Meditation is like taking a good friend to a coffee shop and getting to know her better, only without the coffee and the good friend is you.   Just sit down with yourself and bring your open, curious attention to what is going on with you.  Notice what thoughts are passing through your mind, what feelings are present, and what your body feels like.

If you spent even a teeny portion of the time you spend getting to know others in getting to know yourself, it would be extraordinarily beneficial.  Research indicates the benefits of meditation range from alleviation or decrease in a broad range of physical symptoms to a decrease in anxiety and depression.  However, a lot of people go through their entire lives without doing it.

Getting to know yourself and living a life of presence doesn’t have to happen through meditation practice, but it is one of the best ways I’ve discovered.

You might have been reading this blog for some time now and never taken the time to “taste mindfulness” for yourself.  So, I’m offering a challenge to help you get started.

Just sit, right where you are.  Don’t move (except to settle the body into a relaxed, yet alert posture.  Click here and practice a three minute meditation.  If you will comment below on what you noticed by September 11, I’ll put your name in a drawing for a book called “Commit to Sit: Tools for Cultivating a Meditation Practice.”

As Jon Kabat-Zinn says, when you sit down to meditate, don’t even think “I am meditating.”   “Just be awake, with no trying, no agenda, no ideas even about what it should look like or feel like or where your attention should be.”   Do this three minute meditation every day or try some of the longer meditations found on the Audio/Video link above.  Find out, firsthand, the benefits of meditation.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us” – Ralph Waldo Emerson