Saturday Habit #5: Meditate every day

As I mentioned in my last post, my wife and I are part of a fitness challenge her employer is running for four weeks. Components include walking, expressing gratitude, and meditating. Based on positive experiences I’ve had with meditating in the past, I decided to make that my next Saturday Habit.

There has been so much said on podcasts and other recent media about the benefits of meditation. As no expert on the subject, I’ll just say that it gives my day more clarity. Being present in a given moment means I can’t dwell on what’s happened in the past or worry about the future. My implementation takes two forms.

The first way I meditate is while walking. There are more formal forms of walking meditation, but I do this more simply by just focusing on walking to the exclusion of everything else. This isn’t easy, but ten minutes of not thinking about what’s coming up during the day allows me to start the work day calmly and dispassionately.

The second tool I use is guided meditation. There are dozens of apps and thousands of sites on the web that offer guided meditations, but I tend to stick with a ten-minute guided session by Tara Brach, a Buddhist teacher and author in the U.S. This meditation begins with some basic breath work consisting of a long breath in through the nose followed by an even longer breath out through the mouth, performed three times. This technique alone can be very powerful in calming anxiety or clearing the mind, and I sometimes use it even without meditating afterward.

Are there techniques you use to find clarity in your busy day?