Meditation 101
Meditation is strength training for your brain. It helps to build mindfulness and equanimity — or clear and balanced seeing — so that you can choose how to respond, rather than react, to all that life throws your way.
Meditation increases your ability to live in the present. It helps you to create more space between the thoughts and emotions that drift through your consciousness and their assumed meaning. Helping you recognize that you have choice in all of your responses. This allows you to learn how to let go of potentially painful or untrue narratives — think ruminating or worrying — about yourself and others that may induce shame, fear, blame, or guilt.
It is also linked to various mental and physical health benefits and can even improve your focus, creativity, and productivity.
Meditation is the fastest growing health trend in the US, with it’s popularity increasing more than threefold in the US, over the past five years. Worldwide, it’s estimated that 500 million people practice meditation.
Nearly 10% of American’s have a daily meditation practice. Given the benefits meditation, those numbers are expected to continue to grow — especially in the workplace. One of the best parts about meditation is recognizing that we all have the capacity to change the way our brains work, and anyone at any age can learn meditation.
We are big supporters of Loving Kindness Meditations.
Benefits Of Meditating
The benefits of meditation are immense. Research shows that it can positively boost your mental and physical wellbeing in as little as three-weeks, but the longer you practice the greater the impact. Further reading: Why the best leaders meditate.
Increased concentration and focus.
According to research out of Harvard University, our minds wander 47 percent of the time. Research also shows that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. One of the first things most new meditators notice is their increased ability for focus and concentration, which makes sense, because the whole practice of meditation has to do with strengthening our ability to notice when we’ve stopped paying attention and choose to refocus our attention to a specific point of focus.
Increased happiness.
Meditating for only a few minutes everyday can increase the parts of the brain that are linked with happiness, contentment, and feelings of connectedness. It literally is rewiring the brain, creating more neuron pathways associated with better emotional regulation, happiness and positive emotions. It can also help you feel less lonely.
Decreased pain and Quicker recovery.
Meditation has also been linked to decreasing the sensation of chronic pain, inflammation at the cellular level, migraines, chronic low-back pain, and post bypass surgery recovery especially when using a specific technique called Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR).
Decreased stress, anxiety and depression.
Chronic stress increases inflammation within your body — especially in the brain — this can worsen symptoms of depression and compromise your immune system. Meditation has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety and help improve cognitive functioning. Research has also shown benefits of meditation in overcoming Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or (PTSD).
Increased kindness and compassion.
Certain types of meditation practices can also help you be more present, kind, empathetic, altruistic, and compassionate to yourself and others. It can help to decrease your implicit bias toward others and feel more connected.
Increased resilience.
Meditation also helps you clear out the negative chatter, reconnect with your values, and literally re-wire your brains so you can choose to respond instead of react. It can help you better regulate your emotions improves your ability to have introspection and perspective, which improves your ability to think creatively.
Improves your immune system.
Compassion meditations — like lovingkindness — has also been proven to improve your immune function — meaning you get sick less frequently and for shorter amounts of time.
Sharpens your memory and Slows Aging
Meditation can also help you improve your memory (in as little as 4 days) and literally make you look and feel younger at a cellular level by extending the length of your telomeres.
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How to meditate
The best way to understand the benefits of meditation, is to start your own practice.
Most meditation practices have you begin by choosing an anchor, or an object of focus, like the sensation of your breath, a phrase or set of phrases, or an object like a candle or flower. Then you work to hold your full attention on that anchor.
It’s important to come to meditation with a beginners’ mindset. When you first start meditating you may notice that you may become distracted within 1 or 2 seconds. This is normal. It’s not important how long you can meditate for, or how long you can hold your attention. The most important part of the practice is the moment you notice you’re not paying attention and you choose to bring your focus back to your anchor.
As you build your practice, your capacity for holding your attention will improve.
Here’s the best way to start a daily meditation practice.
1. START MEDITATING.
There’s no reason to over complicate the process. The biggest obstacle most people face when they are trying to start a daily meditation practice is literally not doing it. Start with just one minute and then add a minute everyday until you get to 10, 20, or 30 minutes.
2. MAKE IT A ROUTINE.
Make time for it everyday. Set an alarm on your phone and work it into something you’re already doing - like eating lunch or brushing your teeth. Think, I eat lunch and then I meditate for 10 minutes. Or before I brush my teeth, I mediate for 10 minutes.
