An Intro to Meditation

If meditation can help significantly reduce stress in Congolese refugees in just 10 days, do you think it could help you reduce your stress?  

Meditation has been proven to reduce stress, increase positive emotion generation, reduce burnout, increase healing in patients, works as a coping mechanism for those with PTSD, and helps bring the body back to a state of homeostasis. 

So why aren’t you meditating?

I love to meditate in Garden of the Gods

 

Here are the excuses I hear:

1. I don’t have time
2. I don’t know how
3. I can’t stop my brain from going out of control
4. It’s weird
5. I’m not a monk( yes I’ve really heard that one)

Along with breathing exercises, one of the skills that martial arts teaches is meditation.  It is used in combination with breathing exercises to get yourself ready for class and to end class.  Meditation is part of practice for everyone age 4-80.  It becomes an ingrained part of your practice and later your life.  Being able to meditate got me through 50 page graduate school projects, my GRE, comprehensive exams, and multiple other stressors.  I seemed to handle these things better than my peers because I was able to employ meditation as a coping strategy and a stress prevention strategy. 

The easiest way to start meditating is to put 5 minutes in at the beginning of your morning and end of your evening. Guided meditations seem to be easiest for beginners. 

Here is a good 5 minute starter for you...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2UKw8tFYyY

Multiple magazines including Forbes and Entreprenuer have shown that successful people meditate daily.  It doesn’t matter why they meditate, just that they do. There is something about meditation that increases productivity and mental creativity. So far these are only correlations, but hopefully we will see some studies that give us a definitive answer as to what about meditation leads people to be more successful and productive.  Hopefully they an also establish the amount of time necessary to see full benefits of meditation for the general public. 

Take 5 minutes for yourself today and meditate!  You will have a clearer and more focused mind heading into the weekend.