Personally, I have now been practicing mindfulness &
daily meditation for over 10 years. I am
often asked “what are the top 4 things for your health & energy?” and these
always include mindfulness & meditation, along with great sleep, great
nutrition and morning exercise.
In 2014, energiseYou celebrates its 10th year in
helping companies to improve the health, energy & performance of their
employees. For almost a decade we have
brought mindfulness & meditation into the workplace via our workshops,
webinars, podcasts & health events.
That aside, I have observed a very interesting polarity with
this subject. On one hand, there are so many amazing benefits associated with
mindfulness & meditation, such as:
-
Improves
happiness
-
Increases
your energy levels
-
Improves
sleep
-
Makes
you more successful in business
-
Helps
you manage pressure at work
-
Improves
problem solving & creativity
-
Lowers
blood pressure & boosts the immune system
-
Reduces
negative emotions, stress, anxiety, fear and anger
Yet, on the
other hand, there are so few people that actually practice mindfulness &
meditation on a daily basis.
So given
all of these benefits why is it not practiced more? Here are some of the reasons:
-
People
and companies are not fully aware of its transforming benefits
-
Some
of these benefits cannot be fully appreciated until they are personally
experienced
-
People
often expect to be able to quieten the mind and meditate like a Buddhist monk
on day one, which just doesn’t happen
-
People
often try meditation without being shown how, find it very hard and then
immediately give up
-
People
often over look mindfulness as a practice because it seems too basic and
simple, yet it is in its simplicity that the magic lies.
-
As
with many things, people need to be inspired by someone to start. My personal inspiration to start TM
meditation was the film director David Lynch who has been meditating everyday
for the past 35 years and he’s still loving it!
So the
reasons that mindfulness & meditation should be a key part of your
wellbeing programme are because of their profound benefits that can transform
overall health & energy. To achieve this we need to address the challenges
in the list above to ensure we can actively and regularly embrace the gift of
mindfulness & meditation into our lives.
