You have probably heard of meditation before but assumed that it’s something reserved for hippies and yogis. You may be surprised to hear however that Meditation is being adopted by the top business, science, and athletic professional all over the world because of it’s amazing benefits.

Meditation is actually quite simply, it’s just the practice of keeping your mind clear and free of thought. This may sound easy at first by try this exercise: close your eyes for 15 seconds and try not to think about anything.

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Were you successful?

If we had to guess you probably found yourself thinking about a ton of things: how stupid this was, if you turned the oven off, whether the kids cleaned their room, etc.

Meditation is the practice of recognizing that your mind has drifted and then bringing it back to being quiet.

This is an incredibly helpful skill in our high paced world because it can be used to keep your mind from constantly drifting to high stress thoughts.

Why Is Meditation Beneficial

If we think of meditation in simple terms it is our ability to control our mind and channel its powers in the direction of our choosing. If our mind is a bucking horse then meditation is the saddle and stirrups we can use to control it.

This skill can be used in order to channel your total brain power on a single task or work project in order to deliver amazing results and further your career. However, it is also useful to separate the stressful work thoughts from the rest of your life.

Have you ever brought your work stress and problems home with you where they continued to bother you? We sure have. Through meditation we can teach our mind to separate these thoughts and compartmentalize them so when you come home you don’t continue thinking and stressing out about work.

If you found yourself unable to control your mind from drifting during our quick experiment don’t worry, this is completely normal. You can’t expect to walk into a gym and bench 250 pounds without first starting with a much lighter weight and working your way up to that. Similarly, you can’t expect to close your eyes and have complete control over your mind, it takes a lot of practice. This is where coloring comes in.

Why Coloring Helps With Meditation

Although coloring is something we think of as a simple task and one reserved for children, the fact is that the mind finds it very difficult. When we sit down to color a highly detailed designs your mind has difficulty interpreting the designs and keep your hand within the lines, and because our brains are very bad at multitasking this keeps our mind from thinking about other things. In essence it’s sort of a “meditation crutch” or “training wheels”.

Research supports this. When the brain wave patterns of people in deep meditation were compared to those several minutes into coloring a detailed designed they showed many similarities.

Coloring intricate designs for just 30 minutes a day can put you well on the path to controlling your mind all the amazing benefits of meditation. And best of all this isn’t something that you have to spend tons of money to try since there are many free coloring designs available online. So what are you waiting for?