Meditate your stress away

Relieve tensions and take control of your life with daily meditation.

Updated:: 2009-10-03 14:41

Published:: 2003-07-30 00:00

By: Wendy Prince

The benefits of meditation

Coral Freedman's life is hectic. As a full-time manager at a technology company, she is also studying for her MBA and still manages to find time for running, yoga, friends and countless other activities. Like many women, there is always some sort of stress beating down her door. But Freedman, 29, knows something a lot of women don't -- how to use daily meditation to ward off stress.

After being introduced to meditation through her yoga classes, Freedman began to practise meditation on her own to help gain control over her thoughts and keep stress at bay.

For nine minutes in the morning and nine more at night, Freedman sits cross--legged on her bedroom floor, closes her eyes, and touches the tips of the thumb and middle finger of each hand together. Inside her head she repeats her mantra: Om Namo Narayanaya. The phrase is meant to keep her mind focused so she doesn't think about anything except what is happening at that exact moment, allowing her mind and body to relax.

After a month she noticed that her stress level decreased. "I notice it in terms of the attachment and detachment to things. Instead of feeling like I'm riding the roller coaster of other things, I feel like I'm seeing the roller coaster happen and realizing it doesn't have to bug me as much."

Freedman also notices that she is more focused and can concentrate on the task at hand without being easily distracted.

Peggy Trainor says 85 per cent of the students who come to the Primordial Sound meditation classes she offers from her home, north of Toronto, are women. Trainor says these women, like Freedman, are searching for a better way to relieve the stress and anxiety in their lives.

The benefits of meditation
Trainor believes women need meditation because they often do things for family, friends and co--workers, without taking the time to replenish their own energy.

When you meditate you go into a very deep state of rest and calmness, one that is beyond sleep, explains Trainor. People feel better and they really are better because their blood pressure and heart rate is lower and they aren't pumping so much adrenaline into their bodies when they encounter stressful situations. "The most important part of meditation is integrating the peace that you get from the meditation into your daily life," explains Trainor. "So when the milk gets spilled you mop it up and just go on."

Page 1 of 2

Print
E-mail