What if you are too busy to meditate

Firstly, ‘being too busy’ shouldn’t be an excuse to not meditate. Instead, it should be the indicator you should! Have you ever heard someone say that they are ‘too obese’ to lose weight?

Meditation will bring you rest and rejuvenation, two things you most certainly need when you are rushing around being ‘too busy’. In fact, meditation becomes a necessity when you’re asking more of your body and mind than they can actually cope with. It is very important to keep an optimal balance in your wellbeing and to give yourself time to ‘re-balance’ your health when needed. And meditation is an excellent means to that end.

These days, often watching a movie or TV show and other screen-related activities are seen as ‘relaxation’. Even though your mind is bombarded with stimuli and input that has the opposite effect. What meditation teaches you is how to distance yourself from these stimuli. Being addicted to your TV, phone or computer screen is just distraction, not relaxation.

Health

As a corporate physiotherapist, I have been teaching companies about the three key points of health: exercise, nutrition and relaxation. Exercise is what keeps our body strong and flexible. Nutrition is the fuel to keep your body and mind energetic and relaxation is how you reset and recharge yourself. Often, these three pillars of health are given less priority when we are busy.

Overtime or a busy social schedule can result in unhealthy take-away foods, less exercise and lack of sleep. This means your body and mind are working extra hard to keep up with the pace of your work – and social schedule, and a lack of sports and health foods further decrease the functioning of your immune system.

Where of course all three key points are essential to maintain a healthy lifestyle, in recent years ‘relaxation’ has become more and more important. Not because I want to sell you what I offer, it is because more and more people suffer with mental health problems. Statistics have shown that since 2014 mental health issues are a bigger cause of work disability than physical problems. (statistics: CBS).

Too much mental stimuli

The technological development of our society has resulted in more and more computers, smart phones, tablets and other fancy gadgets. Besides more computer based job roles, kids in primary school now do their homework on iPads. There is too much input that your brain can actually handle and ‘relaxation’ and ‘logged off’ time is becoming more and more scarce. Every free moment we have is filled with more stimuli and stressors (apps, social media, TV, You Tube etc) and the real free moments, the ones where you don’t have to do anything at all, become almost non-existent.

The biggest challenge in today’s society is dealing with too many stimuli that are overwhelming for your mind and mental health.

• Sleeping often brings you ‘relaxation’, although this is relaxation for your body, not your mind.

We’ve all woken up from an eight-hour and sleep still feeling exhausted. This is because you’re not aware of your mind wanderings during your sleep and your thoughts can go wherever they want.

When you meditate you actively try to focus on keeping your thoughts in check and try to create space and harmony in and around what you sense or think. That is why meditation brings you so much more relaxation than sleep does. Research also shows it’s even more effective than certain relaxation techniques used as therapy.

Ready for a mini break?

Meditation brings you inner peace and balance and resets your mind, body and spirit. It gives your whole being ‘a daily mini-break’, just as the title of my latest book suggests. It’s what you need most when you are busy. Simply look at companies like Google, Apple and Sony, where meditation is offered to employees and top executives to ensure they can cope with their daily roles and all the stress it brings. They know like no one else how important it is to remain balanced and focused to perform at your best for long periods of time.

Finding the time to invest in yourself is obviously a matter of prioritising rather than ‘having the time’. If you have time for Facebook or TV, whether that’s first thing in the morning or late at night, you should be able to find the time to meditate.

So if you’re too busy: meditate!

I promise it will bring back harmony and balance in your life, you will become more focused and will be able to function better in your daily life. And you will see, eventually it will create more time for you.

Do you want to learn quickly and effectively how to meditate? We would love to help you. Follow one of our meditation programs or follow the easy step-by-step plan in my book: Meditation, your daily mini-break (unfortunately only available in Dutch). It’s very easy and won’t take much time. Try for yourself and experience what meditation can do for you. You can click here for a free meditation audio. Enjoy!

I hope this blog helped you get a better understanding of the what meditation is all about. Do you have a different question regarding meditation? Send it to me and who knows, it might the subject for my next blogpost!