Meditation has so many amazing benefits (that you can read all about here) to help improve your mind and body. Though many meditation beginners get frustrated with the difficulty of completing a practice without their mind constantly wandering - which is actually entirely normal!
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Here are 8 tips that will help you begin and improve your practice:

1. Get Comfortable
Feeling uncomfortable throughout your practice will distract you and pull your attention towards it. Try using pillows and others props to help support an upright and attentive posture.


2. Relax your body
For your mind to be able to effectively concentrate on your practice, you need to begin by relaxing the body. Try taking several deep breaths prior to beginning your practice. This will help release the tension in your body.


3. Prepare your surroundings
It is important to find a meditation location that is free from external interruptions (think phones, tv's, etc.). Find a private space where you know that you won't be disrupted. Using headphones is a great way to minimize distractions.


4. Watch your breath
Focus on the inhalation and exhalation of each breath. By doing this, you'll be less likely to have your mind wander. You can also count in your ahead with each inhale, then count back down with each exhale.


5. Re-center your focus
Your mind inevitably will wander during your practice, this happens to even long time meditation practitioners. Simply let your thoughts and emotions come into presence, observe that they are there (that's all they really want!) and then let them go. Try and refrain from identifying and holding onto them.


6. Keep a half-smile
Adopt a simple half-smile throughout your practice. A ton of stress and tension is actually held in our facial muscles - a subtle smile can help relieve this.


7. Bring attention to your heart beat
Following your heart beat will not only help you from wandering your mind, but also brings an aliveness as our heart pumps blood throughout our entire body. Be grateful for the power of the heart.


8. Don't judge your practice
​You are never doing it "wrong". Meditation beginners often get turned off because they feel they aren't doing it right. Remember, there is really no wrong way to meditate - it is simply just you being at one with your own self.



Note: The great thing is that you can meditate for as little as 5 minutes per day and still receive many of these amazing benefits meditation offers. Try MeditateBot[free] for Messenger today and start benefiting from a daily meditation practice!


About us: At The Mindful Tech Lab, we develop and market apps that are easily ingrained into your daily routine to deliver positive results. We are most known for our Facebook Messenger chatbots that help you live your best life, you can check them each out by clicking on their links:

MotivateBot - Motivation
MeditateBot - Meditation
Daily FitBot - Fitness
HealthyBot - General Health
Eat Clean Bot - Healthy Recipes
StoicBot - Stoic Philosophy

There are so many amazing benefits of meditation. Not only does it make you feel good in the moment while meditating, but it also actually changes the way your brain operates, and scientific research has proven it.
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You've probably heard about all of the elite athletes, business leaders, and other successful people talking about the power of meditation. Here are 7 benefits, backed by science, to help you better understand how a daily meditation practice can improve your life.

1. Lowers Stress
"Meditation has been proven to decrease mood disturbances and stress symptoms in both male and female patients..." Read the entire study here

2. Reduces pain
"After four-days of mindfulness meditation training, meditating in the presence of noxious stimulation significantly reduced pain-unpleasantness by 57% and pain-intensity ratings by 40% when compared to rest." Read the entire study here

3. Increases brain grey matter (which helps process information)
"Meditation practice has been shown not only to benefit higher-order cognitive functions but also to alter brain activity. " Read the entire study here

4. Improves happiness
"A short program in mindfulness meditation produces demonstrable effects on brain and immune function. These findings suggest that meditation may change brain and immune function in positive ways." Read the entire study here

5. Improves body awareness
"Results indicated a linear relationship in coherence, with meditators having highest levels... We conclude that the coherence between subjective and cardiac aspects of emotion is greater in those who have specialized training that promotes greater body awareness." Read entire study here

6. Enhanced focus and attention
"Brief mindfulness training significantly improved visuo-spatial processing, working memory, and executive functioning. Our findings suggest that 4 days of meditation training can enhance the ability to sustain attention; benefits that have previously been reported with long-term meditators." Read the entire study here

7. Improves handling of difficult emotions
​"Meditation may be associated with structural changes in areas of the brain that are important for sensory, cognitive and emotional processing. The data further suggest that meditation may impact aggregated declines in cortical structure." Read entire study here


Note: The great thing is that you can meditate for as little as 5 minutes per day and still receive many of these amazing benefits meditation offers. Try MeditateBot[free] for Messenger today and start benefiting from a daily meditation practice!


About us: At The Mindful Tech Lab, we develop and market apps that are easily ingrained into your daily routine to deliver positive results.

We are most known for our Facebook Messenger chatbots that help you live your best life, you can check them each out by clicking on their links:

MotivateBot - Motivation
MeditateBot - Meditation
Daily FitBot - Fitness
HealthyBot - General Health
Eat Clean Bot - Healthy Recipes
StoicBot - Stoic Philosophy

We’ve all been there before…sitting at the airport…patiently waiting at the gate for our flight to board…excited to kick off our “much needed” vacation…then the announcement…

“This flight has been DELAYED”

Of course, just as soon as you hear the word “Delayed” a series of negative reactions ensue:
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"I told her to book the earlier flight, why did she not listen and book this one!"
"This always happens to me!"
"Who is responsible for this!?"
"There goes my vacation!"
[sound familiar?]

These reactions are referred to as Second Darts. Second darts most often serve no real purpose and disproportionately harm us compared to the inevitable first darts. Simply, they are a result of the mind reacting negatively to the experience.

When first darts don’t even exist
One of the saddest parts of all is that many first darts don’t even exist — they are entirely drummed up in our mind.

