You’ve likely heard about the benefits of a regular meditation practice such as an enhanced sense of wellbeing, improved focus, decreased stress and anxiety, to name just a few.

While these are all very appealing reasons to begin a regular meditation practice, let’s look at a few more that might further encourage busy modern mums to take up this ancient practice:

1) Helps you develop emotional control

See that wailing, screaming child over there? Yep the one that’s inconsolable over having to use the blue pool noodle, when what she really wants is the pink one?

Our kids get all caught up in the wild emotion of the moment, and it can be easy as a parent to fall into that trap too.

Children need to learn how to regulate their emotions so that they can express the way they feel in a constructive, rather than destructive, way.

It’s up to us as parents to teach them – so that they can experience emotions, without being overwhelmed by them.

A regular meditation practice will help you become more aware of your emotions, and empower you not to be a slave to them.

Through meditation, you realize that you are not your thoughts, and that you can choose how to react to them.

Your child will be able to more effectively learn how to regulate their emotions from modelling you.

2) Helps you get off the perpetual rush-athon

Are you a multi-tasking mum? Do you feel the unrelenting drain from continually rushing from one thing, one task or one event to the next?

Modern life sure is busy, but our own anxiety can create stress for our family.

There will still be lots to do, but through a regular meditation practice, the way we approach tasks will be different.

When we discover the benefits of adding some punctuation to our day, we realize that we have a choice in how we do things.

3) Helps you sleep better

Sleep, anyone? One of the things that I have found hardest about being a mum is the sleep deprivation.

The continual demands of parenting don’t stop at 5pm! Night feeding, night terrors and bed wetting accidents all have mums up in the wee hours, and they can challenge your ability to get back to sleep.

It’s not hard to see why insomnia is the most common sleep disorder.

So that we can drift off to sleep, we need to be relaxed and able to let go of the day’s activities and tensions.

Sleep has to come to us – we can’t make it happen. A regular meditation practice will train you to better let go of your day, as well as encourage the body’s relaxation response making it easier to drift off, and stay asleep.

It will also help you to more calmly deal with night time waking, and improve your ability to get back to sleep afterward.

Hopefully this post has encouraged you to consider taking up a regular meditation practice. In my next post, we will look at simple ways to get started so that anyone can begin!

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