Meditation is the #1 thing to reduce anxiety. So, do you ever take time to meditate and spend some time in silence? It’s OK if you don’t, but perhaps you’d consider doing this simple 2 week meditation challenge?
When I’m working with my coaching clients and if we get to the point where we discuss meditation being a good thing for them to add into their life (this is usually with every client!), I notice a common theme. I find that even when I walk through and send instructions over on how to do the meditation, people have anxiety come up around sitting alone with their thoughts and just breathing or think they won’t be able to sit still long enough.
I’ve had people come back and say they did audio meditations instead and other techniques and then I end up having the conversation of how important it is just to try and do a basic meditation. I’m not knocking audios as I do them too sometimes, but the point is to also get used to being alone in silence and try meditating that way as well.
First off, if you have fear or concerns around anything around meditation and religion, I just want to clarify that you are not worshipping Buddha or anything just by meditating and paying attention to your breath. You are just taking time to focus on your breath so that over time you can have more moments of silence to slow down all of the chatter in our minds.
While the end goal could be to have complete & total silence and nothingness, it’s an honor when we have that happen for a moment in meditation. For the most part, we just have small spurts of time with no thought and we have to remind ourselves to go back to our breath and it starts to retrain us when we are in the real world to have less of the constant stress and chatter in our minds.
Meditation also helps lower blood pressure, relieves depression & fear, improves your mood and emotional intelligence, increases mental focus, improves energy, helps lessen and prevent asthma, fibromyalgia, arthritis and so many other benefits too long to list, but you get the idea.
If you’d like to give it a try, here’s my suggestion for a two week challenge for yourself.
For meditation: Find a comfortable seated position trying to sit with your knees below your hips possibly using a pillow or blanket underneath your seat. Sit up nice and tall and palms facing up can be for receiving, palms down for grounding or do whatever is comfortable for you if neither of those call to you. Close your eyes and just focus on your breath. Your only job is to breathe deep breaths in through your nose and out through your nose. Try to extend the inhales and exhales as time goes on. As thoughts come in just let them pass through without judging them and go back to your breath. That’s all you have to do. I typically set an alarm on my phone and mine still works even with my phone on silent, but the volume up. I use the “harp” on my iPhone as the noise to make when it ends to come out of it a little more peacefully. Play around with doing it in the morning and then some in the evening and see what you like better. There are a few 2ce a day goals below where you can do it both times and see if you notice a difference doing it twice that day also. Even if you have to go back and “start over” by going back to your breath 100 times in a minute because you catch your brain going, that’s ok, just start over as many times as it takes & go back to your breath.
Week 1 –
Week 2 –
Then, after those few weeks, I would decide on a time frame that you like best and stick with that for at least 3 more weeks until it can become a habit. This is one of the best things we could all do for ourselves and our well being. You may be surprised that it could turn out to where you start to look forward to that time of your day, kind of like taking a mini vacation!
Speaking of vacation, I’m headed out for one next week, so this will be my last blog until August 14th. Going to celebrate my belated honeymoon and big 40th bday at the beach getting my surf on.
In the meantime, I hope you consider taking the two week meditation challenge!
Take good care of you.
What Does Equanimity Mean To You?
This week, I’ve been looking at what equanimity means to me and this has been the theme of the yoga classes I’ve been teaching.
I’ve been working through Baron Baptiste’s book for the 2nd time – 40 Days to Personal Revolution and this also happens to be the focus for the week.
I love how he says in the book “Equanimity is the art of meeting life as it meets you – calmly, without drama or fuss.” And he also says that “we change by finding equanimity learning to relax right in the middle of conflict-filled moments.”
Even yoga can seem like conflict sometimes and that’s what I’ve had my students take a look at this week. We can be in situations and start to panic because we think it hurts or we can’t stay any longer because we are too tired or get too shaky to continue.
So, whether we decide to stay in a pose, get out, we are shaky or lose our balance, can we still stay calm in these times?
Can you still stay calm when things aren’t going your way? Can you stay calm when life hands you things that you weren’t expecting that take away from the things you wanted to be spending your time on?
I’ve noticed that meditation helps me a lot with staying calm in these moments. The more that I can relax and stay calm during meditation, the more it carries out through the rest of my life.
If you do not have a regular meditation practice, would you be willing to try and just meditate for 5 minutes a day the next week? The 40 days book I mentioned above suggests working up to 30 minutes 2ce a day. So, could you just commit to 5 minutes a day to start? It just might be the best 5 minutes of your day and you could begin to see you enjoy it so much you may end up wanting more.
You can sit in a comfortable seated position (best if knees are below your hips, so sitting on a pillow or blanket can help) and just take big deep breaths in and out through your nose. As you recognize thoughts and sounds, try and let them pass through without judging them. Just go right back to your breathing and pay attention to your next breath. When it happens again, repeat and go back to your breath. Set a timer for how long you want to meditate and when the timer goes off you can go about the rest of your day hopefully a little more calm and peaceful and you will have certainly given your mind & body a huge gift!