Meditation & Mantras: When Should You Meditate?
As part of our Meditation Event Series, we wanted to explore the ins and outs of practising meditation with our new resident meditation and yoga guru, Simon. Promising to guide us in our meditation practice, Simon will be sharing his favourite techniques, tips and advice on how to live a more mindful life. From 3 minutes a day in the comfort of our homes, to Simon's meditation classes exclusively for our members, there are many ways to practice meditation. So let's use 2018 to discover this new state of consciousness for ourselves, taking the time to shift our focus, harness a sense of mindfulness little and often, and see how it can benefit our day-to-day mindset.
Seeing as meditation can become such a personal practice, away from classes and studios, we wanted to find out from Simon when it is best to meditate.
Ultimately, it can be different for every individual. Some people prefer the first moment they wake, others just before they fall asleep... I've even had a friend who would meditate on her journey to work on the bus. For Simon, he noticed a big difference when he tried to meditate first thing in the morning, in comparison to when he tried to mediate in the day or at night.
“I go deeper in my meditations when I do it first thing in the morning, before I switch anything on, before I’ve opened the curtains, spoken to anyone, before I’ve thought really about my day... for me, that’s the best time to meditate. We are so stimulated, as soon as you switch your phone on, your laptop, have opened up a book or a magazine, we’re already picking up lots of different thoughts.”
“It’s the same as soon as you get up to go to the kitchen, you might start to notice you haven’t done the washing up, fed the dog, cat, goldfish…! I used to find my alarm would go off and I’d roll out of bed and put my feet on the floor, sit on the edge of the bed, and switch my timer on to 3 or 5 minutes.”
But for others, it might be that the best time to meditate is right at the end of the day, when the day has come to a close. In this time just before bed, you can train your mind to slowly psychologically switch off and guide yourself into meditation.
Another factor to consider into the best time to meditate is your daily routine of eating and drinking. After a meal there may be all sorts of noises, gurgles and rumbles as you're digesting your food that may distract you from your meditation. Likewise, if you've just drunk a tea or a coffee, your mind will be stimulated and it may be harder for you to rest and ease your mind into a meditative state.
That's not to say if you meditate you can never drink coffee again... not at all! You can, but there are ways to fit your practice around your schedule so that your 3 minutes, 5 minutes, half an hour of meditating is solely focused on your body and your mind and does not have to face too many distractions and interruptions.
