Meditation

Here's a practice to add to your daily routines, a practice that will help you to reduce your overall stress level, increase your energy, help reverse heart disease, reduce pain, strengthen the body's immune system, slow down aging, help you to manage feelings of anxiety, depression, anger, and increase your happiness, etc. The one practice that when it really sticks can change your life for the better like nothing else. What I am referring to is Meditation. Try it for one week and see how you feel! My advice is to start off slow and simple, try 5 minutes right before bed and 5 minutes when you first wake up. Continue to increase the time by 1 minute every week. Set a timer on your phone. (Better yet, set an alarm on your phone to remind you to meditate!) Find a comfortable position, use a chair if you need to. Focus on your breathing, start with slow steady breaths in and out and then allow your breath to become relaxed and natural. Keep coming back to the sensation of your breath again and again. That's it! It may not become apparent right away, but there is a profound transformation happening each and every time you meditate. Every minute you spend in mindfulness has a positive effect on your overall health.

I will leave you with a few of my favourite quotes for inspiration: (can you guess who my favourite author on meditation is?!)

"The present moment is the only moment available to us, and it is the door to all moments" Thich Nhat Hanh

"Meditation is not about feeling a certain way, it's about feeling the way you feel." Thich Nhat Hanh

"Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves to see what is really going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness we know what to do and what not to do to help". Thich Nhat Hanh