Meditation is a practice to gain insight into yourself and develop and strengthen your skills to be in touch with inner calm, inner peace and compassion -regardless of circumstances and challenges. This improves resilience in the face of stress, it makes you more gentle towards yourself and others,and contributes to inner calm and happiness. We know from scientific research that as little as 5-10 minutes of meditation each day can have positive effects.

Meditation requires courage and discipline; after all, it is not always pleasant to be still and attentively present with all the experiences in your life. Of course youll have thought about not having time to meditate. So meditation, in a sense, requires you to “swim against the current” and do something different from what your system tells you. In stillness, you may also encounter sadness, fatigue, fear, self-criticism, striving and even trauma. All our personal patterns will also show up in meditation and “you don’t see what you don’t see”. Therefore, it is advisable to learn to meditate with a teacher. A meditation teacher can give you pointers to properly develop your meditation technique so that you reap the benefits.

Barbara Doeleman-van Veldhoven has recorded some accessible meditations, so you can practice at any moment.

Do you really want to learn to meditate and further integrate mindfulness and compassion into your life and work, so that you develop more freedom, resilience and inner happiness? Check our International Compassion Community for our daily online meditations.