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Meditation has proven benefits, but the style that works best depends on a person's habits and preferences. In this episode of The Science of Happiness, we explore walking meditation, a powerful practice for feeling more centered and grounded. Dan Harris, host of the award-winning 10% Happier podcast, shares how walking meditation helps him manage the residual stress and anxiety from years of war reporting and high-pressure TV anchoring.
Remember: there’s no such thing as the perfect meditation. If we notice ourselves getting frustrated that the traffic in our mind is moving too fast or we’re wondering, “Why is this so hard?” we can give ourselves some compassion. Let out a big sigh to draw our focus back to the breath.
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We know we’ll encounter the challenges we talked about here while we’re learning to meditate. When they pop up, we can return to this article to refresh ourselves on the basics and tips to get back on track.
We could always meditate to reset ourselves before our last work meeting or after we drop the kids off at school. Anytime we feel overwhelmed, we can take a break and meditate instead of pushing through.
“It’s about living your life as if it really mattered, moment by moment by moment by moment.” Here are a few key components of practicing mindfulness that Kabat-Zinn and others identify:
Incorporate meditation into other areas of your life: Try it on the bus or train on your way to and from work; take 5-10 minutes at the end of your lunch break to meditate; take 10 minutes to meditate before turning off the lights to go to sleep.
Tune into your body’s physical sensations, from the water hitting your skin in the shower to the way your body rests in your office chair.
Not bad for a few minutes of sitting in silence, right? And it just gets better from here. Read on to learn more about meditation and how to start meditating yourself.
If sitting on the floor is uncomfortable for you, by all means, take a chair or another seat. Just make sure that you are comfortable, relaxed but alert, and can stay in that position for a while.
To help your focus stay on your breathing, count silently at each exhalation. Any time you find your mind distracted, simply release the distraction by returning your focus to your breath. Most important, allow yourself to enjoy these minutes. Throughout the rest of the day, other people and competing urgencies will fight for your attention. But for these 10 minutes, your attention is all your own.
It’s increase positive vibrations often said that meditation may be simple, but it isn’t easy. And this makes sense. It’s not part of our normal routine to sit quietly, without any distraction, and just… breathe.
JM: I think that’s definitely a risk. But given that stress is a reality in many people’s working lives, I think mindfulness can be an effective tool to buffer its negative effects. And ideally, mindfulness may even help change workplaces for the better. Research suggests that mindfulness training helps make people more compassionate and empathetic toward others. By improving the way people relate to one another, ideally it can change corporate culture for the better, creating a more supportive, friendlier workplace with better relationships.
Taken together, the studies suggest that mindfulness may impact our hearts, brains, immune systems, and more. Though nothing suggests mindfulness is a standalone treatment for disease nor the most important ingredient for a healthy life, here are some of the ways that it appears to benefit us physically.