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 –
Day 1: 1 min 2ce this day
Day 2: 2 min
Day 3: 3 mins 2ce this day
Day 4: 4 mins
Day 5: 5 mins
Day 6: 5 mins
Day 7: off
Week 2 –
Day 1: 6 mins
Day 2: 7 mins
Day 3: 8 mins twice this day
Day 4: 9 min
Day 5: 10 min
Day 6: 10 min
Day 7: off
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.
