Posted: 6/17/2014 | Meditation	Comments
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We learned from my blog The Benefits of Meditation that there are many benefits to starting a meditation practice.

Meditation helps and supports us on all levels of consciousness, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually including relieving stress and depression, lowering blood pressure, enhancing our immune system, creating new neural pathways in our brain, and helping us align with our deepest purpose.

Here are two approaches to meditation that can help beginners ease into a daily practice. The first is to use guided meditations. These give the mind something to focus upon, and are less intimidating than the idea of trying to just sit down and silence your mind.

Using guided meditations that help a person become better acquainted with their inner life of thoughts and feelings, and the deeper silence they arise from creates a familiarity with the subtleties of our inner life that can also help beginning meditators connect more deeply within during silent meditation.  You can find many helpful guided meditations in my award-winning book, Your Ultimate Life Plan.

The second helpful approach is to meditate for just five minutes. We’re all so busy it can be difficult to carve out a chunk of time to meditate, but most of us can find five minutes—even at work. Once you know how to meditate for five minutes, you can meditate in the morning before you begin your day, during a coffee break at work, or at any other time that’s convenient for you.

We know that five minutes isn’t what they suggest to really change life-long mental or emotional patterns, but it’s a start and can be a way to begin shifting your nervous system and changing your brain. Those five minutes start building up our inner muscles, our meditation muscles. Then eventually those five minutes feel so darn good or are so helpful, we want to do 10 minutes. And then 20 minutes.

How have you added a meditation practice? If you haven’t yet, you might try these ideas and please let me know how it goes. Your comments make a difference for us all.

For further information on accessing the wisdom, happiness, fulfillment, and peace you desire, click here to learn about Dr. Howard's Multiple Award Winning Book "Your Ultimate Life Plan: How to Deeply Transform Your Everyday Experience and Create Changes That Last.

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