Getting the Benefits of Meditation in Just 10 Minutes a Day
We often think that meditation takes a long time. And if you’re the kind of person who needs to have everything in precisely the right place – whatever you’re going to meditate on, the “space” you’re in, the ambience of the room, maybe even going to a special location – then maybe it does.
But for those times when you need to meditate but can’t take an hour out of your life, it’s worth picking up some methods that will help you get at least most of the benefits of meditation in as little as 10 minutes a day.
Why 10 minutes?
Because even the busiest person can allocate that amount of time most days to improve their health.
It’s the Pareto Principle – often called the 80/20 rule – where you get the majority of the benefits of something from a fraction of the time you normally spend on it.
Think about it – you have productive times and you have times when you’re just faffing around, doing not very much. It’s the same with meditation.
You could watch a guided meditation on YouTube – there are more options on there than you’ll ever get through in this life time. That’s a good place to start as it will get you ove the hurdle in your mind that 10 minutes isn’t enough.
And you’ll get a large chunk of the benefits of meditation in that short time – just over an hour a week in total, split up into 10 minute segments.
You could spend longer than that trying to find those keys or something else you put somewhere safe.
What benefits can you expect from meditation?
Various studies have shown that meditation can help with:
Lowering your stress levels – my take on that result is that it’s the chill-out effect that helps you relax and therefore tames your stress levels back to something closer to OK
Helps you sleep better at night – same kind of reasoning as stress levels. You can’t sleep if you’re wound up in a tight knot. Personally, I like to put on a meditation track just before I go to sleep. I’ve been doing that for over a decade and have found my sleep patterns to be much better.
Pain reduction – slightly more controversial as everyone has their own pain scale. But combine the other factors with this and pick a guided meditation that has been written to help reduce your pain levels and you’re good to go.
Reduce anxiety – this fits in neatly with the stress level reduction as anxiety and stress can feed off each other.
More focus – because your mind has taken time to clear things up and sort them out. Even just 10 minutes of chill out time can do this because our minds work fast when we give them space to do that.
The thing to remember is that meditation can take place almost any time, anywhere.
A walking meditation can be done any time you walk from A to B.
Binaural beats meditations – the kind I like to use – take a little bit more planning as you need somewhere to sit or lie down for 10 minutes. Preferably with some kind of do not disturb message for anyone around you who has a habit of popping into your space at the drop of a hat.
But the thing is that even the busiest person can find those 10 consecutive minutes in their life – or they can be super efficient and schedule them in – so there’s every reason that you can do this.
And if you’d like a bunch of free meditations and other self help stuff, click this link.
Do yourself a favour and test meditation out for yourself for the next week. Allocate 10 minutes a day and keep a note of how much better you start to feel.
