Modern life is intense on you and in particular, your nervous system.
It has been indicated that we consume the equivalent information in a single day that our ancestors, just 250 years ago, did in a whole year. Think about that and the impact of your brain having to process it all without you being consciously aware of what is playing out.
Don’t you think our brain needs to be organised sometimes with all this information coming in?
Well that’s the way we like to describe the benefits of meditation. Meditation is not sitting in the mountains, in cross-legged position and chanting. Although that would be super cool.
Meditation comes in many forms, breathing, chanting, focusing, and letting go – they are some of the popular ways. But each year Health Stack offers the people we work with to learn and remind themself how to meditate and the amazing mental health and wellbeing benefits we get from this simple practice.
Stress is the epidemic of the 21st Century, it makes us sick physically and mentally and has a massive impact on our ability to manage our mental wellbeing at home and at the workplace. Tired, feeling down and stressed, worried about things at home and can’t get them off your mind?
Well meditation could be for you, in fact, it’s scientifically proven to reduce the trigger for a stress response, so we have a greater capacity to deal with stress and live much better. We can choose to RESPOND RATHER THAN REACT because we have the tools at our fingertips.
Meditation Methods
There are many styles of meditation; however, they all fall into three primary forms of meditation, and they all work differently on the nervous system. It is like a gym, if you want cardio fitness; you are not going to focus on lifting heavy weights.
The three forms:
Concentration – Concentrating on your breath, a candle, or a mantra. Activates the left hemisphere of the brain (the side for rational thinking and logic). Good for developing concentration and focus.
Contemplation – Bringing our awareness to the present moment without any judgement, allowing things to come and go and bringing our awareness back to an anchor, i.e. the breath. Mindfulness practices and guided meditation fall into this category. Activates the right hemisphere of the brain (the side of present moment awareness and big picture thinking).
Self-Transcending – Using a phonetic mantra (means nothing) and an effortless technique without concentration. Activates both hemispheres of the brain. Transcendental & Vedic meditation use this technique. Good for stress response and brain coherence.
Myth: My Mind is Too Busy To Meditate
Science shows we have between 60-80,000 thoughts a day.
A lot of people think their mind is too busy, but we all have loads of thoughts. We can meditate even with a busy mind. We learn not to judge meditation based on how busy or quiet our mind is. Your mind will think like your heart will beat!
So if you or your team would like to access these tools for the workplace, please get in touch with us at Health Stack. We are ready to build you a custom solution to address all the needs of your business and staff and help you be the best at looking after your staff.