More Methods To Make Meditation A Habit
Hey Total Gym Team! After receiving popular results and positive feedback from the last meditation blog, I would like to expand on some more benefits and ways to build your own practice until it becomes a healthy, peaceful, daily habit.
To start, you should probably review my short meditation blog and accompanying video. In this post I will build on the methods of mindful mediation from in Part 1.
I have been meditating for over twenty years and teaching for more than seven. In this post I would like to address the top five questions that I’ve been asked by the thousands of students I have taught over the years:
When Should I Sit?
(“Sit” is the term used by meditators for meditation – now you can sound hip around fellow meditators!)
Most gurus recommend that you meditate first thing in the morning for this simple, practical reason: Meditation and calming the mind can be challenging, but training your mind to obey you just upon awakening eases that challenge. As soon as you open your email box, pick up your cell phone, or open the door to the world, the thinking mind is off and running. Telling the “thinker” who is in charge sets a great platform for your day. Ask yourself this: Are you in charge of your thoughts, or are your thoughts in charge of you?
How Long Should I Meditate?
The length of your meditations is a personal choice. I urge you to start with what feels good, I started with five minutes. In the beginning, five minutes seemed like five hours! I was always thinking I forgot to start my timer. But before long, my timer would go off and it felt comfortable. Soon I bumped my timer to seven minutes, then up to ten minutes, and so on. Just like exercise, consistency is the key. It’s better to practice meditation for two minutes every morning rather than 30 minutes once a week.
Where Should I Meditate?
Ritual is very powerful when trying to create a habit. Positive psychologist experts are now telling us that habits are much more powerful than will power. Find a place in your home that feels good and is peaceful. I have one client who uses her walk-in closet. It is the one place in her house away from the kids that feels quiet.
What Are the Benefits of Mediation?
I could write on this topic for days. Making your brain more effective and efficient is at the top of my list but here are a few more of my favorite reasons to meditate:
- Increased Focus – In today’s myriad of distractions, could this help you? Are you in control of your thoughts or are your thoughts controlling you?
- Neuro-Plasticity – Since we now have the ability to take vivid pictures of the brain, we can see that meditation increases grey matter density, neural connections AND it protects your cognitive health.
- Peace – Could you use a little more peace in life? If you give this a shot, I promise you that more and more peace will start to flow into your life.
When Will I See Results?
This is a popular but tough question. Patience and consistency are key. To make another exercise comparison, you feel good after a workout but that doesn’t mean you start to feel and see results right away – it may take a couple of weeks. The great news is the results and benefits just keep getting better the longer you stay consistent.
One thing I will guarantee you is this: if you try it and are consistent for a couple of months, you will notice a positive shift in your life. If you continue with it for the whole year, you will experience a huge transformation in your life. It is so hard to explain in written words so you can only know it by doing it yourself. It is like trying to explain true love to a teenager who has puppy love. You have to experience true love to know the difference from infatuation.
Enjoy the video and please contact me with any questions or comments. I cherish sharing the gift of meditation!
JD
