Ahhh Meditation

People are always asking me about Meditation – how do I meditate, what should I do, what if I’m ‘bad’ at it, I want to but I just don’t have time… etc..

I think people often have this idea that it’s supposed to be easy or that magically, you can just stop yourself from thinking or that it has to be hard and time-consuming. We’re humans – we THINK! That’s what we do. The idea with meditation isn’t necessarily about not thinking AT ALL so much as not letting your thoughts rule you.

I love the phrase I heard many years ago “you can’t control your first thought, but you can your second”. The acknowledgement that we ARE going to think, that’s just what we do BUT, if we catch ourselves before we let that ‘monkey mind’ (You know the one where your thoughts randomly swing from one thing to another…and then another…and another and you started thinking about cheese and ended thinking about your 4th grade teacher and the time you failed your spelling test…and then how you need to change the oil in your car…or something else as random, and not necessarily as nice, as that). If we can catch ourselves and stop that mind chatter, we can gain a little bit of peace and stillness in our day AND, gain some of the health benefits that come along with it like decreased stress and anxiety, better sleep, lower blood pressure, decreased anger and irritability…uh, yeah, all that good stuff!

There are many wonderful meditation classes about, but for those of you who just want to get started or take a moment in your day, I came across this wonderful little video that I think does a beautiful job of getting you started. So often I find it’s the little things that we do every day, or several times throughout the day, that make the biggest difference long-term.

Meditation doesn’t have to be daunting or majorly time consuming…stop, take a breath, take three, stop that mental chatter and arrive in THIS moment. Ahhhh! THAT’s the beauty of meditation!