Wanted to share a lovely informative post written by Ryan Rivera just for YOM readers! His background is:

Ryan Rivera has spent 7 years of his life suffering from, as he calls it, the “whole package” – panic attacks, severe anxiety, agoraphobia, social anxiety, unbearable physical symptoms, headaches, neck pains, constant tension, diarrhea, palpitations, pounding heart.  Ryan made a number of “huge leaps” toward anxiety elimination and a more fulfilling life. His successes inspired and gave him determination to help other people who suffer from the same condition as he did…

How to Find Time for Meditation

Centuries of use have proven that meditation is one of the most powerful tools for handling life stress and anxiety. The right type of meditation has the potential to calm the mind and body, improve overall happiness, and create a level of contentment unseen by most other relaxation methods.

But meditation does have one issue that affects the modern day individual. Meditation takes some time – time that most busy families do not feel they have. While meditation can have a profound effect on your life, you do need to find the time to insert meditation into your day regularly to fully engulf yourself in its benefits.

Tips to Making Meditation Time

Most people have at least an hour of their day that they can dedicate to meditation that is currently spent with something that feels like a “must do,” but is can actually be cut out of their day fairly easily. However, if you really feel as though your life is too busy to fit in meditation, here are several tips for creating time.

• Share Alone Time

Most families share duties when taking care of their children and household chores, working together to ensure everything is being taken care of efficiently. But while it’s helpful for the family dynamic to share this time, often it’s possible for only one parent to take care of the duties while the other parent enjoys some relaxation meditation. You and your partner can work out a schedule that allows both of you to engage in meditation (or any activity) for at least a half hour to an hour regularly without interruption.

• Schedule the Time In

Time budgeting is one of the main reasons that individuals struggle to find time to meditate. It’s not enough to simply try to fit it in every day. If you schedule a very specific time frame dedicated exclusively to meditation every day as part of your daily schedule, however, you’ll find that you complete all other activities around it more efficiently so that the time is more easily freed up to meditate.

• Add it To Your Pre-Sleep Routine

If you suffer from anxiety, you are likely used to the idea of anxiety and depression keeping you awake. Meditation, then, is a great way to improve your ability to fall asleep. Before you go to sleep is a bad time to engage in activities that require a lot of physical exertion, but meditation requires only mental exertion, and is a successfully quiet and relaxing way to find solace before bedtime.

• Lunch Breaks

Work can often be a contributor to excessive stress and anxiety, which is why meditating at work is often a useful way to relieve some of the pressure you experience in the workplace while also promoting relaxation and wellness. You should always eat your lunch, as eating every meal is an important part of healthy living, but if you ate a healthy breakfast you can afford to eat a small, fast, and healthy lunch like a salad or sandwich and spend the remaining time meditating somewhere quiet around the company property.

• Progressive Meditation Time Increases

At the heart of a busy schedule often lies a sad truth – anxiety and stress are one of the primary reasons that are schedules remain so busy. Stress makes it hard to complete work efficiently, and anxiety can cause procrastination and other negative behaviors that contribute to our tendency to over-schedule our days. Meditation is designed to reduce that stress and anxiety and, presumably, improve your ability to open up space/time in your day.

So if you are unable to fit a great deal of meditation time in your schedule, try fitting just a small amount whenever you have a free moment. You may not receive the all of the benefits of meditating, but you will be able to experience some level of serenity that should help you improve the amount of time you have available for meditation with each passing day.

Creating Time for Meditation

Finally, we come to one sad truth. If you cannot find time for meditation, it is unlikely you are going to find time for any other solution for your anxiety and stress. Your mental health should always be your strongest priority, because it’s not only you that depends on your health and wellness – your family, your friends, and your work need you to be at your best as well.

So use the above strategies to find time in your life to integrate meditation, and give meditation a priority over some of the other, less vital life activities that you may have planned. You’ll soon find that you are not as busy as you thought you were, and you will be able to find time to meditate and receive all of the benefits that meditation has to offer.

About the Author: Ryan Rivera is an outspoken supporter of meditation and other safe mental health treatment techniques. He has more information available on his website at www.calmclinic.com.