Just 10 minutes of mindfulness a day could improve your mood, energy levels, and mindset.
Clear thoughts, balanced mental state, and productive days. Meditation could transform your mindset and perspective. From personal experience, and insights from health professions, meditation can be seen as a solution to intrusive thoughts and short attention spans.
Mediation defined by Mayo Clinic is, “-a practice that revolves around concentration, a bringing of oneself back to the moment, over and over again.” There are various benefits that come along with meditating. These range from reducing stress to relieving chronic pain, depression, and even heart disease. Personally, I define mediation as a moment for myself, a form of self-care and self-improvement to become the best version of myself. Taking five or ten minutes a day to just be can improve a lot of our internal struggles and thoughts.
If you’re just beginning your meditation journey, start with five minutes a day. An easy way to get settled is to sit in a comfortable seat with your feet grounded. Relax into your seat, taking note of how each part of your body feels. What is tense? What parts are more relaxed than others? After taking note of how your body adjusts, make sure to relax any tenseness. Start to lower your gaze, leaving your eyes slightly open, looking toward the ground.
Start to relax your mind, it’s easier said than done, but try to start to clear your thoughts. Clean the slate that fills your mind with the to-do lists, scenarios that haven’t happened, or fantasies. Let your mind drift into a state of just being. The best way to achieve this so-called nirvana is to focus on your breath. Try to take each breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. This will allow you to remain present. A tool I learned while first starting to meditate is to count your breaths. The trick is to not go above ten and return back to one every ten breaths you take. This method helps breaths stay consistent, and keeps the mind from wandering.
To start meditating can be intimidating, but I encourage everyone to try it. Challenge yourself, to just be for a few minutes of your day. Try meditating first thing when you wake up, or the last thing in your day. The way we start and end our days can have huge impacts on our mental states. So, what’s a better way to start a new day or to close one out with peace of mind.
Overall, meditation can reveal parts of yourself that have yet to be found while healing your mental and physical state. One of my favorite books on mindfulness, Meditations by James Van Praagh says, “When you meditate, you enter your own private sanctuary and tap into the purity of higher consciousness where ignorance, judgment, and hostility do not exist.” Discover a new world through practicing meditation, it’s never too late to start.