Starting a regular practice doesn’t have to be hard — it can take as little as five minutes as soon as you wake up.
There are some things we all know we’re supposed to do to feel better: drink more water, take more walks, go on fewer tequila benders. Meditation is another — research has shown it to help with everything from anxiety and depression to better sleep, lower stress levels and chronic pain relief.
But if you’re new to meditating, it can be hard to know where to start. So start small — with five minutes of breathing exercises to calm and focus the mind every morning.
Not only will it “set the tone for the day,” said Dr. Eva Tsuda, a meditation instructor at the UMass Memorial Health Center for Mindfulness, but meditating earlier may make the practice easier to stick to. In a recent study of almost 900,000 meditation app users, those who meditated in the morning were more likely to maintain the habit.
Here’s how to kick off your day — every day — with a quick and simple meditation.