3 Reasons You Keep Quitting Your Meditation Practice

You're a regular at your Vinyasa yoga class, jade roll in the morning, and even choke back mystery tonics for the sake of gut health. But one daily wellness practice just doesn't seem to stick: meditation. You know meditation is good for you. After all, the science is in: It reduces anxiety and inflammation, reverses body age, increases your productivity, and even increases sex drive.

So why do you keep quitting your meditation practice?

How many times have you sat down to meditate and your thoughts kept firing off at a mile a minute? Suddenly, you can't stop thinking about that intense work meeting, or your friend's new dog, or how much you'd love a doughnut even though you haven't eaten a doughnut in months (years?). Then the guilt creeps in because aren't you supposed to clear your mind during this meditation thing?

Here's the news, friend: The mind thinks involuntarily just like the heart beats involuntarily.

I get it—we're all busy. But this may be the most important thing you can take away from this article: Meditation actually gives you back time in your day.

Let me explain: When we meditate, we're actually giving our bodies rest that is five times deeper than sleep. We are de-exciting the nervous system and reducing stress at the cellular level. By taking care of all of these things during our meditation, when we go to sleep at night, our body doesn't have to work so hard clearing the stress from our day and instead uses this time to rest deeply. Hundreds of students—myself among them—report needing less sleep nightly after starting the practice.

Plus, during meditation, we're strengthening the connection between our left brain and right brain, which means we can still access creative solutions during high-demand, high-stakes situations. Meditation also dramatically improves productivity, allowing you to blow through your to-do list in less time. Suddenly, tasks that used to take you five hours might take you only two.

Not to mention the many physical and emotional benefits of a daily practice—it's like going to therapy while getting a facial AND taking a nap all at the same time...

When you begin certain types of meditation, there is a period I call "unstressing," during which you may experience a physical and emotional catharsis, or detox. This can include anything from irritability, sadness, or fatigue. While it may sound unpleasant (and it is), it's your body's response to releasing the stress your body has stored on a cellular level over your entire life.

When you're going through this phase, it's easy to want to quit. But the emotional detox lasts only a short time, and what's on the other side is a lifetime of bliss, fulfillment, less stress, and extraordinary performance.