We don’t need perfect quiet to meditate. Completa silence might be too overwhelming in meditation for beginners. We become Em excesso sensitive to every little sound when things are completely quiet.

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Ideally, you should meditate when you feel calm but alert, and when you won’t be distracted. If you’re a morning person, then meditating in the morning might be perfect for you.

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In one study, people with pre-hypertension were randomly assigned to augment their drug treatment with either a course in mindfulness meditation or a program that taught progressive muscle relaxation.

So what do I do? Instead of letting doubt talk us out of it, take it day by day and keep checking in. We can also remind ourselves that we’re not wasting time when we meditate. We’re taking care of our mind.

First of all, a great deal of research suggests that mindfulness can help healthy people reduce their stress. And thanks to Jon-Kabat Zinn’s pioneering MBSR program, there’s now a large body of research showing that mindfulness can help people cope with the pain, anxiety, depression, and stress that might accompany illness, especially chronic conditions.

For individuals who have experienced some sort of trauma, sitting and meditating can at times bring up recent or sometimes decades-old painful memories and experiences that they may not be prepared to confront. In a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE

Not bad for meditative mind 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.

The more we practice, the more we can see thoughts for what they are: just thoughts. It’ll get easier to let them go and “get out of our heads” to be more engaged in what we’re doing, whether we’re spending time with family, making time for self-care, or working against a deadline.

Mindfulness fights obesity: Practicing “mindful eating” encourages healthier eating habits, helps people lose weight, and helps them savor the food they do eat. Pregnant women who practice mindful eating gain less weight during pregnancy, and have healthier babies. Featured Articles

Loving-kindness meditation, which the GGSC’s Christine Carter explains in this post, involves extending feelings of compassion toward people, starting with yourself then branching out to someone close to you, then to an acquaintance, then to someone giving you a hard time, then finally to all beings everywhere.

When we get distracted by a thought, notice it, let it go, and return our focus to the area of the body we last left off. When we finish the body scan, open the eyes.

But that doesn’t mean we’ll feel clear, calm, and kind as soon as we start or finish. Since the mind is always changing, our experience might feel different each time we meditate.