Importance of Morning Meditation To Healthy Living

Creating a good morning routine can help you to begin your day with a positive mindset and prepare you for the busy day ahead. It is a well-known fact that successful people have an adaptable morning routine which helps them to be more productive throughout the day.

Beginning your day in a healthy way can help you to make healthier choices too, ensuring you maintain your wellness and feel good in yourself. But where does meditation fit into this routine?

Meditation can be a great tool to use in the morning to help you feel calm and prepped for a busy day. You can fit a short meditation into any morning routine and it can help you to feel less anxious and more at peace.

Morning meditation helps you to maintain a healthy lifestyle and improves mental health and wellbeing too. If you're curious about how morning meditation could help you, then keep reading to find out more about the practice and its place in your morning routine.

What is meditation and how does it benefit you?

Meditation is a practice that helps you to be more aware and to focus your attention. There are many ways to meditate and each one allows you to enter a state of heightened awareness, helping you to accept yourself, your thoughts, and your feelings.

Meditation can be found across cultures and religions and is also used in mental health treatment for conditions such as depression and anxiety. Meditation practice can be split into two types:

1. Concentrative meditation, where you focus on one specific thing, such as your breath and learn to control thoughts as they arise.
2. Mindfulness, where you use mindful techniques to build inner peace. Mindfulness can be used in different forms, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive behavioural therapy, both of which are used in mental health treatment.

Meditation is an extremely beneficial practise to learn, and though it takes time to develop these skills, even short and imperfect practice can be helpful to your health and mental wellbeing. Benefits of meditating include:

• Better focus and concentration. Meditating and using mindfulness can help us to be more aware and more able to focus which helps with our ability to concentrate.
• Improve self-esteem and self-awareness. Mindfulness, specifically, is used to help to build acceptance of oneself which can lead to better feelings about ourselves.
• Reduce stress. Meditation is known to lower cortisol levels and help you to feel more at peace. Repeating mantras, or positive affirmations is also known to have a calming effect and is used within meditation.
• Helps improve anxiety and depression. Training your mind in mediation can help you to keep overwhelming and worrying thoughts at bay. This helps with rumination and overthinking, both of which can exacerbate anxiety and depression.

Meditating at any time of the day can help you to feel better but adding in a morning meditation or following a guided morning meditation can help you to start the day off feeling positive. Let's take a look at how morning meditation can help you out.

How can a guided morning meditation practice help you to live a healthier life?

Morning meditation can be extremely beneficial to you. As well as all of the benefits of mediation, and its effects on your mental wellbeing, you will find that a morning meditation session can help to wake you up and release the grogginess of mornings.

Mornings are generally considered the best time to meditate as they are usually quieter and building the practice into your morning routine can ensure you stick at it each day. Morning meditation can also help you to stop scrolling aimlessly and getting distracted in the mornings. Choosing to get up and train your mind to focus can help you to prepare for the day ahead.

Your morning routine can set the tone for the rest of the day. If it is busy and chaotic and stressful, you will go off into the rest of the day like that. If instead, you take a moment to breathe, focus and calm your mind, you will find that your mood is lifted and your focus and productivity are better throughout the day.

Morning meditation has a range of benefits but the three major ones include:

• Boosting focus and productivity throughout the day. Meditation has been found to help you focus and be more successful at getting things done! As you build your meditation skills, you will find that your productivity increases too. Indeed, many successful people cite a morning meditation session as the reason for their success.
• Improves mood. Starting your day off in a good mood means you can look forward to it. Feeling happier about the day can help you to deal with issues and negativity much more easily. Meditation in the morning can help to boost your mood, helping to begin your day on a more positive note.
• Reduce anxiety and worry. Meditation has been found to reduce the reactivity of the amygdala, which is the part of the brain responsible for fear. If you frequently wake up feeling stressed and worried about the day ahead, meditating in the morning can help to calm these worries and could help you deal with this worry better as the day goes on!

Morning meditation has serious benefits for you and you should consider even adding a short practice into your morning routine.

How to meditate in the mornings

So, you know how meditation is going to help you out and now you need to know how to get started!

Most experts recommend meditating as soon as you wake up. This means you will have to wait for your morning tea or coffee, but it will help you to start the day off right!

To begin your meditation practice, you should sit comfortably with your back straight and lower your eyes to the ground. You don't need to close your eyes fully but let them relax.

You might want to set the room up beforehand, perhaps diffusing aromatherapy oils, like sandalwood to promote focus or lavender for its calming properties.

You may choose to follow a guided meditation, to begin with, and you can find many guided meditations online or on mental wellbeing apps. If you're choosing to do without a guided meditation, follow these next instructions.

Begin by noticing your body, how it feels, sensations in your limbs, your toes. Ask yourself how you feel this morning, and then come to the breath. Use the breath as an anchor throughout the meditation and pull your attention back to it whenever you are distracted by a thought.

Some people choose to count the breath, in cycles of seven, while others simply focus on it, noticing how it feels each time they take a breath.

The purpose of meditation isn't to create an empty mind, but to train the mind to focus. When thoughts appear and you are distracted, simply pull your mind back to the breath. Every time you do this, you are training your mind to focus and let thoughts go.

You can complete a session as short as five minutes each day as you begin morning meditation and you should only build up the time limit when you feel able.

If you are unsure of meditating without guidance, as we mentioned before, guided meditations are available and can take you through lots of other meditation techniques too.

Conclusion

Morning meditation can help to settle the mind, reduce feelings of anxiety, and improve cognitive function for the day ahead. Getting a meditation practice into your daily routine can help you to feel prepared for the day and help your focus and productivity as the day goes on.

Morning meditation can be short and simple and is designed to awaken your body and reduce grogginess. Try adding a short session into your routine today and see how you feel afterwards!

Frequently Asked Questions

What should I meditate in the morning?

Morning meditation should calm the body and focus the mind, ready for the day. Meditation practices that are good in the morning include concentrative mediation, where you focus on the breath or on an object and train the mind to move back to this focus every time a thought distracts you. Another good meditation practice for a morning session is the body scan, which can help you to feel grounded.

How do I start morning meditation?

To start meditation in the morning, you simply need to carve out five minutes in your routine where you can begin. A morning meditation session doesn't need to be a long one, indeed a five-minute session will suffice. You should try to start with five-minute sessions before working your way up to longer sessions.

Is it better to meditate in the morning?

Research shows that mornings are the best time to meditate. Morning meditation can help you to feel more focused and productive throughout the day and the practice can boost productivity and help you to feel less worried and anxious for the forthcoming day. It is best to meditate immediately after you get up, to still the mind and focus your attention.

What meditation is good for the brain?

Meditation as a practice has been found to be good for the brain. Meditation is a form of training for the brain and teaches us to accept ourselves and our thoughts. It also teaches us not to be distracted by thoughts and how to pull our minds back to a focus. Meditation has been found to reduce the reactivity of the amygdala which is responsible for fear, helping you to feel less stressed.