If you haven’t read my post on Mindfulness Meditation: Beginner Mindfulness Tips, it will give you a solid foundation for understanding how mindful meditation differs from other forms of meditation. The meditation I teach is designed to bring you greater fulfillment and happiness in your life and relationships.
There are many benefits of meditation, and as more modern scientists study the practice, the benefits list continues to grow!
“Meditation brings wisdom, lack of meditation leaves ignorance.” – Dalai Lama.
According to neuroscientists, when you meditate regularly, your brain undergoes physical changes, even though your conscious mind is not aware of them. Scientists have observed these changes in the brain over time using advanced brain imaging techniques. These technologies have helped us understand why regular meditation is effective for managing stress.
“The brain waves of meditators show why they’re healthier. Neuroscientists have found that meditators shift their brain activity to different areas of the cortex—brain waves in the stress-prone right frontal cortex move to the calmer left frontal cortex. In other words, they were calmer and happier than before.” – Colin Allen, Psychology Today, April 2003.
Researchers from Harvard University also discovered corresponding changes in the physical structure of the brain after the meditation course; there was a lower density of neurons in the amygdala and a greater density of neurons in areas involved in emotional control – evidence that meditation served as a realistic and maintainable stress management technique.
Squeezing meditation into a jam-packed schedule isn’t something many of us can easily envision. But it is something everyone can (and really ought to) do. When you consider how much time you make for things that cause you stress, pain, worry, and all the other symptoms listed above, it becomes easy to see how important it is to make time for things that relieve us of these symptoms and negative experiences altogether.
Use these five simple and practical tips from Deepak Chopra on how to make time for meditation amid a busy work day:
Get Up, Then Sit Down: Wake up just five minutes earlier than you usually would, and then sit right down and meditate. Even one or two minutes of meditation each day could make a world of difference in your mindset and ability to be more productive. Once you feel good about it and it has become part of your morning routine, you can always increase the time.
Meditate, Then Drive: Got a commute? If you take time at the end of your workday to meditate right before you jump in your car, your commute home will be a more pleasant experience. Your potentially challenging transition between work and home life will be eased through this simple act.
Have Meditation for Lunch: If you begin to pair your meditation with lunch, you’ll soon make a powerful association that will make lunchtime meditation an easy habit. Lunchtime meditations help you regroup and power through the afternoon before your pre-commute meditation.
Schedule a Meditation Break: Schedule a 5-minute meditation break on your calendar and honor yourself by keeping that 5-minute appointment. You can also try using a smartphone app like Calm or Headspace, The Mindfulness App, or Insight Timer to set meditation reminders. Try downloading my FREE 10-minute stress management or confidence booster meditations here to listen to throughout your day.
Take One Minute, Five Times a Day: If you still think it’s too hard to carve out five consecutive minutes in your day, try scheduling one-minute meditations five times. Whether it’s right when you wake up, right when you get to work, between meetings, at lunch, before leaving work, before dinner, or before bed, there are plenty of one-minute opportunities on even the busiest days.
Remember not to judge your meditation based on what happens or how you feel while you meditate. Meditation is a process of learning to calm your mind and enter into a peaceful state.
After continued practice for several weeks to several months, you will start to notice how it is affecting all areas of your life, not just the meditation itself. You may find yourself feeling more at peace, learning your boundaries, and being more in tune with everything around you.
This is where the true benefits of meditation unfold.
I created a ‘Zen Professional: 5-Minute Mindfulness Techniques for the Workplace’ video series to help busy professionals learn the basics of mindfulness and experience the profound benefits of meditation and mindfulness in just 5 minutes a day. You can learn more about it here.
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