A healthy mind is as essential as a healthy body to make a healthy ‘you’. So while it is nutritious food and regular exercise for the body, it is meditation for the mind. The only drawback with meditation is that the enthusiasm seen in the beginning gets lost midway. However, with a few simple tips you might be able to enjoy a more fulfilling practice. First and foremost is to choose an exclusive meditation space, either a corner in your home that you love or a nearby garden/park. Once the space is finalized, settle on a particular time in the day. Early mornings are the best for practice. Set a routine in your mind for regularity without being hard on yourself . The more you try to silence the mind purposefully, the harder meditation becomes. There is no right or wrong technique. So don’t worry, rather enjoy the practice alone in your hideout everyday.
1. Breathing connects us to the present moment.
Mindfulness is a term we often hear, but what does it mean? It’s as simple as breathing. The problem for many of us is that we aren’t aware of our breath. Being aware of our breath connects us to the present moment. In this present moment we are connected to our dreams and desires. When we’re stuck in the past, we can feel depressed or hopeless. And when we lose hope, we cannot heal. When we’re worried about the future, it fuels anxiety. By consciously breathing, we take the peace we foster in our meditation practices into our daily lives.
2. Conscious control of breathing reduces stress.
Anxiety, depression and insomnia are examples of stress-based illnesses that are rooted in the mind’s perception of external stress. By consciously controlling our inhalations and exhalations, we start to shift our autonomic nervous system from a flight-or-fight response to one of the relaxation response. When the brain switches to the relaxation response, the heart rate and blood pressure will decrease, and the brain will regain focus and mental clarity. In this state of breathing and meditation, we also retrain our brains to change our perception of stress, thus reducing our propensity to feel anxious or depressed.
3. Breath connects you to your life purpose.
Career burnout arises when our external world is not in alignment with our internal soul compass. The way we find our life purpose is being aligned with our internal soul compass. Our internal soul compass is the place within us where all the answers reside; some call it intuition, gut instinct, or internal wisdom. It was during the mindful practices of pranayama, yoga, and meditation that I learned to focus on my breath, and then clues to my life purpose started to surface.
Meditation isn’t a marathon! Go at your own pace and don’t be too hard on yourself if you didn’t stick to the schedule you originally had in mind. Take a breath in. Exhale. There you go. You just took a big first step onto your true path.
“Dedicating some time to meditation is a meaningful expression of caring for yourself that can help you move through the mire of feeling unworthy of recovery. As your mind grows quieter and more spacious, you can begin to see self-defeating thought patterns for what they are, and open up to other, more positive options.” – Sharon Salzberg
Circles In The Sand 