Meditation? Don’t mind if I do… by Chantal Bachelier-Moore

When I first started practising meditation about a decade ago, it was still considered a new-age term; you couldn’t mention it in a business situation without getting some strange looks. Now, meditation is a buzzword for our times, and most people are aware of what it is and the benefits it offers.

A Wired article in 2013 ran with the headline “In Silicon Valley, meditation is no fad. It could make your career”. The article revealed that for many years meditation had been a secret weapon of the super successful. Professional high-achieving people had been making time in their busy schedules to meditate, because they recognised the value it brought to their personal lives and to their professional performance. It was being recognised as a super-power activity, encouraged by progressive companies at the time, like Google, Sony and Nike, to boost productivity as well as general well-being in the workforce.

Proven benefits of a regular meditation practice include decreased stress, improved focus and concentration, lower blood pressure and reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression. And you start to feel the benefits straight away – your body relaxes, your breathing becomes more regular, your heartbeat slows and a feeling of peace and calm sweep over you. What’s not to like!

Meditation can take many forms: At one end of the spectrum, you have purist Zen meditation where you detach yourself from your busy mind and constant flow of thoughts by focussing on your breath. At the opposite end, you find guided meditation, which uses specific cues or scenarios to help you visualise something in particular; and there’s a myriad of others in between.

In my own practice, I tend to use a combination, depending on my mood, how busy my mind is, or whether I have a particular issue to resolve that may need quiet contemplation. Sometimes I use technology to help me reach a deep meditative state. Neural entrainment – sound pulses with which your brainwaves quickly synchronise - is a great method if you struggle to meditate in a traditional way.

The great thing is that there is no right or wrong way to meditate – every meditation has its own value, so do whatever works for you. And you can do it anywhere, anytime – on the train or in the car (as long as you’re not driving!), sitting at your desk, or even while out for a walk. There are many apps available to help too. I like to meditate first thing in the morning, sitting up in bed – it always gets the day off to a great start.

In our busy, time-pressured lives, we often fail to prioritise down-time, losing ourselves in our lives. And it’s usually when we are super-stressed and need it the most that we let our meditation practice drop. When you do get back to it, there is a sense of familiarity and welcome, and that’s because in a way you are greeting a long-lost friend - yourself.

So, remember this, “if you have time to meditate you should do so for 20 minutes a day; if you don’t have time, you should meditate for an hour a day”.

Namaste!