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The Path to Peace
Meditation for Moms By Tracy L. Doerr
The word "meditation" conjures up the image of a long-bearded old man dressed in a white sarong, sitting cross-legged on a mountaintop. His thin arms relaxed on his legs, palms up, eyes closed, softly chanting "Om," as he reaches the peak of human understanding of the universe.
But as the following women will attest, meditation is no longer a mysterious ritual practiced by the spiritual elite. The art of attaining Zen has gone mainstream: no mountaintop, sarong or Buddhist temple required.
"Meditation is important for physical and mental reasons," says Swami Darshani Sivananda from the Divine Life Society, an organization that provides information about meditation and yoga. "Physically, it releases blocks in the body's various systems, regulates breathing and normalizes blood pressure without any medication. Mentally, it restores balance and equilibrium to the mind; it gives a meditator distance between herself and the incessant parade of involuntary thought that causes tension and illness."
According to most meditation gurus, the best time to meditate is within the hour and a half before dawn and the hour and a half before dusk. Most people will find the early morning period easy to fit into their schedules. Those who find the pre-dusk period hard to set aside can meditate, instead, before they go to bed.
Forty-three-year-old Judith Crosby is a mother of three and works as a human resource manager in Toronto, Ontario. "Like most women, I have become a master at multi-tasking, with very few of those tasks set aside for my own well-being. After a busy day, the only 'me' time that I have is before bed, usually around 11 p.m.," she says. "For the past 10 years, I have set aside that time for myself to meditate. I find that meditating at this time helps me wind down, sharpens my focus and even keeps me grounded for the rest of the next day."
Abby Ferguson, a 32-year-old New York City native, agrees. "In my career as an investment banker I need to be focused, no matter how hectic work gets," she says. "I usually find two minutes out of my day to meditate to clear my head."
