What if there was a chemical-free, 100 per cent natural way increase your memory, decrease stress and the heighten your ability to think quicker, be more creative and better your overall health? The good news is no pills or potions are required – all you have to do is breathe.
Know Why You’re Doing It
There are many health benefits of meditation, including increased attention span, improved immunity, better sleep, stronger feeling of connectedness … the list goes on. One major benefit is memory preservation and, as our lives get busier, it’s a great perk we could all benefit from. According to Psychiatrist and researcher Norman Doidge in his book, The Brain That Changes Itself, preserving memory as we age is about looking after the cells in the hippocampus – the area of the brain associated with learning and memory. Meditation “has a proven stress lowering effect so is likely to preserve memory and the hippocampal neurons”. This means that sitting down to meditate is not only lowering your stress levels but it’s allowing your brain to make “synaptic connections in neural networks that make learning and long-term memory possible”. Cheers to never forgetting where you put the car keys again!
Do it When You Don’t Want To
At first the novelty of meditation can make it easier to actually sit down and commit to a 10- or 15-minute session. However, as time goes on and more distractions pop up, it can seem easier to ditch the meditation session for tasks more demanding of your attention. This is when you really must do it anyway, despite your increasingly busy schedule. Professor Steve Peters, author of The Chimp Paradox, uses the metaphor of a chimp living inside our brains to describe how we can be ruled by our own emotions if we don’t keep it under control. Peters says that when the ‘human’ part of us wants to do something – like meditate – but our ‘chimp’ would rather sleep, check emails or catch up on a little TV, if we give in to our chimp we’ll feel the consequences of this later through emotions like guilt or regret. Committing to a 30-day challenge of just 15 minutes a day is a great way to get started and, when the inevitable time pops up when you’d rather skip a session, don’t give in to your chimp!
Make it All About You
The best part of meditation is that it’s a gift that keeps on giving. As your own health improves through your practice, you’re able to help others, too. Your ability to think quicker, resolve complications in a calmer and more efficient way and a general happier nature will also have positive effects on those around you. Making a meditation session an enjoyable experience can be as simple as turning on some gentle music, lighting a candle or burning some incense. So make it all about you, so you can help others, too.
