Some reminders about why it’s such a good idea + a 10 minute meditation for today.

1. As we have been discovering in recent years, there are tremendous health benefits, most significantly by reducing stress. It has been shown to lessen activity in the right prefrontal cortex (associated with anger and anxiety) and increase it in the left prefrontal cortex, which is associated with happiness and positivity. Because it lowers stress, it can positively impact diseases that have a clear stress related component such as ulcers, heart disease, asthma, and immune deficiencies. On the emotional side, when included as part of treatment for depression, researchers have shown that those who meditate are 50% less likely to relapse, which is awesome.

2. Meditation can you happier and more creative, if only because it affords your mind time to rest. Rest is essential. Like, consider this: we all know exercise is good for us, yes? But what if all you did was exercise? Inside of about 2-12 hours, it would pretty much cease to be good for you and would become the opposite. Apply this to our minds. If all you do is think, plan, worry, take in inputs, whether in the form of work-related reading, social media, or some form of entertainment–at some point, your mind is just too tired to make much use of what it’s being fed. For many of us, it feels like this incredible mental activity goes on throughout the evening. Uncle! We need to give our minds time to rest. Allowing attention to ride the breath as we do during meditation–also known as synchronizing mind and body–offers the mind a chance to rest that is way different than the ways we normally try, which usually involve some sort of distraction and/or just hoping to space out.

3. Finally, meditation makes you a nicer person, especially toward yourself. As you practice, continually refocusing attention on the breath and allowing your thoughts to be as they are without trying to chase any away or hold onto others, you are also practicing softening toward yourself. If you think something great about yourself, you let that go. If you think something horrid about yourself, you let that go. Whether your thought is vicious, pleasant, boring, confusing, or brilliant–you touch it and let it go. You come back over and over to the you who is simply open, receptive, and curious. You find that there is no thought or feeling from which you cannot return to this very place. In this way, you soften toward yourself. You can untether yourself from the self-improvement treadmill most of us have lashed ourselves to pretty tightly and instead extend the hand of friendship toward yourself. This builds precision without judgment, patience without coddling, and, quite naturally, a heart that is strong enough to open, open, and keep opening: first to yourself in all your unique brilliance and then to all your encounter, no matter what. With this openness, all things are possible for us and between us.

OK, all that said, at the same time, we’re just sitting here, breathing and hanging out with ourselves, just as we are. For all of its profound qualities and principles, at the same time, meditation is just about the most ordinary thing you can ever do. So let’s go.

Comments?! Love to hear them.

Your 10-minute meditation for today: