There are benefits to meditating both before and after exercise. And the best answer for you will depend on the types of meditation and exercise you are doing as well as what your goals are.
Meditation (mind-based) and exercise (body-based) are complementary practices and when done properly together, the benefits of each become enhanced. So, all you need to do is determine which order you will do them so that you can reap the greatest rewards.
Mediation before exercise can help focus your mind on the task ahead, and with breath awareness, can help to oxygenate your body, allowing you to have a more powerful practice.
After exercising, meditation can help promote relaxation and quicker recovery as well as feelings of peace, contentment, and overall well-being.
So, you could benefit from either, or, if you have time, you could do both…. After all, it’s been said that ‘The best meditation (and exercise) are the ones that you do!’
What Are The Benefits Of Meditating Before Exercise?
Meditation helps to settle your ‘monkey mind.’ For me, it allows for the release of the habitual thoughts that are constantly fighting for attention in my busy mind.
By becoming relaxed and concentrating on breath awareness, I can focus my mind to a still point. And the benefits of this are that it sets me up for a more engaging and rewarding exercise practice.
Meditating helps because ‘Where Our Attention Goes, Our Energy Flows.’ So, when we become more focused during our exercise practice, we will perform better at this moment, and if done regularly, we will reap greater rewards over time.
Therefore, Meditating Before Exercise Is Of Great Benefit Because:
– Meditation helps create discipline which is an essential component to obtaining your fitness goals.
– Meditation will help center your mind so you can remain focused on the task at hand without becoming distracted.
– Breath-centered meditation will help oxygenate all the cells in your body, including your brain. This assists your nervous system to become relaxed, enabling you to move more efficiently and freely.
– If your workout is going to be overly strenuous, it will be difficult for you to sit in meditation afterward. Therefore, it will be better to meditate prior to exercising rather than trying to relax when your body is experiencing physical discomfort…. (Having said this, I also like to sometimes meditate when I am completely exhausted as it gives a totally different experience.)
What’s The Best Form of Meditation To Do Before Exercising?
If your meditation goal is to improve your exercise session, then you will benefit from several different forms of meditation.
1) Breath Awareness: Sitting in any comfortable position, closing your eyes, and becoming aware of your breath is something anyone can do. And in itself, this is a beneficial practice. Five to ten minutes is enough to still your body and oxygenate your system.
To ramp it up, you could go for twenty to thirty minutes and incorporate any of the breathing exercises as explained in this article at HealthLine.com
2) Activate Meditation: Try doing some active stretching with focused awareness. Doing a simple yoga stretching routine with conscious awareness to warm up your muscles can be very relaxing as well as therapeutic. Stretching warms muscles up which makes them less prone to injury. Check out this basic 15-minute full-body routine from Mady Morrison.
3) Mindfulness Meditation: This involves focusing your awareness on different parts of your body and noticing, without judgment, how you are feeling. The very act of mindfully focusing your attention on a specific area of your body will direct more of your energy into that area. Again, where your attention goes, your energy flows… and this means that you can direct more focus and energy into your body which will help carry you through your exercise session.
What’s The Best Form of Meditation To Do After Exercising?
After working out, many people, including myself, find that they are more in tune with how their body is feeling. This is likely because your body is pumped up with endorphins (a ‘feel good’ brain chemical that acts as a natural pain and stress reliever) and it’s therefore easy to slip into a deep state of appreciation for your body and what you can experience through it.
A body-scan meditation will help specific areas to let go of any stress that accumulated from a vigorous workout which will help promote a sense of overall well-being.
Meditating after exercising has also been shown to counter some of the unwanted effects that working out brings. These include:
– Helps with alleviating and managing chronic pain. Meditation helps lower blood pressure which allows tension to more easily leave your body making it less sensitive to pain.
– By controlling your mind more efficiently, you will be able to take better control of what ‘pain receptors’ you are responding to.
– Meditation after exercise lowers cortisol levels, thereby reducing stress and anxiety and helping your body to focus on muscle recovery and growth, as well as to relax and experience an ‘inner peace.’
– By reducing stress and anxiety levels, which both contribute to weight gain, meditation can enable you to burn more fat while resting by increasing your basal metabolic rate.
– Often, exercise will leave many people with a deficit of oxygen in their blood. And for you to recover, you need to re-oxygenate your blood so that the cells get this vital element essential for recovery, growth, and proper functioning. And breath awareness meditation is the quickest way to achieve this.
– Many people, myself included, report that it’s easier to stabilize the mind after a workout that’s not too extreme in intensity. When the body is exhausted, it’s ready to relax. Therefore, it’s easier for the mind to let go of thoughts and just become centered in the peace that being aware of a relaxed body brings.
All the above contribute to realigning your body and mind into more optimal states so they can heal themselves from the stresses of daily living. And this means that you will become a better version of yourself, physically, mentally, and emotionally when you meditate and exercise regularly.
What’s The Best Form of Meditation To Do After Exercising?
If you haven’t included any stretching in your exercise session, it’s a great idea to do some mindful stretching
to end your workout. Five to ten minutes is considered the minimum.
This can be followed up with five to ten minutes of mindful breathing exercises. And to finish off, I would add at least ten minutes of total relaxation where you just become aware of your body and mind, without any judgment…. Just allow them to ‘be’ as they are without trying to change anything.
At the end of my meditations, I add a short visualization exercise, when I focus my attention on the future version of myself that I am creating…. the ideal version of how I want my life to be if I could be, do, and have anything and everything that I desire….. Why do I do this? Because thoughts create reality….
What’s The Takeaway From All Of This?
Combining exercise and meditation has proven beneficial effects. And the order you do them is going to depend on your desired benefits.
You could try doing a month of meditating before exercise, and then a month of meditating after exercise to determine which sequence suits you the best. Just listen to your body and you will know if one is better than the other and which one best suits your routine.
I’m sure you will discover as I did, that, either way, is beneficial as the one you do first always makes the other one better.
If you want more focus in your exercise program, meditate first. And if you want more relaxation and quicker recovery after exercise, then meditate after…..
