Meditation can help your body naturally unwind and reduce stress, revealing a calmer, more composed you. What's more, incorporating meditation into your everyday life can help you remain calm even when life throws you a curveball. Discovering your tranquil inner nature reaches far beyond enjoying a few minutes of clarity; a sense of serenity encourages productivity and success, helping you respond to challenges with collected confidence.
Proper meditation requires the right environment; one where you can be peaceful and undistracted. As long as your space is calm and quiet, it doesn't matter if it is in your home, office, backyard or even a nearby park.
After you've chosen your meditation spot, find a comfortable sitting position that feels natural and loose. Try sitting cross-legged on top of a pillow.
You'll also need to have the right attitude before you get started in order to fully immerse yourself in the mediation process. Try to put all other thoughts out of your head by imagining they are flying away like birds. If you find your thoughts intruding on your meditation session, don't fight them. Rather, gently turn your attention back to your point of focus.
It's amazing how something as basic and simple as breathing can reveal healing properties. The problem is, not many people know how to breathe the right way to optimize meditation. The idea is to breathe deeply from the diaphragm instead of taking short shallow breaths from the upper chest. When you get stressed, your breath becomes shorter, limiting the amount of oxygen your body takes in. This leads to even greater stress levels and that overwhelming feeling of anxiety that balls up in your stomach or causes a tension headache. Deep breathing encourages more oxygen to reach your blood cells and deliver energy throughout your body.
Follow these breathing tips to get the most out of every breath:
- Sit comfortably with your back straight as though there were a string pulling the top of your head toward the sky. Put one hand over your chest and the other on top of your stomach.
- As you breathe in through your nose, the hand on your stomach should rise. Conversely, the hand on your chest should move only slightly.
- Exhale through your mouth while contracting your abdominal muscles. Again, the hand on your stomach should move more than the hand on your chest.
- Continue to breathe in slowly through your nose and out through your mouth. Count slowly to help you keep the pace from speeding up.
There's a technique called progressive muscle relaxation that can effectively relax your body for more productive meditation sessions. It is a two-step process in which you repeatedly tense and relax different muscle groups. This allows you to feel and understand what tension and relaxation feels like all over your body. Later, when you feel stress in a certain muscle group, you'll be better trained to relax it naturally. As your body relaxes, your mind will follow suit.
Here's a quick look at what a muscle-relaxing session looks like:
Practice this technique on your feet, calves, thighs, arms, hands and shoulders, starting with the right side and then moving on to the left. Also try it on your hips, buttocks, stomach, chest, neck and face.
With practice you'll master the art of meditation and flow through life with less stress and more confidence. It takes time, but the benefits of meditation can help you meet the challenges of a busy lifestyle and reveal a calmer, more serene you. Try it for yourself. Who knows what you might discover.
