Why should I meditate?

If you are reading this, by now you have already heard about meditation and the benefits of it.

You probably have read all about the wonders of starting a meditation practice and seen lots of pictures on instagram making it look like it's something you should do.

But why should you meditate? 

Why should you start a meditation practice?

In order to have the benefits of meditation you need to practice it. That means spending 10, 15, 20  minutes of your day.. well… meditating.

 

Really, why should you start meditating?

 

The purpose of meditation isn’t only to reduce stress or to make you feel better at the present moment, it’s also to make fundamental discoveries about our own minds.

Meditation is mental training and it will improve your life.

It’s very simple: we experience life through our mind. Happiness, sadness, love, anger, embarrassment, disappointment, they are all mental events. If we stop to analyze it, we can easily see that we are constantly  trying to explain the world to ourselves, and emotionally reacting to the explanations.

We cannot control the world around us. Whether you want it or not, one day something is going to happen: a loved one dies, you can get sick or injured or the thing you thought was forever can end. Life happens.

Accepting this, and accepting that the only thing that we can (actually) control is our mind can be a game changer.

 

Rather than trying to change the world, you can look more closely at what you are doing with your own mind and actually choose to respond to life in ways that are more mindful.

 

Mediation cannot stop stressful moments, frustration, anxiety or anger (they are part of life) but these feelings no longer determine your life anymore. They will no longer define who you are.

Our minds is our most important possession and that is why it is fundamental for you to take good care of your mind and  to train it.

An untrained mind is what stops us to enjoy life when things are going well, or what allows us to be unhappy, even when we have no reasons to.

Instead of focusing on the present we are lost in the virtual reality of thoughts, thinking about what we should do or didn’t do, or wish we had done. And we totally miss our life, we just pass through it, not really living it.

Meditation is the most powerful tool to deal and correct this.

It’s a practice that breaks the habit of being lost in thought and simply become aware of your experience in the present moment.

The quality of the mind that is cultivated during meditation is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a state of clear, non judgmental  attention to the content of the present moment, either pleasant or unpleasant.

Meditation practice has been shown to produce long lasting changes in attention, emotions, cognition and pain perception. And this correlates with both structural and functional changes in the brain.

 

Given all of this… give meditation a try. You’ll realize it makes sense to train or mind.

 

Manuela

 

“The quality of your thoughts determines the quality of your life”

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