1st -- Sit or lie comfortably in a quiet space (or not, on the bus works too). Close your eyes.
2nd -- Make no effort to control the breath; simply breathe naturally and deeply into the belly.
3rd -- Focus your attention on the breath and on how the body moves with each inhalation and exhalation. Notice the movement of your body as you breathe. Observe your chest, shoulders, rib cage, and belly. Simply focus your attention on your breath without controlling its pace or intensity. If your mind wanders, return your focus back to your breath.
4th -- Add a simple mantra: “Breathing in I know I am breathing in, breathing out I know I am breathing out…” or create your own, “Love is all we need…”
**Maintain this meditation practice for 2—3 minutes to start, and then try it for longer periods.
Benefits of a Daily Meditation Practise
1. Mediation actually boosts your health, as in your immune system, it increases your immunity and immune function and decreases pain. It actually decreases inflammation at the cellular level.
2. It boosts happiness! Meditation increases positive emotion, decreases depression, anxiety and stress.
3. It boosts your social life! It increases your sense of emotional connection to others, makes you more compassionate, makes you feel less lonely.
4. It boosts self-control. It helps you regulate your emotions, and that means emotional eating, and improves your ability to go deep and be introspective.
5. It actually changes your brain! Your brain is incredibly plastic. That means if you don’t like the way you think, the way you are, or some of your habits, you have the ability to change this and meditation will help. Meditation increases grey matter. It actually increases volume in areas related to emotional regulation, positive emotions and self-control. It also increases cortical thickness in areas related to paying attention.
6. It improves your productivity – meditation increases your ability to focus and multi-task, your memory, your creativity, your attention, your ability to think outside the box.
7. It makes you wiser. It gives you perspective. By observing your mind through meditation you realize you don’t have to be a slave to it. You realize, outside of the deep you, the watcher you, that your mind on the surface can throw tantrums, yell, scream, be frustrated and irritated it can be happy, sad, mad, glad, annoying, but that does not have to run you. The clear-headed observer you is always there, underneath that, and you can become more present to it.
APPS to help you: Headspace, Mindshift, Calm
It eventually gets easy. There is no right or wrong way to meditate. Your mind will bug you and have lots to say, but over time, the voice will soften, though never go away. You will begin to notice you are the observer and the voice is just noise that sits on top of that. It takes time but you are worth it.