And start today!
Do you have a few minutes to spare? So grab them and read on because I'm willing to bet you'll want to start meditating now!
In yoga, meditation is essential. However, through my experience as a student, I have noticed that the space left for meditation during yoga classes is often very little. This frustrated me terribly, because when I started, I always looked forward to the moment of meditation. And yet, quite obviously, postures (asanas) have the biggest share of the pie during a yoga session. There are even certain styles of yoga that are not at all interested in meditation, essentially favoring work with the body, which completely undermines the basis of yoga, but hey, that's my opinion.
As a result, during my years as a student, I had practiced meditation very little. It really all started for me after I became a yoga teacher. I wanted a nice dose of meditation during my classes. I started writing scripts that I “tested” on my students. I noticed that, like me, everyone was delighted with this moment which ended each of my courses. I witnessed the immediate transformations. I could see the serenity on everyone's faces. A real pleasure!
From that moment on, I started meditating regularly which means every single day, at least once day. I really wanted to go further in discovering the different types of meditation. Many really won me over. I experimented with the different approaches daily for a few weeks, then I changed to be able to appreciate the benefits of each method. Today, I meditate according to my desires and needs, without any particular constraint, other than following my intuition of the moment. Meditation has changed my life, and has become my anchor in difficult times. Thanks to meditation, I went through trials with much more serenity. So I am convinced that if meditation has transformed my daily life, it could certainly change yours!
Now to put the clichés to rest and dust off the concept of meditation, I felt inspired to write this article. No matter which technique you choose, ultimately, the most important thing is really to take this break for yourself every day (if possible). All the different types of meditation use the same areas of our brain, and all have unsuspected benefits, both on our body and on our mind.
Now let me convince you in my own way, by listing all the reasons to start meditating today.
Reason #1 – Meditating reduces stress
A reason that is almost sufficient in itself. When we know the damage that stress can cause, whether at work or in our personal lives, it is in our interest to take a closer look at the issue.
But how can we explain that meditation can have a positive impact on stress? Vast question that could require a thesis proposal in itself. But, between scientific and empirical data, the results are already convincing.
More generally, I can attest to the fact that meditation opens a path to serenity by bringing us back to the present moment.
Reason #2 – Meditation helps us better manage our emotions
Meditation plays a major role in managing emotions. Meditating helps you feel more stable, less subject to the irremediable fluctuations of life.
Far from trying to contain them or reject our emotions, meditation helps us to know them better and accept them. And accepting your emotion, giving it room to express itself, also means learning to “let go”.
Practicing meditation regularly, therefore, allows us to find balance, to assert our personality while being less subject to emotional outbursts. It gives us certain stability.
On this point, I can clearly testify positively to the effects of meditation. I have already talked a lot on the blog about managing emotions, particularly in the post on letting go. Managing my emotions is probably one of the biggest struggles of my life, and of the lives of Highly Sensitive People and Empaths in general.
With meditation, what is as contradictory as it is surprising is that the effect on the management of emotions is immediate. After each practice, we feel calm and peaceful. You’ll see for yourself, as the days go by after you start meditating regularly, you will clearly feel the difference between a day with and a day without meditation practice. You are less easily carried away by your feelings, and you manage to gain more perspective on things.
Take this short quiz (below) if you want to know if you are a highly sensitive person.
Reason #3 – Meditation brings self-confidence
Obviously, greater serenity and better management of our emotions leads us to regain self-esteem. Everything is intrinsically linked, and that’s what’s great! All you have to do is move one lever to make the others move… It’s magic!
Self-esteem. Here, we touch on an extremely vast concept. A problem as old as time, as mysterious as it is universal.
Stop me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that we are all, at some point, in search of that famous self-esteem. Detach ourselves from the judgment of others, do the best for ourselves, above all. Easier said than done, I know. However, by meditating regularly, we get a little closer to ourselves. We feel more in tune with who we are. We take better responsibility, leaving judgment and negativity aside.
Reason #4 – Meditating opens us to others
Being better in your own shoes also means being better with others. We are less afraid of others, of the unknown. We no longer feel judged, so we stop judging others, too.
More open, more altruistic, more compassionate, we understand others better. Even those who don't think like us, and with whom we disagree on almost everything. Before, we put labels on them, we judged them too quickly and, sometimes, we even rejected them. Today, we learn to deal with everything that they are, just as we also learn to deal with everything that we are. It’s a dream, right?!
Reason #5 – Meditating makes the mind clearer
When negative thoughts are tamed and emotions are managed appropriately, the mind can return to its rightful place without risking being upset. Meditating allows you to achieve this clarity of mind, this essential clairvoyance in decision-making.
Thus, meditation allows us to make choices and to make them in an informed manner. This helps avoid remorse and regrets!
Reason #6 – Meditation boosts creativity
By regularly “strengthening” our brain and activating certain areas in it that are sometimes left fallow, meditation helps us to be more creative.
Once again, if negative emotions and thoughts are welcomed without judgment, they end up evaporating in favor of intellectual wealth and heightened creativity.
Clearly, since I meditate every day, not only do I have this feeling of having a clearer mind, but ideas flow without escaping! Usually, I have a thousand ideas a second (thanks to my high sensitivity!), but it's such a mess at times that I can forget a brilliant idea the second it pops into my mind. It's super frustrating, and I'll let you imagine the emotions it can cause. Thanks to meditation, I feel that my ideas organize themselves better. And they also appear to me more clearly and in a more structured way. When I tell you it’s magical!
Reason #7 – Meditation improves attention and concentration
One of the reasons why companies are starting to be interested in meditation for their employees is that it can be excellent for their business!
At work, and even more so when you work in an open space, there are many distractions. So-and-so getting up to get his coffee, the phone ringing, the emails “pop-up” at the bottom right of the screen. In short, it goes in all directions and it quickly becomes hell to stay focused. Especially when you know that the slightest disturbance, even minimal, takes us on average more than 15 seconds to concentrate again on what we were doing, taken together, it's a real waste of time!
Meditation trains our brain to maintain attention more easily and for longer. And that goes for work as for all daily activities!
Reason #8 – Meditating helps combat depressive symptoms
And it’s proven! Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy or MBCT (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy) practiced by certain therapists, particularly in the USA, has made it possible to halve the risk of depressive relapse.
How is it possible ?
To put it simply, meditating will act on the parasympathetic nervous system which plays a major role in our ability to relax. This system itself belongs to the autonomic nervous system, which manages everything that we do not consciously control. By acting in this way on the parasympathetic system, a whole bunch of mechanisms will be activated in the body to provide more relaxation: slowing down of the heart rate, lowering of blood pressure, return to normal digestion, etc.
Reason #9 – Meditation plays a role in our health
If we take up what we have just seen above concerning the positive impact of meditation on the parasympathetic system, we understand better why meditating is good for your health!
Generally speaking, stimulation of the parasympathetic system can have considerable effects on the immune system, by increasing the level of antibodies in the blood.
Corroborated by numerous studies, it has been proven that meditating helps reduce the risks of cardiovascular and degenerative diseases, without forgetting the positive impact on respiratory, digestive and even neurological disorders.
Reason #10 – Meditating makes our daily lives better
Meditation helps us live better, any conclusion?
Meditating allows us to feel in better physical and mental shape. Be better in our own shoes, so better with others.
Meditation, by also acting on the left brain, will help develop positive emotions and thoughts. And positive thinking makes you happy!
And then, by calming the emotions and the mind, meditation brings us to a deeper connection to our soul, to our inner self. Meditation will not change our lives and make difficulties disappear, of course. But it offers us another perspective on these difficulties. Through increased discernment, it can also lead us to flourish and find our way. Thus, it allows those who wish to access a higher level of spirituality, to better understand their life path, their “raison d’être”.
If we had to summarize all of this a little and keep only one reason to start meditating, it would be to say that meditation teaches us to live in the moment, thus leading us to take advantage of each moment of life, from the most trivial to the most exciting.
Reading this, it almost seems like meditation is the magic thing that can change everything. And it's not wrong!
Whether you prefer evening meditation or morning meditation, practiced regularly and assiduously, it can work wonders. So sure, it seems easy like that. If meditating was the answer to all our questions and the path to better well-being, why doesn't everyone do it?
First, because I think that, like yoga, meditation still suffers from a lot of clichés. My favorite being to say that meditation is reserved for an elite, for those who already know how to do it or that it is a bunch of trendy BS.
And then, practicing meditation is like everything in life, you also need a clever mix of determination and rigor. But it's definitely worth it.
To help you get started or make meditation part of a daily routine, several things can help you. There are of course meditation apps. Interesting to use but it forces us once again to use our phone. There is also one that I really like and which I call informal meditation. It’s simply returning to the present moment by using all our senses in everyday activities: brushing your teeth, cutting vegetables, eating, putting on makeup, etc. Basically, it's about doing an activity 100%, even for a short period of time, it is to be in complete awareness of the “now”
So, when do you start? ;)
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