Have you ever thought about the scenario of your boss calling you into their office to tell you that you’ve been laid off. Perhaps you’ve been called out in meetings the past few weeks and are feeling less than comfortable about your work product. On top of that, you’ve heard rumors circulating around the office that layoffs are coming soon! So what do you do???
Naturally, you fire off a first dart → I’m going to get laid off. Then, the second darts ensue….

"How am I going to pay for my son’s school!?"
"We are going to have to move in with my parents because I can’t afford our mortgage!"
"The market is terrible, how the heck am I going to find a job!?"
"My wife is going to think I’m a failure!"

Wait. Wait. Wait. You are now thinking about moving in with your parents (which is more than likely depressing you and affecting your current mood) based of an entirely hypothetical situation — getting laid off. Doesn’t this seem crazy?

Negative reactions to positive events
Sometimes we actually react negatively to situations that are inherently positive in nature. Think about a time whenever something that was supposed to be great for you actually resulted in you thinking about it in a negative light.

So your boss just offered you a great opportunity at work to step up and take on a bigger role → you can’t stop thinking about whether or not you’ll fail and disappoint (second dart)…

"What if I look dumb in a meeting with Executives?"
"I’m not supposed to be in charge of something this important?"
Am I even smart enough to do this?
"So what’s happening in the brain"

​It is extremely important to realize that even just thinking about a first dart kicks off a series of effects on the body. To paint the picture a bit more, here is the chain of events that occur once a first dart is set off in the untrained mind.

First Dart: Getting laid off from work…

1. The thalmus (this is the “relay station” in the middle of your brain) sends an alert signal to your brain stem — causing a release of norepinephrine throughout your brain.
2. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) sends signals to your major organs and muscle groups preparing them to“fight or flight”.
3. The hypothalamus (the brain’s main regulator of the endocrine system) prompts the pituitary gland to signal the adrenal glands to release epinephrine (adrenaline) and cortisol — better known as the “stress hormones”.

How to avoid second darts
The good thing about all of this is that with a little bit of self-awareness and positive filtering of your thoughts, you can save your body and mind from the negative physiological and psychological impacts.Here are a few ways:
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• Accept the inevitable (first darts) — no use crying over spilled milk. Pain and heartache are some terrible aspects of life, but are outweighed by the greatness of it all.
• Look on the bright side — find the positive side of what just happened. Your flight got delayed…go walk around the airport and get some exercise before you have to sit for 4hrs. You are getting laid off…finally you get a chance to find a job you actually want!
• Be mindful of your thoughts — start by noticing when a second dart (or hypothetical first dart) arises and just acknowledge that it’s there. Over time, you’ll notice the second darts won’t try to come in anymore because they know you won’t grasp on to them. Try MeditateBot to start forming a daily meditation practice.
• Practice makes perfect — your brain is a muscle and needs to be trained. The more you act or believe a certain way those neural pathways are strengthened.
• Think about what’s happening in the brain — just knowing that these negative thoughts are sending signals to your body and causing unnecessary stress is sometimes all you need to catch them before you start.
• Relax your body and breathe slow — by doing this you will activate the calming part of your nervous system and halt the fight-or-flight area.
• Understand second darts are unnecessary — our brains have an evolutionary bias to focus on the negative. This was of course back when we roamed with deadly lions and bears and needed to focus our attention on what might harms us.

“There is only one way to happiness,” Epictetus taught the Romans, “and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” 
― Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Eric Rems
Co-founder, The Mindful Tech Lab - Check out all of our amazing apps to help improve your life here

Over the past few years, Facebook Messenger has become the go to place for over a billion people worldwide to engage in their daily conversations. Though over the past year, it’s also quickly become the place where these same people are getting their daily news, weather updates, booking travel, style advice and much more. 

This phenomenon began back in April 2016 when Facebook opened up their API for developers to create chatbots — programs to simulate human conversation. The rise of chatbots are giving brands an entirely new way to communicate with their audience at scale, a way that is so innately human…through conversation.

New Habits are Hard
When launching a new technology product, one of the biggest challenges is getting people to use it daily. New apps struggle with this often. Think about all of the times you’ve downloaded an app, used it once or twice, then deleted it or never opened it again. It’s hard to create that stickiness that keeps people coming back.

This same issue product makers face with getting people to use their apps daily, we all face in our lives with trying to creating a new positive habit.

Want to start working out? Ok, you go to the gym three days straight, then something comes up and you can’t make it, then again you miss it. A few weeks later the thought of going to the gym is so far in the back of your mind it never resurfaces.

In my opinion, the key to forming and sustaining any new habit is two fold:

1. Making the barrier to entry as low as possible. 
2. Working it into your existing daily routine.

An Idea
As I thought through this with one of my own habit struggles, meditating daily, I decided to test the forming of a new habit by leveraging the power of Facebook Messenger — a place which already had my eyeballs as it was quickly becoming part of my morning routine for news, weather, etc.

The end result of a weekend personal hack-a-thon was MeditateBot — a Messenger chatbot that teaches the benefits of meditation, surfaces a variety of meditations, and even lets you schedule a daily reminder — all for free within Facebook Messenger.

I’m extremely happy to say that after 4 weeks since launch I have successfully meditated daily using MeditateBot. And more importantly, so have over 25,000 other people :)
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Here’s how I made it habit forming enough for me keep it up a daily practice for 4 weeks and counting…

Schedule a Daily Reminder​