“Why Meditate?”
Why do I encourage my clients to practice mindfulness regularly? Because every time we practice mindfulness we are literally strengthening the power of our brains and body.
Mindfulness helps us: reduce stress, decrease unnecessary emotional reactivity, harness our thoughts, increase our ability to sustain our attention, improve our mood, lower our blood pressure, reduce irritable bowel syndrome, and much more!
And get this! Neuroscientists at Harvard have found that practicing mindfulness actually grows grey matter! Let me say that a different way: practicing mindfulness changes the very structure of our brain in helpful ways.
Finally, mindfulness seems to have a re-wiring effect on the brain allowing meditators to do a kind of “neurosurgery” on themselves.
So, why do I encourage my clients to meditate? Because mustering the discipline to practice mindfulness for just five minutes a day allows us to hack our brain’s default mode significantly improving our sense of well-being.
It is a skill that can be learned in minutes yet can literally change our lives. If you'd like to watch a little video I made illustrating how mindful meditation improves our mental health click the link below:
“Ok. I’m Sold. So, how do I get started?”
The most important thing is just to jump in and start doing it regularly. You will learn as you practice. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is to get an app and use the free resources they offer. Set a timer on your phone to remind you of your meditation time each day, put your earbuds in, and start healing your brain. Try out different recordings, voices, and themes. You will eventually land on what you like. Eventually you may get to the point where you don’t need anything to stop during the day and do your meditation but for now it helps to have guides and frameworks on which to build.
There are a plethora of meditation apps available. Most of them ask you to purchase a subscription but offer a couple “freebies”. I’d recommend downloading a couple apps and then playing around with the free resources. This will help you get a feel for what is available and also allow you some variety of meditation activities.
I’ve been enjoying the free resources on this one lately. Two courses ("The Basics" and "The Dalai Lama's Guide to Happiness") are completely free to use and revisit as many times as you want:
So, there you go. Get started. Make it yours. Start enjoying the benefits of rewiring that brain of yours!
One last word about the power of mindfulness. I have found that some of the most powerful changes we experience in life come from little tweaks we make to what we do often. Therefore, I can’t stress this enough: The power of mindfulness comes in consistency. Just as good oral hygiene is experienced by regular brushing and the benefits of physical exercise are gained accumulatively overtime—the benefits of mindfulness are experienced as we practice it regularly. So KEEP AT IT!
Here is a mindful breathing exercise to get you started.
Additional Resources and Ideas for Getting Started:
• Use an app:
Calm
10% Happier
Headspace
• You can also simply Google different ideas for practicing mindfulness:
For example, here is a collection of mindfulness exercises by Living Well:
Or, here are 6 easy mindfulness exercises that don’t require any previous experience:
• Michael Taft is an experienced mindfulness coach who offers a free copy of his book The Mindful Geek from his website.
He also has recorded several mindfulness exercises and made them available for free.
• Finally, if you would like to read more about the philosophy, history, and science behind mindfulness meditation I would recommend starting with the following books:
Gunaratana, H. (2011). Mindfulness in plain English. Boston, MA.: Wisdom Publications.
Kornfield J. & Siegel D. (2012). Mindfulness and the Brain: A Professional Training in the Science & Practice Of Medatative Awareness. Sounds True Audio Learning Course.
Want to watch a video I made explaining an analogy that can help us become master meditators? Click below and watch Pooh Bear demonstrate the "Analogy of the Train":
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