Meditation has become one of the most important habits in my life.
It has helped to reduce my stress and anxiety and live more in the present moment.
I’ve never felt more connected to myself than I do when I’m meditating. Simply put, meditation has changed my life.
If you knew how to meditate, how would your life change for the better? If you’re ready to live more mindfully and feel the benefits of meditation, take a deep breath and read this.
Watch the video below:
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Why should you meditate?
The global pandemic caused by COVID-19 has changed our lives forever. Isolation, job insecurity, and fear of the future have impacted people’s mental health. During these uncertain times, meditation is a powerful mindfulness-based practice for finding calm amidst the chaos.
On a daily basis, the majority of your thoughts are focused on the past or the future. In this emotional state, it’s easy to become a victim of your mind. Meditation shifts your focus away from these places and brings you back to the present moment.
If you’ve never meditated before, figuring out how to start can be overwhelming. For many years I was resistant to meditating.
Why?
I didn’t understand how the process of meditation worked.
Intellectually I knew that meditating was good for me, but I couldn’t connect with it. I decided to change my perspective. Instead of getting frustrated, I decided to get curious about meditation. I forced myself to meditate every day over an extended period.
Not surprisingly, I started noticing the profound benefits that meditation was having on my mental and emotional health. At that point, there was no turning back. I was hooked.
Some of the mental health benefits of meditation include better focus, improved self-esteem, and lower levels of stress and anxiety.
As an entrepreneur and overachiever, my mind is constantly moving.
I have a lot of responsibilities in my business, which can create anxiety. Meditation has helped me relax my mind, while still being productive. It’s also given me more clarity and less brain fog while doing things like reading, learning, listening, and speaking to someone.
Why Is It Hard To Meditate?
The reason why a lot of people resist meditation is that they are addicted to thinking. Your brain doesn’t know how to slow itself down. Did you know that from the moment you are born, you process anywhere between 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day?
If ruminative thinking is familiar to you, calming your mind and sitting in silence will be incredibly challenging. When you’re first starting to meditate it’s natural to experience boredom.
Meditation challenges you to practice being in the here and now instead of trying to escape or avoid it. I’ve struggled with a variety of different addictions throughout my life, everything from video games to pornography to binge eating.
The root cause of addiction is an inability to be comfortable with being. Meditation has helped me shift from doing mode into being mode. In being mode, my mind is forced to slow down because it has nowhere to go.
In this state, I have learned how to be fully present, which has given me a heightened sense of awareness. If I have thoughts, feelings, or sensations that arise in my body, I don’t feel the need to change or resist them.
Instead, I observe them in a non-judgmental way.
Meditation teaches you to watch your thoughts and feelings come and go instead of getting attached to them.
If you are new to the world of meditation, I suggest you read Meditation For Beginners by Jack Kornfield. Inside his book, he has some great guided meditations. Having someone direct and guide you through the meditation process is extremely helpful when you’re first learning to meditate.
When I first started meditating, I used Headspace and Calm. These apps helped motivate me to meditate and stay on track until I had the willpower to meditate on my own.
Meditation Technologies
Muse Meditation Headband
With the Muse headband, you listen to a guided meditation while the headband scans your brainwaves. It will identify when your mind is overly active versus when it’s calm. When your mind is active during your meditation, you’ll hear birds chirping.
Conversely, when your mind is calm, the birds will stop chirping. At the end of your meditation session, you can identify what your meditation experience was like and track your progress.
The Brain Tap
The Brain Tap uses frequencies of light and sound for brain wave entrainment. You wear a headset over your closed eyes and headphones in your ears while experiencing these frequencies.
Essentially, it’s a guided visualization and meditation that helps your brain to experience higher levels of alpha brain waves. The visualization puts you into an incredibly relaxed state of mind.
HeartMath Inner Balance
This is a heart rate sensor that attaches to your ear. It is accompanied by an app that teaches you how to shift your emotional state and create synchronicity between your mind, body, and heart. Not only does this device help reduce your stress, but it also helps bring awareness to your breathing and heart rate throughout the day.
How To Meditate
You want to make sure that you’re in a comfortable seated position, whether that’s in a chair or sitting cross-legged on the floor. If you choose to sit in a chair, I recommend sitting upright so that your back is fully supported.
There are many different ways that you can meditate, but one of the most common ways is with your eyes closed. Take a deep breath and allow your body to fully relax. Do a scan and bring attention to every part of your body.
I go through this process in the video above!
If you notice any tension, focus on melting into the tension. Doing this body scan will bring you into the present moment. Once you have done this, bring attention to your breath. Don’t try to control your breath. Merely watch and observe it.
Through this practice, you’ll notice that your mind will start to get busy.
This is your monkey mind in action.
When this happens, it’s important that you don’t get frustrated and react. Your only goal is to observe your thoughts. As soon as you become aware of what your thought loops are, simply return to your breath.
While you may enjoy 5 seconds to 1 minute of pure awareness, shortly thereafter, more thoughts will arise. Again, you want to observe your thoughts and be with them. When you’re meditating, certain emotions will arise as well.
I like to identify where in my body I’m feeling emotions and get curious about them. At times, the feelings will be so strong that I’ll have an urge to stop my meditation altogether. However, if I sit with the emotions long enough, eventually they fade away. The same thing happens with physical sensations that arise.
This is how to meditate for beginners.
Meditation teaches you so much about yourself. It brings awareness to how you think, feel, and move throughout your life. If you’re a beginner, I recommend meditating for 10 minutes per day.
Research has shown that a lot of the long-term benefits of meditation occur once you’re meditating for 20 minutes per day. If you can work your way up to that, fantastic.
A daily meditation practice transformed my life and it can do the same for you. Connect to your breath and go inward. The answers you seek are found in the stillness.
Are you ready to connect to your mind, body, and spirit on a deeper level? CLICK HERE to get instant access to my FREE 21 Morning Rituals Cheatsheet!
