It might seem counterintuitive, but one of the things that I love best about mindfulness meditation is its ability to produce almost instant results. The above meditation to center yourself, was designed to do just that.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge advocate of a regular meditation practice. My own mindfulness practice of 40 minutes per day, has been life-changing for me.
That said, you don’t need to have a regular practice to get some serious gains mental health gains from mindfulness. In fact, I keep an arsenal of guided meditations at the ready for anytime I feel that I could use some mental health help. Check out my favorite guided meditations here.
All meditations help to center us, to some extent. The above centering meditation focuses on this aspect, specifically, by using our breath and a basic visualization.
It’s a great meditation to use when you feel:
- out of balance
- scattered
- not yourself
- foggy
- stressed
The really great thing about doing a practice like this is that it is quite literally a practice for real life. When you sit down to center yourself in this more formal way, it’s showing your mind and body what it’s like to feel centered. This makes it easier for you to be able to access this state, when you need it in real time.
Like anything, the more that you do it, the easier it becomes.
Which is good because, feeling uncentered or imbalanced is very human, and we will continue to experience it over and over again in our lives. Tools like these makes the process much more bearable and allow us to see it for what it is, just yet another part of the cycle.