Back in 2009 I found myself overwhelmed and suffering with PTSD. I was an extremely busy mum of five and I knew I had to readjust my lifestyle if I was to recover. I was lucky enough to find a wonderful therapist who helped me. Yes we psychologists go to therapy too.

One of the first pieces of advice she gave me was to put in place a meditation practice. I was very sceptical at first but I was also desperate to change my life, I would have tried anything.

To me meditation was something I felt was very out there and it didn’t fit in with my logical thinking. I thought we would be sitting around in a circle chanting. But I kept an open mind and took up the offer of a meditation class. We were expected to also complete a ten minute daily meditation practice.

To this day I have never looked back. Did we sit around chanting? No was the answer. All I had to do was follow my instructor’s voice as we completed ten minutes of meditation and then follow a CD each day at home. That first eight week class changed my life and started a complete overhaul.

I still use meditation as part of my daily basic self-care habits. I recommend it to friends and clients alike as one way they can change their stressful lives. I included in my book The Building Blocks Of Self-Care as one of the 12 steps I used to help with my recovery.

As time went on I knew I was gaining a lot from meditation. I felt my stress reduce, my awareness both internal and externally had increased. My focused and decisions were clearer. But with my logical mindset I had to find out all the how’s and why’s meditation worked so well for my recovery.

How Meditation Can Be Of Benefit To You.

So what did I find out by meditation and some of its benefits to our mental and physical health?

1. Just 15 minutes a day can help give your mind a holiday. It can train your brain to slow down and get more in touch with your thoughts and feelings. This enables us to challenge the negative thought patterns and change them. It is one effective tool in helping you to rewire your brain from the negative bias.
2. Reduces your stress hormones and improves your sleep. This is because it again enables us to train the brain waves to drop in the lower states more easily. So important for a better night’s sleep. I have even found that I can go back to sleep more quickly if I do happen to wake up.
3. Our brain waves can also be trained to go up into a gamma stage more easily. The purpose of gamma waves is high level problem solving, simultaneous processing of information from different brain areas, super focus and increased high endurance energy. Gamma brainwaves pass information rapidly and quietly and it is thought that it modulates perceptions and consciousness. This is important for your ability to learn, memory and information processing. Staying in the gamma state is believed to be not as harmful as staying in Beta stage. But gamma is the hardest to get into, it can be triggered by consistent effort and meditation can help access this state more easily
4. During meditation your brain releases dopamine the feel good hormone. This then improves your overall mood.
5. Grey matter increases thereby staving off dementia.
6. We develop more awareness and have a better ability to focus. A huge benefit for learning, work and life in general, particularly our relationships.
7. Rational thinking skills improve.
8. We are more compassionate and less judgemental of ourselves and others.
9. Blood pressure drops which is great news for reducing our chances of heart attack, stroke prevention, etc.
10. Our digestive system relaxes, we can process food better and our vitamin absorption is better, etc. In turn this helps our immune system fight off viruses, etc., more efficiently.
11. We get better pain relief. A lot of people have found their migraine symptoms have improved. You may not know it but mindfulness was developed for pain relief in cancer patients originally.
12. We reduce inflammation which is great for a multitude of conditions including arthritis.
13. Our muscle tension decreases. Again this is great news for anyone who suffers some muscle pain as a result of stress.
14. Our stress levels are reduced.
15. Meditation is effective in helping with many mental health conditions including depression and anxiety.

The above list is not a full one by any means. But it gives you an idea of how having a formal daily meditation practice could benefit you. You can also understand why I feel it is one of our foundations in our daily self-care tool box.

How to do a five minute mindfulness session.

A couple of pointers first:

Yes your mind will wander that is normal and it will continue to wander no matter how long you are meditating for. Your job is to redirect you mind back to concentrating on your breathe when you notice it wandering. The period and length of time your mind will wander will reduce with more practice. Think of it as training a puppy to walk on a lead, you need some patience to do it. So be patient with yourself.

The most important thing here is to have a cue to signal that it is time to meditate. You will need this cue in order to help establish your new habit of meditation as an automatic one. I’ve talked about steps to creating a new habit and putting in cues here.

If you find yourself very agitated then it is a good idea to get up and walk around the room while focusing on your breathing. This type of agitation is very common with stress and anxiety as you have excess stress hormones coursing through your body. Another idea you could use here is to go for a walk before your meditation session; this will use up some of those hormones.

You might also find that you become cold while sitting. So simply have an extra cardigan or pashmina/wrap to cover your shoulders.

How To Complete A Formal Mindfulness Session.

1. Sit on a chair or on a cushion or mat on the floor.
2. Set a reminder or alarm for 5 minutes (to begin with). You don’t have to jump straight into a 10 minute session. 5 minutes can be all you need to get your motivation up and running.
3. Close your eyes.
4. Bring your attention to the air coming in through the nose and out through the nose.
5. Notice the cold air as it enters your nose.
6. Notice the warm air as it leaves your nose.
7. Staying fully in touch with the breath as it enters the body and leaves the body, keeping awareness on the breath in this present moment. You don’t have to deepen your breath for any of this as you focus is on the air as it comes and leaves your nose.
8. Your thoughts will wander, you can’t stop this. Allow your thoughts to wander like clouds in the sky, watch them as they drift along without judgement and when you realise you are doing this simply bring your attention back to the breath instead.

If you would like to follow along to a formal practice then I have some meditation podcasts. My 10 minute mindfulness podcast is here and 20 minute mindfulness podcast is here.

If you find that mindfulness is not for you then do try other forms of meditation. One such meditation is the 7/11 technique. I have a podcast that gives you the background to this technique and runs you through a session.

My Book.

Did you know I talk about basic self-care in my workbook The Building Blocks Of Self-Care? The steps in this workbook will help you lay the foundations to rebuilding your life, feel more in control and help you build healthy routines. You can purchase it on Amazon or here.