Setting some time aside for yourself to quiet your mind is a wonderful healthy habit to incorporate into your routine. Because we have so much stimulus inundating us most of the day, we sometimes forget that quieting our mind is really important to help keep our mind balanced. There are wonderful positive effects that happen to our bodies when we quiet our minds. Our parasympathetic nervous system kicks in which helps us relax. Our memory and focus improves by giving these centers a break from the constant input of information. It can regenerate brain cells. It helps you become more intimate with yourself. Noticing how your body feels in the present moment.
When we pair the quieting of the mind with focusing on our heart and feeling an elevated emotion, even more magic happens within the body. We start to trigger healing processes and chemicals within our body because our heart and our brain comes into greater coherence. We also expand our perception and what we believe is possible. Specialists like Dr. Joe Dispenza and Gregg Braden go into more detail about this with studies they have been performing with a lot of awesome data to support this. Another organization that studies this is HeartMath. They are uncovering the importance of heart/brain coherence and the superpower that it is!
But how can I achieve this for myself? Quite easily! I have been studying different forms of meditation from many sources and they all have very similar approaches. They all have the focus on the heart with an elevated emotion and I personally find this the most effective and easiest meditation to perform. Who doesn't want to feel good, destress, and trigger healing processes within our beautiful bodies!
- Sit or recline in a comfortable position and close your eyes.
- Slow your breathing to about 5 seconds in through the nose and exhale 5 seconds out through the nose or at a slow pace that is comfortable for you.
- Place your focus on your heart. Focus on your heartbeat or comfortably place a hand over your heart to help with your focus. Imagining that you are breathing in and out through your heart.
- Cultivate an elevated emotion. My favorite is gratitude. Some others are acceptance, compassion, care, or love.
- You can achieve heart/brain coherence in about 3 minutes, but I suggest doing this exercise for at least 15 minutes first thing in the morning and right before bed. You can practice this throughout your day as you like.
Some examples to cultivate an elevated emotion may be being grateful for the sun rising in the morning, being grateful for taking the time out of your day to love yourself, feeling gratitude for the knowledge you're learning every day to becoming an even more beautiful and bright version for yourself. You can also imagine yourself playing with a bunch of adorable puppies! Haha, trust me that's a good one 🙂