower stress levels, gain insight into our pain, build stronger connections with others, improve our focus, and cultivate self-kindness.
The Benefits of Meditation
While meditation is not a magical cure for all problems, it can provide much-needed space to breathe and reflect. This space can help us make better decisions for ourselves, our families, and our communities. To start meditating, all you need is a bit of patience, some kindness towards yourself, and a comfortable place to sit.
Five Reasons to Meditate
Understanding Your Pain
Meditation allows us to observe our pain without judgment. By doing so, we can gain a deeper understanding of its nature and learn how to manage it more effectively.Lowering Your Stress
Regular meditation practice has been shown to reduce stress levels. It helps calm the mind and body, promoting a sense of peace and relaxation.Connecting Better
Meditation fosters a deeper connection with ourselves and others. It enhances our empathy and improves our ability to communicate and relate to those around us.Improving Focus
Meditation trains the mind to maintain attention and stay present. This improved focus can boost productivity and enhance the quality of our daily activities.Reducing Brain Chatter
Meditation helps quiet the constant stream of thoughts that often fill our minds. This reduction in mental clutter can lead to greater clarity and peace of mind.
Meditation is a simple yet powerful tool that can bring lasting benefits to our lives. It doesn’t require any special equipment or costly memberships—just a willingness to sit and be present with yourself. Start meditating today to experience these transformative benefits.
How to Meditate
Meditation is something everyone can do. Here’s how:
Meditation is simpler (and harder) than most people think. Read these steps, make sure you’re somewhere where you can relax into this process, set a timer, and give it a shot:
Take a Seat
Find a place to sit that feels calm and quiet to you.Set a Time Limit
If you’re just beginning, it can help to choose a short time, such as five or 10 minutes.Notice Your Body
You can sit in a chair with your feet on the floor, you can sit loosely cross-legged, or you can kneel—all are fine. Just make sure you are stable and in a position you can stay in for a while.Feel Your Breath
Follow the sensation of your breath as it goes in and out.Notice When Your Mind Has Wandered
Inevitably, your attention will leave the breath and wander to other places. When you get around to noticing that your mind has wandered—in a few seconds, a minute, or five minutes—simply return your attention to the breath.Be Kind to Your Wandering Mind
Don’t judge yourself or obsess over the content of the thoughts you find yourself lost in. Just come back.Close with Kindness
When you’re ready, gently lift your gaze (if your eyes are closed, open them). Take a moment and notice any sounds in the environment. Notice how your body feels right now. Notice your thoughts and emotions.
That’s it! That’s the practice. You focus your attention, your mind wanders, you bring it back, and you try to do it as kindly as possible (as many times as you need to).
How Much Should I Meditate?
Meditation is no more complicated than what we’ve described above. It is that simple … and that challenging. It’s also powerful and worth it. The key is to commit to sitting every day, even if it’s for five minutes. Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg says: “One of my meditation teachers said that the most important moment in your meditation practice is the moment you sit down to do it. Because right then you’re saying to yourself that you believe in change, you believe in caring for yourself, and you’re making it real. You’re not just holding some value like compassion in the abstract, but really making it real.”
Recent research from neuroscientist Amishi Jha discovered that 12 minutes of meditation, 5 days a week, can protect and strengthen your ability to pay attention.
Meditation Tips and Techniques
We’ve gone over the basic breath meditation so far, but there are other techniques that use different focal points than the breath to anchor our attention—external objects like a sound in the room, or something broader, such as noticing spontaneous things that come into your awareness during an aimless wandering practice. But all of these practices have one thing in common: We notice that our minds are running the show a lot of the time. It’s true. We think thoughts, typically, and then we act. But here are some helpful strategies to change that up:
How to Make Meditation a Habit
It’s estimated that 95% of our behavior runs on autopilot. That’s because neural networks underlie all of our habits, reducing our millions of sensory inputs per second into manageable shortcuts so we can function in this crazy world. These default brain signals are so efficient that they often cause us to relapse into old behaviors before we remember what we meant to do instead.
Meditation is the exact opposite of these default processes. It’s executive control rather than autopilot and enables intentional actions, willpower, and decisions. But that takes practice. The more we activate the intentional brain, the stronger it gets. Every time we do something deliberate and new, we stimulate neuroplasticity, activating our grey matter, which is full of newly sprouted neurons that have not yet been groomed for the “autopilot” brain.
But here’s the problem. While our intentional brain knows what is best for us, our autopilot brain causes us to shortcut our way through life. So how can we trigger ourselves to be intentional when we need it most? This is where the notion of “behavior design” comes in. It’s a way to put your intentional brain in the driver’s seat. There are two ways to do that—first, slowing down the autopilot brain by putting obstacles in its way, and second, removing obstacles in the path of the intentional brain, so it can gain control.
Shifting the balance to give your intentional brain more power takes some work, though. Here are some ways to get started:
- Put meditation reminders around you. If you intend to do some yoga or meditate, put your yoga mat or meditation cushion in the middle of your floor so you can’t miss it as you walk by.
- Refresh your reminders regularly. Say you decide to use sticky notes to remind yourself of a new intention. That might work for about a week, but then your autopilot brain and old habits take over again. Try writing new notes to yourself; add variety or make them funny. That way they’ll stick with you longer.
- Create new patterns. You could try a series of “If this, then that” messages to create easy reminders to shift into the intentional brain. For instance, you might come up with, “If office door, then deep breath,” as a way to shift into intention as you are about to start your workday. Or, “If phone rings, take a breath before answering.” Each intentional action to shift into intention will strengthen your intentional brain.
My Opinion on Meditation
In my opinion, meditation is a powerful tool that everyone should incorporate into their daily routine. It doesn’t require any special equipment or costly memberships—just a willingness to sit and be present with yourself. The benefits of meditation extend far beyond stress reduction; it enhances overall well-being, promotes emotional health, and improves focus and concentration. Committing to even a few minutes a day can lead to profound changes in how you experience life.
Ways to Improve Your Meditation Practice
Consistency is Key Make meditation a daily habit, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Regular practice is more beneficial than occasional long sessions.
Find What Works for You Experiment with different types of meditation to find what suits you best, whether it’s mindfulness, guided imagery, or loving-kindness meditation.
Use Technology Apps like Headspace, Calm, and Insight Timer offer guided meditations and can help you stay consistent with your practice.
Join a Community Meditating with others can provide support and motivation. Look for local meditation groups or online communities.
Be Patient Meditation is a practice, and progress may be slow. Be patient with yourself and recognize that every session is valuable, even if it doesn’t feel productive.
Conclusion
Meditation is a simple yet powerful tool that can bring lasting benefits to our lives. By understanding the basics and incorporating it into your daily routine, you can experience lower stress levels, improved focus, deeper connections with others, and a greater sense of self-kindness. Remember, the key is to start small, be consistent, and find what works best for you. Start meditating today to experience these transformative benefits.