Videos, books, and instructors abound in touting the enormous changes that can occur if a stress bag parcels off a portion of their day for meditation. A few of the known benefits include a decrease in anxiety, mood stabilization and improved health and concentration.

As a bodyworker who facilitates the healing process with clients, I believe a quiet brain promotes wellness. Explaining this idea to people is easy, the concept that stress can cause illness isn’t difficult to grasp. Anxiety feels awful, ergo of course, it’s doing harm.

But knowing doesn’t necessarily mean doing. I know that eating a sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mints will enable me to see my ass without looking over my shoulder, yet somehow this is lost, or unimportant, as the tribe of wafers slides down my throat.

When I’m speaking with new recruits about attaining Zen Land through meditation, a common response is, “I can’t do it.” Not to be argumentative, but if I can get the squirrel in my mind to stop running figure-eights long enough to achieve a decent OM, so can you.

The answer to this dilemma is to entertain the squirrel.

Because of my own rodent’s compulsive need to flail in my treetop, I have developed several cheat tools to entice the critter into a long pause. They involve nature, noise, and activities more annoying than figure-eights.

In this two minute video, Lake Superior stuns my squirrel into silence.

Large bodies of water are known to inspire church-esque solemnity. In the coming weeks, I’ll share more meditation tips for silencing a chattering herd of distractions.

If I can meditate—anyone can.

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Author: Deb Lecos

Editor: Travis May

Image: Featured Image by Author, Main Image: Kyle Pearce/Flickr