Meditation : A practice that helps towards a more mindful lifestyle

Have you ever wondered when our thoughts feel blurry and we have hard time taking decisions, what kind of practice could help?
Or what we can do to feel less overwhelmed, worried or anxious ?

Taking care of ourselves is a key step to start taking care of people around us. In this article, we will introduce you to a practice that helped us towards a more mindful lifestyle: Meditation!

Meditation can bring health benefits such as lower the stress and anxiety, improve self-awareness and concentration, among others. It’s definitely a good habit that we should all adopt to better cope with the daily challenges.

Starting with the basics, what is meditation?

Meditation is a practice that involves focusing or clearing your mind using a combination of mental and physical techniques. It is discovering, living and accepting the present moment.
Meditation can take more than one form:

* Contemplation. This usually involves concentrating on a question or some kind of contradiction without letting your mind wander.
* Emotion-centered meditation. This kind of meditation has you focus on a specific emotion. For example, focusing on how to be kind to others or on what makes you happy in your life.
* Meditation with movement. This type of meditation can involve focusing on breathing, holding your breath or performing specific body movements. It can also involve walking while focusing on what you observe around you. Tai Chi is one form of meditation with movement. 
* Mindfulness meditation. This form of meditation is about staying aware of what’s happening at the moment rather than letting your mind wander and worrying about the past or future. It is using what you feel throughout your body as a foundation for your awareness of the world around you.

In the picture, I was practicing mindfulness meditation in the middle of the nature. It helps me to feel grounded and clear my mind! 

Whatever the form it takes, meditation has huge benefits on our body, mind and spirit:

Here are some:

1. Helps you make mindful choices
Mindfulness is about being more aware of your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings, and live the present moment. Meditation helps to regulate your thoughts and clear up your mind in order to take better decisions.

2. Boost energy levels
Meditation tackles the extra, energy-draining stress you might experience. By improving your quality of sleep and giving you moments of deep and profound rest during the day, you will be jumping out of bed every morning full of energy.

3. Increase your empathy
We all want the world to be a better place for everyone. But stress could get on the way and make harder for us to practice compassion with others. Meditation tackles the root cause of everyday selfishness by making us calmer and more mindful, and it has proven to increase our kindness.
 
Meditation is key for our Well-being and it help us taking care of ourselves.
We discovered this practice few years now and we love it!

Gaby