I started an on again off again relationship with meditation about 5 years ago. When I began, I had just digested some of the many studies relating why meditation is so beneficial. It changes the brain, it alters mood, it has a profound impact on mental health. These were all great, I was convinced, and I started my new habit with an abundance of enthusiasm.

After the first few months, I could feel the difference. Everything was lighter, I didn’t overreact to small issues, and I felt in many ways like a different person.

But after the first few months, the shine of meditation started to wear off. I lost some of that initial enthusiasm. The new car smell had faded from my meditation practice, and with it had my devotion.

Did I really have to spend 20 minutes doing this every morning? I could do yoga, or morning pages, or a host of other beneficial activities. Even with the newfound patience I had, some days I just didn’t feel like meditating.

If you’re meditating, I’m sure you’ve gone through “off” periods where you have a few weeks or months where you just don’t sit down and meditate. Being alone with your thoughts can be painful, it can be uncomfortable, and damn it sometimes I just don’t want to sit down.

I’d always come back to meditation, though. It always produced benefits. One thing that I used to help when I’d fallen off or didn’t feel like meditating was CBD. I found this unique supplement after a friend living in Colorado started working at a dispensary. He called me up and raved about how much CBD was helping him calm down. I started taking CBD drops before I would meditate and noticed that it helped me in a number of different ways.

Here’s 3 reasons why I include CBD as a part of my meditation ritual:

1. It helps me “get there” before I sit.

Sometimes life is stressful. Things start and even when you’ve been meditating, your mind won’t leave you alone.

“This time things are really going to fall apart,” you hear your mind say. Deep down, you know that isn’t true, but you engage the thought and an inner dialogue starts that can continue for days.

When this is happening to me, the last thing I want to do is sit down and focus on my breath. Sometimes that doesn’t even seem possible. When this would happen to me in the past, I’d inevitably fall out of my meditation habit and the stress would slowly compound.

Now, when I don’t feel like meditating, I try taking some CBD without THC. While it doesn’t completely calm my thoughts or eliminate them, it does put me in a calmer place. Often times it is enough to get me past the resistance that makes me want to avoid meditating. It has allowed me to skip less days and experience the compounding effects that come with a daily meditation habit. When I’m not feeling like there is any possibility of calming thoughts, I take CBD, wait a few minutes, then try sitting again.

2. It helps me stay meditating longer.

Sometimes, when I’m halfway through a meditation, I get an unbearable, urging thought that makes me want to jump off and check off whatever the thought is telling me I need to do. It could be responding to a text, taking out the trash, or any number of significant or not so significant things that the mind can conjure up when it starts moving.

When I take CBD before I meditate, these things don’t seem to pop up as much. II don’t seem to give as much weight or importance to the thoughts I have. I seem closer to a meditative flow state. It is as though the thoughts are lighter and don’t have as much of an impact on my actions or behavior. Something about that additional calming presence of CBD allows to me sit and meditate for the time I intended rather than getting up early because of a bothering thought.

3. It helps me keep calm on days when I just can’t meditate.

Life happens. No matter how much of a devoted yogi you are, there will be days when you can’t meditate.

If you’ve been consistently meditating for a long period of time, you know that the benefits can compound. But what happens when you miss a day? Sometimes the stress and other parts of life can come back into your life and you can lose that calm, centered balance.

Having CBD on hand is the perfect solution when you can’t meditate but still want to feel a little bit calmer. It helps me during days and weeks when meditation just isn’t possible.

I hope these tips help you in your own journey. Incorporating CBD into your life may be the perfect way to improve your lifestyle and encourage peace of mind.