7 Reasons Everyone Keeps Telling You To Meditate

The post-divorce period is always one of stress and angst. Meditation is a great practice to help you cope with this difficult time. I speak from experience. This is a piece I wrote about the value of mediation. It starts like this:

I bet you know people who meditate. They’re often hawking the benefits of meditation, right?

 Annoying as it is, they’re correct. 

There is a wealth of research showing the benefits of meditation. These benefits include greater happiness, an improved sense of well-being, better emotional control, more compassion for, and better relationships with, others, less depression and anxiety, improved focus and even less inflammation in the body.

Though you may understand the benefits of meditation, when you imagine yourself in the perfect meditation space…you’re sitting on a cushion, the temperature is just right, there’s a slight scent of lavender in the air, it’s silent except for the tweet of a bird outside…you know you are never going to find that in this lifetime.

You’re busy, it’s noisy everyplace, and there may be a smell in the air, but it’s more likely to be car exhaust or pet effluvia, than lavender. When it comes to meditation, that’s okay!

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How To STOP Feeling Lazy, Guilty & Selfish For Taking Care Of Yourself

Now more than ever, you need to take care of you. Here's my recent piece on giving yourself permission for self-care.

Women tell me all the time how they want to slow down and take time out from their busy lives to chill, but they can't.

They tell me there's way too much to do to keep things going in their world, and no one else to do it.

Besides, they tell me, taking time for myself is selfish.

They tell me doing stuff for the kids, partner, parents, grandparents, friends, dogs, cats, is more important than me-time.

When they do make time for exercise, yoga, painting or a class, they feel guilty. Isn't cooking and freezing meals for the next decade, helping kids with their homework and vacuuming dog hair for the umpteenth time this week more important than self-improvement?

When they sit and read, take a walk or meditate for 30 minutes they wonder if they're being lazy. What about the cabinets to be cleaned, the extra work they could be doing at their job or preparing the gourmet meal their partner would be thrilled with?

The oxygen-on-the-plane metaphor is something I often invoke. Everyone understands that if you can't breathe you can't help your 4-year-old breathe. Think of taking a little time for solitude as something to help you breathe.

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Relieve Your Stress And Become A Better Mother

As the stress mounts post-divorce, parenting is an area where it can really take a toll.

I'm quoted in a post about ways to reduce your stress for better parenting.

You can read it here...

7 Steps To Reduce Insomnia

If you're like me, one of the things that gets short shrift post-divorce is sleep. And I can tell you it wasn't healthy. Here's my recent YourTango post about getting more sleep.

I was fascinated by the NY Times' two recent articles on sleep. One is about how to get more of it so you'll be more beautiful, featuring spas, sleep products and a barely perceptible nod to useful skills like meditation and relaxation. The companion piece is about makeup to hide the ravages of sleeplessness. Really?

Sleep deprivation causes irritability, relationship issues, depression, anxiety, weight gain, medical problems, cognitive deficits, impaired work performance, car crashes and a host of other ills beyond the toll it takes on physical beauty. Makeup is not going to solve these problems.

Clouding the issue by suggesting a cosmetic fix, spa products or pills, ignores the fact that sleep problems are often easily remedied without medication or costly solutions.

Since it's summer, why not send yourself to sleep camp? In sleep camp you have daily activities, just like volleyball and swimming in summer camp. If you despised summer camp you can think of it more like soccer or tennis camp where you're trying to improve a skill set and you know it's going to take dedication, practice, tweaking and repetition.

Here's how sleep camp works: 

1. Start a sleep journal. 

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