Meditate to improve you health and happiness.

Meditation can have an overall healthy affect on your health, which is important for fertility.Why meditate? Decrease stress, reduce pain, and improve your health.You might be asking yourself, why meditate? Many studies have shown that even short bouts of meditation can have an impact on increasing brain waves and decreasing anxiety, stress and depression.

Dr. Herbert Benson found that meditation could even help reverse heart disease, reduce pain and improve the body’s immune system.Another study in Stroke Journal concluded that meditators were able to reduce the thickness of their artery walls, while the non-meditators increased.  The change for the mediation group actually decreased their risk of heart attack by 11% along with a 15% decrease in their risk for a stroke. Other studies have shown meditation to lower blood pressure, improve happiness and self-acceptance, along with a decrease in the production of the stress hormone cortisol. High levels of cortisol can have many negatives affects on the body even interrupting ovulation.

Therefore, it is important to keep this stress hormone at a lower level.How to make meditation a daily habit. We can now see the importance of meditating. Now we need to figure how to meditate and more importantly make it become a daily habit to help improve our body and mind’s overall performance. Imagine turning on your iPhone to play a song, but instead you hear interference along with beeps, rings of messages, emails and calls. Our mind is somewhat like our phone, if left alone it is filled with all sorts of random noises, thoughts, ideas and desires. We need to work on training our mind to being present.I have people ask me “how to begin meditating” and “ how do they know if they are "successfully meditating”. To begin meditating you want to find a quiet place or at least a place where you can mentally turn off the background noise.Make sure you will not be interrupted for your designated meditating time, which might be just a few minutes or maybe longer over time. Often the best time to meditate is in the AM before your mind becomes filled with daily tasks.

‍Set aside a specific time daily to form a habit. Experiment with what position feels most comfortable. Then begin focusing on only your breath breathing in thru your nose and out thru the mouth so you create more space for fresh air. Your breath will automatically signal your body to relax. Keep your mind open and focused on your breath only. If you find your mind begin to wonder just redirect your thoughts back to your breath. Sometimes it helps to stare at a candle or light to keep the mind focused.Try not to get frustrated if you can’t quiet your mind. Take a break get up stretch or take a quick walk then come back to meditating later. As you learn to quiet your mind you will begin to notice that you are more present in your daily activities.It is also possible to perform active meditation. For example, walking, running, washing the dishes.