IIf you want to experience more personal growth, emotional wellbeing, or enhanced self-love, this article is for you. Let’s explore the power of integrating mindful rituals into daily life, focusing on the transformative practice of meditation.
We’re frequently reminded of healthy lifestyle habits we "should" incorporate: cardio exercise, being in nature, stretching, mindfulness exercises, and more. Yet, life can feel overwhelming, making these practices hard to integrate sustainably.
So below we're going to explore integration. This is a big thing for me. We live crazy, hectic lives - whether that's working a 9 to 5, running a business, looking after a family, or all of the above.
No matter what’s on your plate, whether balancing a career, family, or other commitments, making time for sustainable and integrated mindfulness practices like meditation can be incredibly impactful.
Let's consider for a moment the benefits that can be gained from meditation and having a regular meditation practice. Firstly, let me say, by ‘meditation’ I mean being still with yourself.
Various studies of meditation in different settings have uncovered benefits like increased levels of creativity, intelligence, moral reasoning, being able to recover from stress more quickly, the reduction in symptoms from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, improving psychological health, reducing the need for drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, and decreasing levels of aggressiveness, anxiety and stress, and many, many more.
Scientific studies, as well as my personal experience, on meditation have shown powerful benefits, such as enhanced mental clarity, improved psychological health, and reduced symptoms of stress and anxiety. Meditation has also been shown to help people manage post-traumatic stress, reduce dependency on substances, and decrease aggression and stress levels.
In addition to that, I've had incredible spiritual and physical healing experiences as a result of my meditation practice. Being able to release trauma and stress out of my body through my meditation practice has been a critical and pivotal point in my physical body healing.
So the big question is, when you have something like meditation that is both freely and readily available to everybody, which is incredibly powerful in creating body, mind and spirit health, wellness and peace, why isn't everybody doing it?
Meditation is becoming more and more mainstream and more and more people are at least aware of what it is, if not, how to do it … and the ‘how to do it’ is probably where people fall down in terms of being able to move forward and integrating, or even creating a meditation practice.
You often hear that to really be meditating, you have to sit for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 or even more minutes. Let me tell you, that is not true. If you are able to sit for even 5 minutes with yourself with your eyes closed focusing on your breath, you are meditating - cultivating mindfulness and a state of inner peace. You are creating a state of meditation. You are creating a state of stillness. “But my mind wanders!” I hear you say. Even sitting with yourself for 5 minutes where your mind has wandered and you've brought it back and your mind has wandered and you've brought it back, you are practising meditation.
I've been meditating for a very long time, and you could even say that I'm a lifetime meditator. As a Hindu, I've grown up with chants, meditations and prayers in all sorts of ceremonies, from blessing the home when moving in, to somebody passing away, to somebody getting married, to going to the temple on the weekends.
One of the challenges that I can say I've had with my meditation practice has been where I've been overloaded with work, and then experienced levels of stress so high it’s knocked me out of doing the practice.
There's a quote that says if you are too busy to meditate, then that's when you should meditate twice as much. I absolutely, completely, wholeheartedly agree with this. And I'll tell you why.
For a couple of months, I stopped doing my morning gratitudes and my morning meditation. I had a lot of work on and I was up to my eyeballs in responding to people, managing people, managing work and managing projects and doing so much data analysis that I just stopped doing my morning gratitudes and my meditations. I was trying to save a little bit of time so that I could get to work a little bit earlier, save a little bit of time and get ready faster in the morning and maybe do some exercise to clear my head.
What I noticed was that my head - my mind, became heavier and heavier and more foggy. I'm not sure what triggered me to start my practice again, but when I started my morning gratitudes and short meditations of maybe 15 to 20 minutes, within a couple of days, I found that I had much more mental clarity, my emotional state was lifted and I felt clearer and more focused and was able to get so much more done through the day.
Things shifted to a point that other people had noticed and had said to me that I seemed lighter or happier or in a better mood.
When people outside of you can see how you're changing and you can feel internally how you have changed, then it makes sense that this is a good practice to keep doing on a regular basis, even if it's not every single day. Incorporating meditation into my daily ritual seems to have an amazingly incredible effect on my life and my world. I’m sure it will for you too.
Now that you have an insight into some of the benefits of meditation, how exactly do you go about creating and integrating meditation into your daily rituals?
My absolute top tip is to start small. A short meditation for me could be 15 or 20 minutes, but you can start smaller than this. As I mentioned before, even sitting with yourself for 5 minutes and focusing on your breath, this can be incredibly powerful.
I was invited to do Deepak Chopra’s 21-day abundance challenge where the meditations were about 4-7 minutes tops. At the time, my daily meditation practise was maybe 1-2 hours every morning.
The first couple of days that I did the Deepak Chopra meditation, I started to drop into the meditative state I was used to going into, and then all of a sudden the meditation would be finished. Confused, I asked myself, how can I possibly get into the same meditative state that I'm used to with my longer meditations in 4 minutes? How could I possibly do that?
I came to the realisation that time is simply something of our own construct so I can get into whatever meditative state that I want in a shorter or longer period of time.
The meditations for the rest of the challenge after those first couple of days were incredibly deep and incredibly powerful, purely because I shifted my mindset around how long I need to sit and meditate for it to be beneficial and worthwhile.
So here's how you can integrate meditation into your daily rituals.
Start with 5 minutes. Set a timer for 5 minutes and that way you know you're not going to drift off and be gone for 60 minutes by accident, and you're not going to stop too early to check if it's almost over. No need to worry you’ll run over or under time. This will allow you to stay more present.
Set your timer for 5 minutes.
Then all you're going to do is sit. Sit and bring your awareness to your breath.
You don't have to change your breath.
You don't have to breathe more deeply.
You don't have to do anything.
You're simply going to become aware of your breathing.
You're simply going to become aware of how you're breathing in and how you're breathing out, and you're going to maintain that awareness and keep your attention on your breath.
If your mind wanders, that's totally okay.
Catch yourself wandering and bring your attention back to your breath.
And keep doing that.
Your mind might wander a lot … or a little … but every single time you catch yourself wandering, bring yourself and your attention back to your breath.
Only with awareness.
No need to analyse or judge that it happened.
Simply notice that it did and come back to your breath.
The more and more you do that, the more and more you're training your mind to come back to your breath. As we train ourselves to come back to our breath, we're training ourselves to come back to the present moment. Our breath can be very, very powerful in anchoring us into the present moment.
How will you know that you've integrated that into your daily rituals? Well, it will be three, four, five weeks later, maybe more, and you're doing it with more ease.
When meditation has truly become part of your daily routine, it will feel more natural, bringing calm and clarity. You may still be using your timer and that's completely okay.
At this stage, you might choose to extend your practice, enjoying the benefits of deeper meditative states. Start increasing the time that you're sitting with yourself, perhaps one more minute is enough. This will allow you to continue to experience the state that you've successfully achieved whilst stretching yourself to sit for a little bit longer.
This in itself may create new states of being, so you may experience a little bit more discomfort. You may experience some more wandering thoughts, and that's okay.
Remember: it's all about coming back into the present moment and connecting back in with your breath.
Let me know how well you're going with this integration practice.
Love, hugs and magic!
Bhavna xx
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