Lots of people find it helpful to start or end their day with a meditation practice. For me, 11 am seems to work best. I might even take another 10 minutes to meditate around 3 pm when my brain starts to feel a bit scattered from a full day.
If you really think you don’t have the time, consider cutting something out of your day that makes you look busy, but really isn’t that productive… think checking Instagram, FaceBook, or watching Netflix.
Not convinced that you have the time?
Stop brushing your teeth and meditate instead. Just kidding! But seriously, if you don’t have an extra 10 minutes in your day, maybe it's time to re-evaluate the priority your placing on your own health and wellbeing. It's not selfish to fill your own punchbowl.
AND if on a particular day you find you don't have 10 minutes, take 2 minutes instead.
3. USE AN APP.
Having someone guide you through the mediation process, especially when you’re first starting your practice, is seriously helpful. You’ll be less likely to stop early, you can try out different types of meditation, and you can even setup alerts on your phone. We offer an ongoing series of mindfulness meditations and LovingKindness meditations that can be found on Instagram and Youtube.
There are TON’s of great meditation apps out there, but my favorite are:
4. DON’T STRESS.
Meditation is a practice. Don’t worry if you’re “doing it right” or if you find your mind wandering. It happens. You are literally working on training your brain. No one would expect you to run a 5K without prep work, and no one expects you to be a meditator master overnight. Plus, it's not a competition.
When you do find your mind wandering (and you will) gently bring your awareness back to your breath or the feeling of your feet planted firmly on the ground.
If as you're practicing, you feel like meditation is, “a waste of time”. Ask yourself why. Usually, it’s a sign that you really are in need of a moment of silence, reflection, and all around brain training.
“IN JUST A TWO-MINUTE SPAN OF TIME DONE FOR 21 DAYS IN A ROW, WE CAN ACTUALLY REWIRE YOUR BRAIN, ALLOWING YOUR BRAIN TO ACTUALLY WORK MORE OPTIMISTICALLY AND MORE SUCCESSFULLY.” —SHAWN ACHOR, PSYCHOLOGIST
Types of meditation
Finding the right type of mediation —especially if you’ve never tried it — can take a little patience. Here are six types of meditation to help you start exploring your options.
mindfulness meditation.
A great place to start a meditation practice is with a mindfulness meditation or breath-based meditation. Deep breathing helps trigger your parasympathetic nervous system and helps increase your sense of calm. This helps you be better respond to emotional triggers throughout the day with a sense of space and ease instead of panic. The best part about this type of mediation is you can practice anywhere. Including: in your car, in-line at the grocery store, or even during a stressful conversation. Here’s how: Find a quiet space to sit, stand or, lay-down. You can keep your eyes open with a soft gaze about 3 feet in front of you or, if you feel comfortable, close them. Then literally spend one or more minutes being aware of the sensation of your breath as you inhale and exhale. Staying focused and aware is harder than it sounds. When you find your mind wandering, which you will, gently bring your attention back to your breath. Try a guided mindfulness meditation.
LovingKindness Meditation.
Lovingkindness meditation or compassion meditation uses a phrase or set of phrases as your point of focus or anchor. Some people also call this type of meditation a mantra meditation. In a lovingkindness meditation, phrases like: may I be safe, may I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be at ease, are offered first to yourself, and then to a series of other people, including a benefactor, a friend, a neutral person, someone who you find difficult, and then all beings everywhere. The goal of this type of meditation is to recognize that we all wish to be happy, and yet are connected by the share experience of our humanity., cycling through periods of joy, pain, pleasure, and sorrow. This practice helps you cultivate compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity for yourself and others as well as many other mental and physical health benefits. You can try this meditation on your own by silently repeating the above phrases or try a guided loving-kindness meditation.
moving meditation.
Most people don’t realize that moving meditations include walking, yoga, and tai chi. Moving meditation can be especially helpful for those who find their mind-wandering. The goal is to be fully present and aware of the sensations in the body as you move through space or practice different postures. We are especially fond of yoga practices because when practiced correctly, you can get the benefits of physical movement and a meditation practice all at once! Try a moving meditation.
Body Scan
A body scan focuses on paying attention to specific parts of the body and it’s sensations in a gradual sequence. It can be very helpful in training your brain to reconnect to your physical body and help you enter deeply relaxed states — or the parasympathetic nervous system — that can allow your body to heal from chronic stress. A type of body scan practice that is especially helpful for deep relaxation and sleep is called a Yoga Nidra practice.
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