Meditation is an opportunity to raise consciousness and bring more peace and calm into people's lives. Any time from 5-60 minutes will benefit.

The more time, the more benefit. This is a practice. Accept the idea that interruptions in your "quietness" occur.

Thoughts will float into your mind. Just allow this without judgment and get centered again. Some find that listening to a guided mediation is easier. Ask your inner being to guide you to a path for your highest good.

"Meditation can help us experience our own inner wisdom and peace," says Dr. Dean Ornish. Along with eating the right foods and getting enough exercise, he recommends meditation as a powerful way to stay healthy. "Meditation is part of all cultures and religions," Ornish adds. "It's powerful because when you focus your awareness, you gain power. Your mind quiets down, and you experience inner sense of well-being."

(Neuroscience) Meditation is often promoted as a tool for alleviating stress and anxiety, but exactly why it calms the nerves has long mystified scientists. A published study offers a few clues. For the first time ever, a team of medical researchers led by Richard Davidson, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, showed that meditation activates an area of the brain associated with positive emotions. A randomly selected group of middle-class volunteers with stressful jobs took an 8-week course in Mindfulness Mediation given by author Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. A control group from the same pool of volunteers did not receive any meditation training. To establish a baseline, everyone was given electroencephalograms.

After the course, both groups were asked to pick two intense emotional experiences they'd had--one good, one bad--and write about them while their brains' electrical activity was monitored. Whether they summoned a happy or an unhappy memory, the meditation group showed markedly more electrical activity in their left prefrontal cortex--the locus of positive, optimistic emotions--than they had in their baseline test or than the control group had in either reading.

A Sample Meditation - Meditation with Dean Ornish, M.D.

1. Find a quiet, calm place and set aside a few minutes for yourself. "Ten to 15 minutes is ideal, but meditating for even a minute has great benefits," says Ornish. "Consistency is more important than length."
   
   
2. You can meditate silently, but many people use a focusing word that begins with an "oh" or "ah" sound and ends with an M or N sound like amen, om, or shalom.
   
   
3. Close your eyes and take deep, slow breaths.
   
   
4. Allow yourself to feel more centered and relaxed.
   
   
5. Breathe in through your nose and exhale slowly.
   
   
6. Keeping your eyes closed, repeat your word and emphasize the humming sound at the end.