Meditation for your business sanity!

A 21 day meditation Challenge!

I’ve just done a 21-Day Meditation challenge with the Chopra Institute in California. Every day I receive an email link to a meditation and I listen to it at some point during the day. I’ve missed a couple of days but caught up and am aiming to create a lifetime habit of meditating daily as I can see it’s a really valuable habit to have. These simple meditation courses are a gradual introduction for beginners and can be found free on the Internet. These days you can easily and quickly learn to meditate and then you can do it almost anywhere, anytime.

Research on meditation

Many studies show that regular meditation practice offers numerous health benefits, including lowering blood pressure, strengthening the immune system and releasing stress, anxiety and fatigue. Meditating for half an hour is said to provide more psychological rest than a full night's sleep. Meditation has also been shown to help alleviate pain from muscle tension, headaches and period pains in people who had been unresponsive to standard medical treatment. Cancer patients found greater wellbeing, less symptoms of stress and were better able to cope with life. I’ve even heard of research on couples with unexplained infertility that became pregnant within weeks when they were taught to meditated daily.

When's the best time for you?

The ideal time to meditate is between 5 and 7 a.m. and again between 5 and 7 p.m. For most of us, me included, this just doesn’t fit into our daily schedules, and so you have to do whatever works. Ideally we should wake and meditate before our thousands of thoughts begin, we go online, take dogs for a walk or feed the baby. To get around this, for the last few months, I’ve been setting my alarm for an hour earlier than I need to get up, sleepily putting my headphones on and listening to a meditation on my MP3 player, usually falling back to sleep until the clock goes off again! This has worked well for me and I get up feeling positive and happy and my days flow really well. It doesn’t matter what you do but find a way that works for you and doesn’t create any unnecessary difficulties, or reasons not to continue. My friend Gary meditates at bedtime and sleeps wonderfully afterwards!

Waves or mantras?

I’m really enjoying my 21 day course as it’s fun and a different meditation every day. Yesterday we meditated to the sound of the sea and today to the sounds of nature, These I know I can do in my own garden listening to water flowing into my neighbour’s pond or in a quiet spot on the Hadleigh downs away from the diggers building the Olympic course!

Listening to repetitive sounds creates a vibration that helps you slip into the space between your thoughts, into the complete silence that is referred to as "the gap" where your mind is no longer caught up in its noisy internal chatter. Meditating on a regular basis, I’ve noticed an increased sense of well being as well as greater energy and creativity. I’m finding that every time I meditate it gets easier to relax and be restful. Doing something every day for 21 days is the time it is said to take to develop a ritual, which is powerful way to transform your life.

Give it a go!

If you try meditation, take it seriously and do it daily (even if it is only 5 or 10min) and you will see results. I have learned that everyone has their own results and really important is to let it go and expect nothing, just enjoy. And it does work!
There’s a new 21-Day Meditation Challenge starting soon and thousands of people will take part. If you’d like to join me and sign up, go to www.chopra.com/meditationchallenge/fall