12 Oct Why Meditating Should Be Part of Your Life
Want to boost productivity, sleep more soundly, even have better sex? Who would say “no” to that? But how? One word: meditate. All those benies and more with a commitment of only 20 minutes. Read on in Dr. Mark Hyman’s article in EcoWatch on the subject. He himself is a convert and practices regularly. Me too.
Full confession: Once upon a time, I meditated consistently. As a teenager, my sister had a boyfriend who was a Transcendental Meditation (TM) teacher, so she taught me how to meditate.
I really got passionate about meditation as an adult, attending 10-day retreats where I meditated up to 12—yes, 12—hours a day. I studied Buddhism in college, and meditation remained an integral part of my life.
Meditating before I paddled down the Green River in Utah.
As you probably know too well, real life can interfere with creating time for oneself or even the inclination to meditate, and for me, eventually, it fell by the wayside.
Just thinking about the zillion tasks I juggle every day makes my head spin: managing a functional medicine clinic at a major hospital, seeing patients at my own practice, writing books and attending to tons of other work obligations. I balance these duties with regular exercise, eating healthy and oh yeah, sleeping 8 to 10 hours every night.
So OK, no jury in the world would convict me when I say I don’t have time to meditate, right?
At the same time, I’ve been “prescribing” meditation to patients and readers for decades, so I always felt slightly uncomfortable recommending it when I didn’t practice meditation myself.
Among its many benefits, meditation reduces stress. Think of your brain as a computer, simultaneously keeping many windows and programs going.
Meditation helps you close out the unnecessary windows so you can focus on what’s essential. When you do less with more, you enjoy life more and perform at a higher level.
Stress relief might be the most-studied benefit, but meditation also has been found to help reduce drug addiction, relieve anxiety and boost immunity.
I could go on, but as my new friend Emily Fletcher recently reminded me, you don’t need studies to substantiate meditation’s many benefits.
An incredible Broadway performer in her past life, Emily and I met recently while lecturing at a conference in Greece. She’s a bona fide rock star, teaching meditation to some of the world’s top players, like those working at Google and the Harvard Business School.
Emily immediately called me out on the “I don’t have time to meditate” excuse. In saying that, she said, I was only fooling myself. Even though I felt pretty good, she mentioned that meditation could help me feel better, be better and become happier.
When I returned from Greece, I told Emily I wanted to reactivate my meditation practice. I realized this would require time and commitment, but I remained determined and stuck with it.
Over the past several months, as Emily helped rekindle my meditation fire and gave me a mantra to work with, I experienced a profound, “supercharged” difference. I felt happier, calmer, less anxious and more energized or filled with energy. Before, I felt tired at the end of a long day; now I find I am alert and far more productive.
Experiencing those and other benefits makes prioritizing meditation much easier. We all say “I’m too busy to meditate.” Listen, if Oprah has time to meditate—if I have time to meditate—so do you.
At the same time, I understand how finding a compatible practice that works with your crazy schedule can be a challenge. After all, there are lots of meditation methods out there, and you could spend years selecting among them.
Emily and I want to simplify that journey for you, which is why she created Ziva Meditation, the world’s first online meditation training…
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