Meditation is one of the most popular and effective ways to handle stress. By learning to calm your body and mind, your physical and emotional stress can go away. You will feel better, refreshed and ready to face your daily problems with a healthy attitude.

With regular practice, you can experience even greater benefits. Meditation can be a quick-fix stress reliever to help you reverse your body stress and help you physically relax. It can become a part of your daily routine and help you to be resilient to the stress. It can be a technique that you use to get centred when you have emotional stress.

Meditation is sitting in a relax position and clearing your mind, or focusing your mind on one thought or clearing it of all others. It’s in general necessary to have at least 5 to 20 minutes to spend meditating. It’s important to have silence and privacy, but more experienced meditators can practice meditation anywhere.

Meditation affects the body in exactly the opposite way the stress does. It restores the body to a calm state, helping the body to repair itself and preventing new damage from the physical effects of stress.

During meditation you can reverse your stress response:

• Your heart rate and breathing slow down.

• Your blood pressure normalizes.

• You use oxygen more efficiently.

• Your immune function improves.

• Your adrenal glands produce less cortisol.

• Your mind ages slower.

• Your mind clears and your creativity increases.

Try to practice meditation for a few minutes every day, for at least five minutes each session. If you don’t know how to start, you can just focus on listening to your breathing for 5 minutes. To do this you will need to relax your body. If you find yourself thinking of other things, direct your attention back to your breathing. Another simple strategy is to count your breaths, when you inhale count “one” in your head, and then count “two” when you exhale.

-Patricia Chirino Cabrera