6 Reasons Why You Should Meditate Each Morning

 It’s 7 am and your phone alarm goes off, screaming for you to wake up. Dim morning light filters in around your drawn curtains, giving you just enough to see by as you stumble into your clothes, check your email, and hurriedly punch a few buttons on your coffee maker. You impatiently wait for the machine to fill your mug, and blearily run out the door on an empty belly.

If you’re like roughly half of Americans, this is your morning. And it’s exhausting, repetitive, and just plain depressing.

Taking time for ourselves is important, yet with our ever-present focus on productivity, few do. Immediately upon waking, our minds are focused on the future, on how we’ll get to work and what we’ll do there. It’s a nonstop rush toward productivity that leaves us drained and, ironically, less productive.

But we don’t have to live that way. One of the best, most time-efficient ways to relax and recharge our bodies and minds is through meditation. Meditation can take many forms, but the goal is a state of deep peace achieved through a calm and silent—yet alert—mind.

In its simplest form, meditation can be achieved by sitting on your bed, closing your eyes, and choosing an object of meditation, such as the way you breathe. When your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the object upon which you are focused. Start by doing this for a few minutes each day, and increase from there. Find out more information on meditation techniques here.

The benefits are numerous, and encompass both the physical and the psychological. Read on to find out 6 reasons why you should meditate each morning, and learn what meditation can do for you.

Set the Tone

What you do in the morning can set the emotional tone for the next few hours, or even your entire day—why not ensure that tone is a calm and focused one?

Waking up and meditating for the few minutes that you would have spent checking emails and texts can make a huge emotional difference. Rather than allowing your mind to begin with the race of planning, organizing, and stress that potentially lie in the future, focusing on the present moment will help you feel optimistic, focused, and happy.

It’s important to get enough sleep in order for this to be effective—if you’re exhausted, the calming effects of a morning meditation routine will be reduced because of the stress hormones released by sleep deprivation. Combine your meditation with at least 7 hours of sleep, and your new morning routine will change your life.

No Need for Stimulants

For those who need their three cups of coffee in the morning, there is hope! Meditation actives the parasympathetic nervous system, which slows the heart rate, aids in digestion, lowers blood pressure, and encourages a feeling of wellness.

Unlike coffee, which loses its effectiveness over time as the body builds resistance, the activation of the more relaxed side of our nervous system never gets old. We’re not only more relaxed after meditation, but also more alert, and without the jitters that can come with caffeine and other chemical stimulants, most of which activate the sympathetic nervous system—the side branch of the nervous system which prepares the body for the fight-or-flight response.

Break your reliance on caffeine in your morning routine with daily meditation. You’ll feel just as alert, without the tension, headaches, and nervousness that can come from one too many cups of coffee.

Go With the Flow

Adding a period of meditation to your morning routine can help you focus on your work later in the day, and will aid you in flowing easily from one project to the next as you easily adapt to change.

Your morning meditation period gives you time to quiet your mind, allowing thoughts of daily drama, worries, and pressures to pass you by without affecting you. Without these distractions and the stress that they bring, you’ll have a much easier time filtering out internal noise and focusing on your tasks—your attention span will increase greatly, as will your productivity.

You’ll soon find that you’re not as bothered by the little things—things which would normally cause your day to go emotionally awry. If you’re already in a calm state when you hit bumps in the road, you’ll be more flexible much less likely to react negatively to change or challenge.

Improve Relationships

Are you the person everyone steers clear of until around noon? Do you grouse and fuss and complain in the mornings? If so, meditation may be for you.

Because meditation, when combined with enough sleep, releases stress, you’ll find yourself better able to act compassionately. Stress can lead to snap judgments, overly critical responses, and a reputation that may just lose you opportunities. That sense of calmness and peace induced by meditation, though, will show in your words, actions, and expressions, and you’ll soon find that people are more drawn to you than ever before.

If you’re particularly angry at a specific person, visualize yourself in their shoes as you meditate, and try to understand their perspective. This helps to create empathy toward the person and objectivity in your reactions, both of which are valuable emotional skills.

Why waste the opportunities for positive interactions with friends, family, and coworkers for the entire first half of the day? Begin with meditation, and make every conversation the best that it can be.

Improve Your Health

Many studies have shown that when we’re stressed, we go for comfort foods, which are often fried, sugary, fatty, and just generally bad for us.

Meditation takes care of that stress, and if caught early in the day, helps us be better able to change our eating habits. Good decisions are, after all, easier when we’re happy.

Not only this, but our immune systems are intimately linked to our mood. Anxiety and stress cause the body to prepare for trouble, usually by stimulating inflammation—one of the body’s natural immune response. The body, however, is not designed to sustain long-term inflammation, which begins to weaken your immune system after a time.

Not only does inflammation weaken the immune system, but it also causes memory issues, digestion problems, headaches, and fatigue—all long-term symptoms which reduce our productivity and overall happiness, leading to further stress.

Break this unhealthy cycle with a morning meditation routine, and enjoy the effects of better health.

See the Big Picture

Imagine that you’re shown a picture of something that was taken from about a millimeter away. Would you be able to see that object clearly? Would you even be able to tell what it is? Not likely—you’d just see an unidentifiable, colored smudge.

Similarly, it’s difficult to see our own lives clearly until we take a step back. When was the last time you stopped—both mentally and physically? Can’t remember? Then you might just be missing out on that perspective—the big picture.

Stepping back from the chaos of our daily quest for productivity allows us to detach from it. From this detached perspective, we can see more than our morning to-do list, or what we’re going to have for lunch. We can see the trajectory of our lives, our happiness or unhappiness, and what we can do better. We can see what is truly important in this particular day, a day that we can suddenly see in the context of our lives. The clarity afforded by meditation is an invaluable gift that too few of us take.

Establish a New Routine

Practice meditating each morning for at least a week, and you’ll see results that will have you keeping the habit for a lifetime. And don’t forget to try to extend your meditation time until you’re able to reach at least 10 minutes or so. You’ll be calmer, more confident, and healthier as you go about your day.

Wesley Baines is a graduate student at Regent University's School of Divinity, and a freelance writer working in the fields of spirituality, self-help, and religion. You can catch more of his work at www.wesleybaines.com.