How to Start Meditating: Everything You Need to Know

Sometimes its all too much. We all have those moments where things just feel overwhelming.

Meditation can help alleviate these feelings, and with a regular practice can even help decrease the likelihood of negative emotions showing up in the first place.

However, we do not always have the time to set aside for a comfortable meditation session.

This is especially true when the need for calm is immediate. When stress or anxiety show up unannounced, we need something in our back pocket to help right away.

Luckily that something is a close as your lungs. Simple breathing can work wonders with easing anxiety if we do it consciously.

Here is a complete guide on how to start meditating.

Basic Steps to Start Meditating

The next time you feel overwhelmed by negative feelings, try the following simple steps.

First, compose your posture. No slouching, no leaning. Stand up solidly on both feet, or sit up straight.

Next, take a deep breath.

Feel the air go in all the way down to your pelvis. Let the breath out slow while intentionally releasing tension in your neck and shoulders. Feel your shoulders drop.

Then, close your eyes. Be in the present moment.

Take five more long, deep, slow breaths. Count the breaths as you feel the cycle of each breath. Inhale down to your pelvis, exhale all the way to your nose.

With each exhale, feel more tension releasing from your body.

Slowly open your eyes with a smile. After five intentional breaths, you will find your feelings of anxiety greatly reduced. From that relaxed place, step back into your day.

How To Use Meditation To Your Advantage

We are always trying to better ourselves. We want to be more productive, more successful, healthier, happier.

It’s difficult, and it may feel like we are always falling short of our goals. The key to reinvention is to try, try again and to try new things.

No reason doing the same thing over again if you’re not getting the results you seek. If you re looking to better your life, here are 5 ways meditation can work to your advantage.

1. Improves Health

Meditation has as many physical benefits as it does mental benefits. Studies have shown that when meditating physical changes are occurring.

In a state of relaxation and mindfulness bodily functions improve, for instance, meditation lowers blood pressure, improves aches and pains, and boosts the immunes system

2. Improves Brain Functioning

If you are seeking to be more productive, then meditation is a great tool to help with that. Meditation improves brain functioning and enhances your attention span.

Meditation can also help with creative thinking and problem solving as meditation clears up your mind and allows for clearer, reflective thinking.

3. Improves Metabolism

Meditation is also great if you want to lose weight. Another physical benefit of meditation is that it improves your metabolism.

This in part has to do with the state of relaxation your body goes under in meditation, which helps relieves stress-a known cause of weight gain.

4. Improves Energy Levels

It’s difficult to achieve goals when you re unmotivated. Fortunately, a combined mental and physical benefit of meditation is the boost in energy.

The energy comes from improved health, having an easier time falling and staying asleep, relaxed physical and mental stress, and an inner calmness. Think about all you can accomplish when you’re motivated and energetic.

5. Improves Moods

Mediation is notable for reducing stress. However, meditation is not just a practice of relaxation, but also a practice of mindfulness and self-reflection.

Meditation can improve self-esteem, decrease anxiety, and overall increase happiness.

In order to reap the benefits of meditation, you have to dedicate yourself to its practice and meditate regularly.

Fighting Words: How to Start Meditating After a Quarrel

Even the happiest couples fight now and then, and if you are going through a particularly rough time, you have to remember to be good to yourself, even when your significant other forgets to be.

From finding your inner voice to letting off a little steam, here are five wonderful ways to be good to your heart after a quarrel.

Meditate on the Positive

Being human means saying things you don’t mean sometimes. If you were on the receiving end of some not-so-nice words, remind yourself, “l matter. I m enough. I am my own anchor.”

Remember, you are not defined by your spouse’s opinion but by who you know you are on the inside and that is somebody special. Meditation can help you to clear the noise and hear your inner voice the most important voice of all.

Work it Out

Exercise releases feel-good endorphins that can decrease anxiety while boosting mood and energy. In fact, scientists suggest that just five tiny minutes of aerobic exercise can begin to release those antianxiety effects that you crave.

Crank that up to 30 and you are well on your way to being ready to put that smile back on. This is a perfect reason to turn up a little Shake it Off and, well, shake it off. Shut the bathroom door, lock it and dance in front of the mirror… you’ll feel a whole lot better afterward.

Call a Friend…

It can really help to get things off your chest and even we women can tend to hold things inside when it comes to our marriages.

Call up a gal pal who will get it… but don t call up the friend who will be quick to bash your spouse. Instead, call someone who sees the big picture and isn’t afraid to call you out on your own stuff too.

Sometimes seeing things from another’s perspective can shed new light on your big fight.

Keep Meditating

Meditation is a powerful antidote to life’s challenges. The one thing we don’t want to do is introduce too much stress into our meditations. Keep things simple and reap the sweet rewards.