I hope everyone is recovering from Halloween…because it is officially holiday season! Now isn’t that crazy.
In an effort to help ease the holiday stress, this month’s health challenge is to take time every day to meditate.
Meditation has a long list of benefits, but one that is always at the top of the list is the impact it has on stress level. Study after study has shown that meditation is successful in reducing stress. Along with that, here are a few other benefits:
– it improves concentration
– it encourages a healthy lifestyle
– it increases self-awareness
– it increases happiness
– it slows aging
I don’t have a step by step how-to for this month’s challenge. That’s because meditation can look different for everyone. That is also why I don’t have any pictures of people meditating on this post. The best thing to do is find what works for you. Meditation can mean taking time to pray each day. It can mean lying in bed doing your best to clear your mind to a blank state for 10 minutes. It can be on the bus ride to work, sitting quietly and letting your mind clear. Or if can even be in the shower, during those few minutes you get to yourself each day.
The key is to focus your attention and eliminate the stream of jumbled thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress, and then practice regularly. The first few times you might find that it is very hard to clear your head. Do your best and don’t stop trying – it will come. If you need something to think about, try to only think of things you are grateful for. We could all spend more time being grateful, right?
