3 Types of Meditation To Practice Today.

On this journey of personal development of mine I have noticed time and time again that all the health gurus and wellness professionals all recommend that we should spend at least 10 minutes of our day practicing mindfulness and/or meditation. The mind control practice has always bewildered me as I mostly associate it with Tibetan monks, lots of humming and levitating off the floor- thank you Ace Ventura.

The benefits of daily meditation practices really speak for themselves, along with creating a sense of calm and inner peace, it helps improve attention and enhances self awareness, it also offers improving your tolerance for pain and reduce stress.

Recently I have done more research into the variations of meditation and mindfulness and have found a few that are easily incorporated into your lifestyle. I work 5 days a week and I'm gone from home for 10 hours a day, I'm a fast talker, fast walker and very rarely do anything at a standard pace so I was very skeptic as to how I was supposed to find 10 minutes to slow down and switch off. It just didn't seem realistic for me.

Here are the three practices I found easy to incorporate into my lifestyle.

1. ASMR

ASMR is an autonomous sensory meridian response. It's that tingling sensation you get when a hairdresser is washing your scalp, or that calmness you feel when listening to someone talking softly. Basically you can watch or listen to low volume sounds of people doing random things like crinkling up paper, writing with pencil on paper, brushing hair, softly tapping on a key board or my favourite, listening to someone whispering into the microphone. There are millions of ASMR videos on Youtube and podcasts available online. I plug my headphones into my phone, pick a random video from Youtube and lay back, close my eyes and let the tingles and calmness wash over my body to unwind after a days work.

2. Bedtime stories

Okay so this isn't quiet meditation but it's a form of mindfulness and I find it brilliant when I've had a stressful day, if I feel my mind is in overdrive replaying everything that happened in the day or if I feel overwhelmed about the to-do list for the following day. After spending the day on/off a computer screen followed by a couple of hours scrolling on social media, the audio bedtime stories also known as "sleep stories" are the perfect way to unwind and fall into a deep sleep. You can listen to the soft voices of Matthew McConaughey, Harry Styles, and Tom Hardy reading stories to lull you to sleep. I have listened to "crossing Ireland by train" narrated by Cillian Murphy a dozen times and I have never heard the middle or end of the story, I don't think I have stayed awake past 5 minutes.

3. Journaling

Mindful journaling to be more exact is spending 5 to 10 minutes every day, either first thing in the morning or last thing in the evening jotting down what's going through your mind and expressing your thoughts. It's a way to challenge yourself on how and why you think and feel the way you do about certain things. It is considered a helpful way to learn who you are, to understand your motives and the way in which you think and feel. For years I have done a "brain dump" where I write down all that is going on in my head and then never think about it again, but mindful journaling is writing that stuff down, reflecting on it and either confronting yourself about it or recognizing that it isn't worth your energy and moving on from it.

It's only a small habit to create but it sets the intention and unblocks your mind, freeing up more space for creativity and happiness. For that alone I think it's definitely worth a try.

So there we are, those are the three things that I have introduced into my lifestyle. I would love to know what sort of mindful meditations you practice or if you try out any of these after reading today, I'd love to hear what you think, let me know in the comments.

xx