One of our 2014 goals is to meditate daily and practise mindfulness. We’re setting ourselves up for success and aiming to do 4 x 10 minute guided meditation sessions each week. This way we can slowly build it up to daily sessions… and maybe even unguided! Look out!
So first, what is mindfulness… is it just a fad?
Mindfulness can be described as the non-judgemental awareness of experiences in the present moment. AKA living in the now. It’s been practised for thousands of years and for good reason. Studies show there are huge benefits to our health… but we don’t have to be scientists or yogis to know this. We have seen benefits in the short time we’ve been practising mindful meditation. So no way, it’s not a fad. It seems that just more and more people are starting to realise the benefits (like us!) so naturally it’s gaining popularity and media attention.
So how are we doing it? How are we meditating?
Duh… we downloaded an app, called Smiling Mind (how cute is that?!).
This meditation app is free and described as modern meditation for young people but really anyone can use it (merrymaker Mum and Dad have both tried it and given their tick of approval). Smiling Mind is a non-for profit organisation making mediation super easy for everyone. To get started all you need to do is search ‘Smiling Mind’ in the app shop, download (for free) create an account and get meditating! There are a range of different meditations ranging from 7 – 45 minutes. A man with a lovely voice will talk you through the mediation (Mr Smiling Mind (yes we named him) sounds super nice and good looking).
We always feel better after meditating. We become more aware of our body, our mind and what we need. For example, if we come home from (boring not merrymaker) work feeling sluggish/tired, we do a Smiling Mind session and BAM we are energised to merrymake. We’ve also tried meditating late at night and this puts us in the perfect frame of mind for a deep and restful sleep. It didn’t take us long but we are totally hooked and in love with meditating.
We read an interesting article on Huffington Post: Mindful Meditation Benefits. Some of the benefits they mention are that it lowers stress and decreases cortisol levels, improves school and work results, better control of emotions and attention, supports weight loss goals (we think goals in general), lowers depression, makes you sleep better and makes you a nicer person (this is our favourite one… we love nice people!).
So we vote: we should all meditate, start with just 10 minutes a day. You’re busy, we’re busy but we know that we can all spare 10 minutes. Why not dedicate this 10 minutes to meditation and create yourself a smiling mind! 🙂
Always merrymaking,
Emma + Carla
More information:
If you’d like to read more about Smiling Mind click here.
Read about our recent visit to the Billabong Retreat Yoga and Meditation Retreat here.
We’ll be learning more about meditation (and heaps more) at an event called Raw Kinetics, if you live in the Canberra area you might want to check it out (we are way too excited for this event!).
Merrymaker note: this is not a sponsored post. We just love the Smiling Mind app and want to share it with you… go on, get meditating!
photo credit: Olga Kruglova via photopin