This newsletter is inspired by Elise Bialylew, a coach, meditation teacher and social entrepreneur who is trained as a doctor and psychiatrist. She left the hospital wards to pursue a deeper calling to start a global mindfulness meditation movement and founded Mindful in May in 2012.
Next week marks the start of the Mindful In May challenge (plus our own Centred Meditation challenge). Apart from raising much needed funds to bring clean safe drinking water to developing countries, what we love most about the challenge is that it’s participants get to experience what a profound difference a regular meditation practice can have on their lives.
Elise says she started the campaign because “although I knew meditation was so valuable, like many people it was not uncommon for me to fall out of the routine especially at times of high stress, when I actually needed it the most. I imagined that there were many other people who could relate to that experience and I wanted to create a supportive community that could come together to learn something valuable for themselves and at the same time contribute to a greater cause through fundraising”. Fundraising can help so many people with causes close to their heart, or for personal needs that they require help with, checking out the best fundraising sites will show people how best to give back to society.
We’re proud to say that in our almost two years since opening our doors, thousands of urban professionals have sat in our armchairs and experienced a taste of the benefits of meditation. What brings them to our studio? High stress, unsustainable anxiety, poor sleep, fertility issues, blood pressure problems, and the list goes on. Although the majority initially come with the best of intentions to meditate regularly, for a lot of you, something seems to get in the way of you and your regular practice; High workload, lack of time, other commitments, distance, you name it. Whilst meditation is indeed a powerful reactive solution when you are feeling stressed out, those of you who meditate regularly know first hand that it is even more powerful when used as a proactive strategy from getting stressed in the first place.
The jury is out: the benefits of meditation are cumulative. This means that the more often one meditates, the larger the results. Similar to physical exercise, if we want to get fitter or lose weight, it’s not going to happen if we only do it once every few weeks. We personally experienced the profound benefits of meditation years ago while we were super stressed out and paying the cost: somatic anxiety, digestive issues, chronic nightmares, recurring bouts of glandular fever to name a few. Within weeks of meditating, all those symptoms dissipated and having now been taking the meditation challenge for over 2300 days, we can safely say that regular meditation has completely revolutionised our lives. So much so, that as you know, we’ve now devoted our lives to bringing calm, clarity, and confidence to the world by making meditation as accessible as possible to urban professionals.
Like Elise, we believe “that in 5-10 years time meditation and mindfulness will be an integrated part of our daily lives. Just like brushing your teeth is something you wouldn’t think twice about doing to maintain good dental hygiene, mindfulness will be something that we all do regularly to ensure our mental hygiene”.
Interested in giving meditation a real go? Join our ‘Centred Meditators’ fundraising team as part of the ‘Mindful In May‘ campaign, and/or join our own Centred Meditation challenge to meditate in our studio 13 times this May and we’ll give you a complimentary WEEK of unlimited meditation in June! As an added incentive, meditate the most amount of times out of all our guests this May and we’ll give you a complimentary MONTH of unlimited meditation in June! Just email us: info@centredmeditation.com.au to let us know you are taking our challenge. Just want to delve deeper into mindfulness? Participate in our ‘Centred In The City’ mindfulness workshop series and know that a portion of the proceeds will go to the Mindful In May charity 🙂
