Free 31 Day Meditation Challenge for Busy People & Beginners
May is National Meditation Month so I created this free 31 day challenge to help you start (or re-start) your daily practice.
This daily guided meditation only takes 5 minutes and is perfect for beginners and busy people.
Studies show that a consistent meditation practice can:
• Reduce stress & anxiety
• Improve sleep
• Increase memory, focus & creativity
Plus lots of other benefits that you can read at the end of this post.
It takes around 30 days to break or form a new habit.
The goal of this challenge is to help guide you along your own unique journey towards more:
• Health & happiness
• Self-improvement
• Mindfulness
• Gratitude
Sign up here to have reminders/encouragement sent to your inbox each day in May 2022.
So easy! All you have to do is open your inbox and click on the link each day.
Deadline to sign up is midnight on Saturday, April 30.
The new moon is this weekend so it’s the perfect time to start a new challenge!
👫 BETTER TOGETHER: Help hold yourself accountable and invite someone to participate in this challenge with you!
Simply copy this text/link to this blog post and paste it in an email or text it to a family member or friend:
Let’s do this 31 day meditation challenge together. It’s free and only takes 5 minutes per day! https://bit.ly/31daymeditationchallenge
If you found this page later and missed the deadline for May 2022, you can still start this challenge at any other time as well and revisit this page every day for 31 days. (Create a bookmark in your browser or shortcut on your desktop computer.)
Watch this 2:10 video first to set yourself up for success:
5 Tips: How to Meditate Daily & Stick to a Meditation Routine for Beginners
Some people prefer to meditate first thing in the morning and others prefer to end their day with meditation so I have created videos for both of these options.
Choose one of the following videos below and play it every day on your phone, tablet or computer for 31 days to make meditation a healthy habit!
5 Minute Morning Motivation Meditation for Beginners
5 Minute Daily Evening Gratitude Meditation for Beginners
Need some help convincing yourself or someone else to try meditation?
Here are several ways meditation might help you or someone you love.
Health Benefits of Meditation
Meditation Reduces Stress: Stress reduction is one of the most common reasons people try meditation.
Meditation Helps Control Anxiety: Meditation involves slow, steady breaths which help to reduce anxiety be decreasing heart rate, blood pressure, and stress hormones.
Meditation Promotes Greater Emotional Health: Studies have shown that mindfulness meditation helps with developing resilience to depression and helps to create a more positive outlook on life.
Meditation Increases Awareness of the Unconscious Mind: Some forms of meditation help you develop a stronger understanding of yourself, helping you grow into your best self.
Meditation Increases Attention: Focused-attention meditation is like weight lifting for your attention span. It helps increase the strength and endurance of your attention.
Meditation Lessens Age-Related Memory Loss: Kirtan Kriya is a method of meditation combining mantra with repetitive motion to focus thoughts and has been shown to help with age related degenerative memory disorders such as Alzheimer's.
Meditation Generates Kindness and Gratitude Toward Others: Metta meditation is also known as loving-kindness meditation. Twenty-two studies of this form of meditation have demonstrated its ability to increase compassion toward others.
Meditation Helps with Recovery from Addiction: Mental discipline you can develop through meditation may help you to break dependencies by increasing your self-control and awareness of triggers for addictive behaviors.
Meditation Improves Sleep: Becoming skilled at meditation disciplines the mind and helps better control racing or “runaway” thoughts that can keep you up at night. Additionally it can help you relax the body, releasing tension that prevents restive states.
Meditation Helps Control Pain: Perception to pain is linked to state of mind and it can be elevated in stressful conditions. Discipline from meditation helps to control pain signals received.
Meditation Decreases Blood Pressure: Meditation helps to control blood pressure by reducing nerve signals that coordinate heart function, tension in blood vessels, and the sympathetic nervous, “Fight or Flight” response.
Meditation Increases Immune Function: Studies have shown that visualization meditation can increase immune responses in a short amount of time!
Meditation Improves Emotional Intelligence: Through meditation you can safely become more comfortable with emotions that have been avoided in the past.
