Meditation is a good daily
practice to engage in. While it takes a bit of practice to get to a stage of
just being in the moment it is worth it. Studies looking at the benefits of
meditating suggest that it boosts immunity, gives emotional balance, increased
fertility, relief of irritable bowel syndrome, lowers blood pressure, has an
anti-inflammatory effect and gives calmness.
Meditation is quite easy to
do. You don’t have on sit on the floor cross-legged or sit in any other pose.
Just sit in a chair, legs uncrossed, close your eyes and breathe regularly. You
can if you like pay attention to your breath. You can if you like count 1 as
you breathe in and count 2 as you breathe out. Or you can count to 20 and then
start again and continue. However you do it, just take a step back from your
thoughts. When you realise you are thinking something, don’t follow it but say
to yourself “There’s that thought again.”
You might like to visualise
yourself in front of a blackboard and when you have a thought that thought
comes up onto the blackboard. And then you scrub it out. The idea is to get to
a state of just being in the present moment. Whenever thoughts come into your
mind, just scrub them out and go back to being in the present moment. It is a
bit hard at first but after awhile it is a lot easier. Sometimes it’s not easy
to switch off from what is happening in your life. However, if you persevere
then you will be rewarded.
Even if you start out with
10 minutes of meditating a day then you will make progress. I have been doing
10 minutes of meditating in the mornings since January this year and in June my
blood pressure and pulse measurements were the lowest ever. So it works.
Work meditating into your
daily routine. You will find out whether the morning or evening works best for
you – or perhaps you’d like to do it at both times. Whatever works it doesn’t
matter just as long as you do it.
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