Everyone can benefit from these easy meditation exercises. In addition to improving your physical health, meditating has shown to help those who suffer from depression.
As a type-A personality, I've always dreamed of being able to sit still for even just a few minutes a day to meditate. Recently I tried a simple meditation exercise that I hope to make time for every day. Call it my Meditation Challenge and join me!
This reminds me of my Organizing Challenge, which felt like meditation, as do a walk in the woods, a bike ride and relaxation in a warm tub.
Nonetheless, I often wonder what would happen if I got captured by terrorists. (As you may know, I'm a worrywart.) I'd want to be able to rest my mind. Meditation could give me control of my mind, even if I don't get confined by terrorists but simply find myself in a long checkout line.
Credit for this meditation goes to NPR and to Mark Williams, a clinical psychologist at Oxford University. In his book Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World, Williams discusses mindfulness meditation's brain and body benefits, not unlike those of cognitive behavioral therapy that can be as effective as drugs for keeping recurring bouts of depression at bay.
Here I have adapted Williams's easy meditation exercise to try at home (and never while driving):
Become aware of your posture and, if you're in a sitting position, you might want to just sit up straight so you've got a straight spine. But not stiff, not ike a sergeant major.
Just with the back straight, the head balanced, the shoulders can be quite relaxed and dropped. And even this sense of changing your posture already signals your intentions to step out of autopilot. And then, there are three steps now that people can try for themselves. The first is just to notice what's going on in mind and body right now. So in the silence that comes up, just notice any thoughts that are around, any feelings or emotions there may be, any body sensations that are around.
Notice any tendency we have to want to change what we discover and seeing if it's possible to simply allow it to be just as it is, just as it already is. And then, moving to step two of this short meditation, to gather your attention, to let all that fade into the background, gather the attention and place it lightly on the breath. So just noticing the sensations of the breath moving in and out of the body, and it may be convenient just to focus on the sensations down in the abdomen.
You can put your hand on the abdomen, if you like, and just notice the rising of the in breath and the falling away of the out breath. And just paying attention as best you can to that sensation of breathing in and breathing out. Not trying to control the breath in any way, simply allowing the breath to breathe you. And if the mind wanders at all, just notice where it went, and very gently escort it back to the breath, the sensations of in or out breath.
And now, taking step three of this short meditation and expanding attention to the body as a whole, sitting here. So simply noticing the whole body, all the sensations in the body from the surface of the skin and right deep inside as if the whole body was breathing now and allowing the sensations in the body to be just as you find them. A sense of coming home to the body. And then, when you're ready, beginning to move fingers and toes, opening your eyes, if they've been closed, and taking in wherever you are, all of your surroundings, and allowing thee meditation to pass and coming back to this moment.
As a compaion to this simple meditation, try some easy yoga exercises at home, which can relieve stress and pain. My colleague Leah Ingram suggests ways to make space for a yoga workout in your home.
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