Relaxation Sunday

Molly Harley
Oct 18, 2015
3 min read

Relax. It's Sunday.

My Sunday-Funday wasn't as relaxing as I would've liked it to be, but that's okay! How did you relax this weekend?

As I mentioned last week, relaxation techniques are important for your health. Our bodies need rest and time to regenerate. One of my favorite forms of relaxation is meditation. It's great because you don't need anything to do it, but you can always use mediums to assist if necessary. Meditation helps the body and mind relax. Meditation is simply just living in the present. You can meditate while walking, driving, laying down, sitting, cooking dinner, pretty much anywhere you are; you can take a minute or 30 and meditate.

So how exactly can you meditate? Simple, just relax your mind and allow the thoughts to come and go. Acknowledge each thought, feel each emotion that your thought evokes. How did that thought make you feel? But the trick is, don't let the thought or the feeling linger. Just let it come and go. Or simply just don't think about anything.

Our mind is powerful. We need to learn to embrace what it can do for us.

There are different types of meditations - mindfulness, mind-less-ness (not a technical term by any means), and guided meditation. There are many more but I'll cover what these three things mean to me and how you can incorporate them into your lives.

Mindfulness

Be mindful. Be mindful of what you think. If you have a negative thought, focus on why it has come to you, and then change it to something positive. To be mindful during meditation is when you let thoughts come and go. You also focus on your breath and the present moment. Mindfulness to me is just allowing yourself some time to think, and accepting all the thoughts you might have. You can incorporate this into every aspect of life, not just during quiet meditation time. Be mindful of what you say, how you act towards others and yourself; soon you'll be living a much more positive life.

Mind-less-ness

Simply have no thoughts. This takes some practice and what I think most people believe to be "true" meditation, even though there is no "right" or "wrong" way to meditate. With this technique, you focus on your breath solely - you still allow thoughts to come and go, but don't focus on them, try to return to focusing on your breath as quickly as possible. You can also focus on how every part of your body feels. This is truly living and existing in the present.

I started out doing this form of meditation during yoga and while laying in a dark or dimly lit room. The less distractions there are, the better.

Guided Meditation

There are a ton of websites, apps for your portable devices, books, audio-books, etc that have guided meditations. This is a great way to relax. The meditations take you through scenes and thoughts that you visualize. If you lose focus, you are easily guided back to the visualization. Not only is this a great way to relax, it's a wonderful form of therapy.

This one is great for people that don't think they can meditate and happens to be one of my favorites.