The Benefits of Daily Meditation

Have you ever tried meditating? We’ve been reading a lot online recently about how meditating for even just a few minutes a day can improve your mental and emotional health, as well as aspects of both personal and professional lives, so we decided to start practising daily mindfulness meditation to see what the fuss is all about. There were two apps recommended to us for this, Calm and Headspace and we have to say, as beginners, we’re enjoying the ease and simplicity both!

Meditation works best when practised frequently and consistently so we’ve been sticking to a morning routine of sitting down on the train, popping our headphones on and getting stuck in. Of course, there are plenty of opportunities throughout the day to do this… be it first thing in the morning, during your lunch break or just before bed – it doesn’t matter what time of the day, just that you’re setting aside time to be present and mindful for a matter of minutes.

There were a few potential results of meditation that prompted us to give it a go, we’ve listed them below in hope that they might inspire you too:

• The first key reasons that meditating appealed to us in the first place is its ability to help reducing stress. We all know how stressful it can be working in a fast-paced environment with tight deadlines, demanding colleagues and clients as well as trying to maintain a healthy work/life balance. It’s truly mind-blowing how a series of breathing exercises and controlled thoughts can have such a great impact on the way we view and deal with stressful situations. Having less stress in your life will most likely lead to less anxiety too.
• Do you find yourself being easily distracted and struggling to concentrate, both at work and at home? You’re definitely not alone… We go through life at such lightning speed, always moving onto the next thing and with that, it can be difficult to maintain focus. Mindful meditation has been proven to improve the length of your attention span, allowing you to clearly focus on and complete the task at hand. Definitely something to help with getting through a lengthy to-do list and leaving the office on time!
• Mindfulness meditation can help to enhance self-awareness, meaning that you can develop a deeper understanding of yourself and channel that into improving your outlook on situations and a having more positive mindset.
• Meditation before bed can help to improve sleep quality by relaxing your mind and body, making you feel sleepy and clearing your mind of any worries and tension that would usually keep you awake. There are many different meditations that you can do, whether you need help reducing the time it takes to fall asleep, the quality or length of sleep, of a combination of all of them if you struggle with insomnia or getting out of bed when your alarm goes off in the morning.