Meditation Increases Optimism: Staying positive is important! Meditation helps to achieve an overall more positive mindset.
Meditation Buffers Against Impulsivity: Gain discipline to buffer against impulsive actions.
Meditation Strengthens Decision Making & Problem Solving: Studies have shown that people who meditate are able to better focus and score higher on cognitive tests!
Meditation Helps Manage ADHD: Meditation can be used to counteract ADHD.
Meditation Strengthens Information Processing: A meditation practice enhances speed with which attention can be directed and redirected, decreasing response time and increasing processing ability.
Meditation Increases Longevity: Meditation boosts antioxidant molecules such as glutathione as much as 41%.
Meditation Improves Neuroplasticity: The mental training of meditation increases plasticity in the brain.
Improved Visuospatial Processing: With very limited meditation training studies have shown significantly improved visuospatial processing.
Meditation Fosters Creativity: Meditation helps stimulate the neocortex, where we do our creative thinking.
Meditation Decreases Frequency of Inflammatory Disorders: Reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes have been reported in a study of meditation and gene expression.
Meditation Helps to Prevent Asthma, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Mindfulness practice helps to reduce psychological stress which is a trigger for these types of diseases.
Meditation Helps Treat Menopausal Symptoms and Premenstrual Syndrome: Was conclusion in over 20 randomized control studies.
Mindfulness Training Helps with Fibromyalgia
Meditation Changes Gene Expression: Studies have found a range of genetic and molecular differences in people who have regular meditation practice versus control groups.
Meditation Can Reduce Panic Attacks: A study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry discovered after 3 months of meditation and relaxation training, 90% of participants diagnosed with anxiety or panic disorder substantially reduced negative symptoms.
Meditation Can Increase Gray Matter in the Brain: MRI scans by Harvard neuroscientists show that the grey matter concentration increases in areas of the brain involved in learning and memory, regulating emotions, sense of self, and having perspective increased after 8 weeks of meditation and mindfulness training.Long-term meditatorsshow a larger hippocampal and frontal volumes of grey matter in other studies.
Meditation Can Reduce Boredom: Katherine MacLean of the University of California led a study suggesting that during and after meditation training, subjects were more skilled at keeping focus, especially on repetitive and boring tasks.
Meditation Can Improve Test Taking in Students: A study of students indicated that after just 20 minutes a day of practice, they were able to improve their performance on tests of cognitive skill. In some cases, the mindful students did 10 times better than the group that did not meditate.
Meditation Can Be More Effective Than Morphine: A study at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center determined that Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain (40% in pain intensity and 57% in pain unpleasantness) than morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 percent.”
Meditation Can Increase & Improve Self-Awareness: Long-term practice of meditation increases grey-matter density in the areas of the brain associated with learning, memory, self-awareness, compassion, and introspection.
Meditation Can Improve Memory & Reduce Multitasking: In a study conducted by University of Washington and University of Arizona, a group of Human Resource personnel that practiced meditation and body relaxation techniques for 8 weeks reported lower levels of stress and showed better memory for the tasks they had performed. They also switched tasks less often and remained focused on tasks longer.
Meditation Helps You Deal With Stressful Events: A study conducted with 32 adults that had never practiced meditation before, showed that if meditation is practiced before a stressful event, the adverse effects of stress were lessened.
Meditation Can Reduce Emotional Eating/Obesity: Scientists have been experimenting with Meditation to help manage emotional eating, which prevents obesity.
Sources:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1555415516001732
https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/CABN.7.2.109#page-1
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00133/full
https://eocinstitute.org/meditation/4-top-ways-meditation-is-the-best-anti-aging-longevity-tool/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810010000681
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bianca-rothschild/the-science-of-how-medita_b_5579901.html
https://news.wisc.edu/study-reveals-gene-expression-changes-with-meditation/
I’m so excited for you to join me on this journey!
Namaste & Have A Great Day!
💖 Miranda
This challenge is sponsored by me & Namaste in Nature.
Here are more things you may find useful on your journey towards more health & happiness:
