I teach a Meditation every Monday and I believe it’s a good way to set up and shape the week ahead. I can’t think of a better thing to do on a Monday, before the madness and stress of the week totally grabs you. You can either let the week rule you, or you take control of the week. It’s the difference between stress and happiness. And it can only take 5 minutes. When I wake up to face the day, I either go for a morning walk or I do three sun salutations and meditate for a few minutes. It leaves me refreshed, calm, and ready to take on the week with a smile. Here’s the meditation I did today, very simple:

Beautiful nature always helps for meditation!

• Start by sitting upright in a comfortable position
• Then begin your active breathing…using the counting method, inhale for four counts, hold at the top for four counts, and exhale for four counts. Do this for a few minutes until your mind and body calms down
• To move to the focus of this meditation, I want you to think of kindness and inhale the kindness, and exhale entitlement. Inhale kindness, exhale entitlement. Do this for a few minutes until you have a smile on your face.
• Finish with three big stress relief breaths. Use your body and raise your shoulders as you inhale, and exhale with a loud breath (as if sighing), slumping forward. Do this three times.

And that’s it. Only takes a few minutes and really sets a beautiful tone for the day. I focused on breathing in kindness (because we all need more of that) and exhaling entitlement because I believe entitlement always leads to other problems like greed, anger, frustration, and so forth. I hope you do this meditation sometime this week! I promise it will be worth it. And as always…stay hungry and fit!