The Mind-Body-Soul Benefits of 10 Minutes of Meditation

Time is our most precious commodity, yet we frequently spend it frivolously. If you were allotted $24 at the beginning of everyday and told you had to use the money to buy time throughout your day at a rate of one dollar per hour, how would you spend it? Eight dollars for eight good hours of sleep seems like a bargain. Because of the necessity, another $8 for eight hours of work would begrudgingly be forked over. As the money dwindled, however, it would get harder to cough-up a few bucks for things like surfing the net, getting lost in YouTube videos and posting on Facebook. Yet, that is where our precious extra-time often goes.

What if you knew that just 10 cents a day, or $3 a month, could buy you amazing health benefits like:

• Lower blood pressure
• Enhanced memory
• Enhanced immunity system
• Stress resilience
• Decreases in muscle tension
• Strengthened impulse control
• Anti-inflammatory effects

The aforementioned are just a few of the positive side-effects that result from a practice of merely 10 minutes of meditation a day. From a cost-benefit analysis, meditation is a no-brainer. Since it distracts us from the never-ending monkey chatter in our heads, the source of all our stress, it gives the term no-brainer a whole new meaning.

How can you fit an extra 10 minutes into your already packed day? The answer to that question is…don’t. The 10 minutes is already there. You just have to find it and use it more wisely. Here are a few tips for finding time to meditate:

• When you pull into your driveway after a long day at work, remain in your car, pop in a meditation CD and meditate in your car before going into the house. This little trick is a great way to delineate your work life from your home life…creating a nice buffer between the two.

• On your lunch break, close your office door and crank up your iPod with a downloaded guided imagery. Nothing resets the work-stress button like a walk on the beach in the middle of the day…from the comfort of your desk chair.

• Because we rarely feel rushed on weekend mornings, there is no better time to meditate. Before your feet even hit the floor Saturday morning, start your day with a short meditation from bed. What a way to start your day!