Meditation: How & Why

by Liza – Sunday, 25. November 2018

Leading a busy life, it’s especially important to take some time for yourself and just take a deep breath now and then. Meditation has many benefits, such as enabling better performance and focus during your workouts to help you reach your goals and prevent injury. It also reduces stress, which affects all of us now and then and can result in serious mental and physical problems. Lastly, it helps controlling anxiety and your overall mental and emotional health, it boost your self-awareness and mood and can even better your attention span.

When we hear ‘meditation’, we might think of an hour-long session of sitting on the floor and repeating ‘om’ under your breath. However, meditation can take many different forms and we’re sure you’ll find one that suits your lifestyle.

It might feel hard to invest more than 10 minutes a day, but even just that can make a huge positive impact on your life. Try dedicating 5 minutes to meditation after your workout as a part of your cooldown or just take a seat for 10 minutes in the evening, don’t look at your phone, don’t turn on the TV and don’t even listen to music. Take deep breaths and try to empty your mind. Should any thoughts cross your mind meet them neutrally, reflect on them, try to analyze what exactly is bothering you or makes them stand out, and then let them go. The goal of meditation is to achieve a mentally clear and emotional calm state, so confronting yourself with what is going on in your life is the first step to processing it and getting over it.

Should you feel like it, adding aromatherapy can help you achieve a truly relaxed state and might even make it easier for you to do so in the future, once you associate a certain smell with well-being so feel free and light a candle or even burn some incense sticks.

If you’d like to invest more time into meditation, group sessions to practice meditation can be an option. Going into depth and practicing different breathing methods can help you find the way that suits you best. Alternatively, try going to a yoga class (our very own Geraldine is a Yoga Instructor in addition to Velocity 🙂 ). The flowing movements and steady, rhythmic breathing promote similar benefits to meditation and the mentality is very similar, since both have roots in Indian culture. But in the end, the most important part is finding and dedicating time to yourself and your wellbeing.

References:

https://www.fitnessmagazine.com/mind-body/meditation/benefits-of-meditation-for-workout/

https://liveanddare.com/benefits-of-meditation/