Heat Therapy & Meditating Tips
Kick Your Infrared Sauna Routine Up a Notch With Meditation!
Maybe you have a stellar infrared sauna routine already (if not, you can still develop one!), and maybe you’ve recently started meditating (and if you haven’t, here’s your sign!). After all, studies have proven both of these self-care tactics to be highly beneficial for the health and well-being of your body and mind.
So, here’s a twist: Why not use your infrared sauna sessions for meditating?
The truth is we rarely tap into the unconscious mind—unless we’re asleep and dreaming! Yet, meditation and the unconscious mind go hand-in-hand. In fact, studies show that those who meditate are actually more aware of their unconscious mind1. This means that individuals who meditate are more mindful, less impulsive, and find regulating their emotions that much easier.
Inevitably, there’s something to it. And if you meditate but don’t have an infrared sauna routine, you can still hop on that train. It’s never too late or too early to start improving your life with wellness strategies—like infrared therapy and meditation. In this article, we offer up some key tips for meditation to help you tap into your unconscious and ultimately, optimize your life. So, keep reading!
Why Meditate?
Meditation is a useful tool to eliminate excessive noise and distractions in our daily life. With technology, we are constantly stimulated and constantly reacting. However, meditation teaches us to become more mindful and aware—and even more proactive!
In fact, like infrared sauna therapy, meditation helps with stress relief2 (something many of us need a little bit more of in our lives). Studies even show how meditation reduces inflammation caused by stress3. Taking all of this a step further, it’s been found that meditation actually reduces the stress hormone, cortisol, which may help decrease one’s risk of developing stress-related diseases, such as migraines, ulcers, heart disease, and more4.
Combined, infrared therapy and meditation offer the perfect strategy to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and relax the body and mind. The parasympathetic nervous system works to reduce cortisol production and help promote healing of the body, ensuring balance and good health and well-being.
It’s further suggested that meditation and infrared sauna sessions can reduce one’s risk of depression5,6, potentially indicating that sauna sessions with meditation can greatly enhance one’s overall mental well-being and quality of life.
Additionally, infrared sauna sessions have been shown to increase the sensitivity of receptors in the brain that respond to serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine7,8. In other words, infrared sauna sessions boost those feel-good chemicals while meditation inhibits stress and adverse related brain chemicals. Simply put, combining all of the above can make you a happier (and more relaxed!) person. So, how can you enhance these effects? We’ve got a few tips!
6 Meditating Tips
When you first start, meditation is tough, especially if you’ve never done it before. Like most things, practice is key. So, while that first session, despite it being maybe five minutes, might feel agonizingly long, stick with it. The benefits of meditation compound significantly with time.
Now, with that in mind, here are our top five meditating tips:
1. Try Different Types of Meditation
Here’s the thing: Like physical exercise, there are many different types of meditation. And part of getting into a habit of meditation is finding one type that works for you.
For instance, there’s the basic form of mindfulness meditation. This is where you set a timer and bring your attention to focus on your breathing. If a thought comes, you simply observe it and let it pass, always bringing your attention back to your inhales and exhales.
Mantra meditation is another form of basic meditation, where you chant a phrase or word that resonates with you as you meditate. There’s also progressive relaxation meditation, where you systematically tense up each part of the body and then fully relax each body part.
So, don’t be shy about trying different forms of meditation if you find the first one doesn’t quite hit the mark for you.
2. Start With 1-5 Minutes
While many meditation gurus tend to meditate for 20, 30, 60 minutes, or more, as a beginner, you should ease into it. This usually means meditating for a minute or two to start, then gradually increasing your time once you get used to it or the practice becomes easier.
For meditation in an infrared sauna, it’s probably best to cap your meditation sessions between 20-60 minutes, so you don’t overdo it when it comes to heat exposure. And again, 20 or more minutes is reserved for experts in both realms. There’s no shame in only using 5 minutes of your sauna session dedicated to meditation. You never want to get into a situation where you become dehydrated throughout your infrared sauna session. Thus, you will definitely want to hydrate before and after (even more than you usually would if you decide to meditate during your infrared therapy).
3. Avoid Self-Judgment!
During your meditation and infrared sauna session, avoid beating yourself up if thoughts come to you and even if you get lost in them for a second or two. When a thought pops into your mind (as it likely will!), try to recognize when this happens and simply observe it, then send it on its way. Try to avoid indulging in the thought. But if you do, don’t judge yourself. Again, it’s all about simply redirecting your focus toward your meditation session.
4. Meditate At The Same Time Each Day To Form A Habit
As previously mentioned, the benefits of meditation compound over time. Performing your meditation and infrared sauna session at the same time each day can help you create a new habit where this merely becomes a part of your daily or weekly routine.
5. Ensure You Won’t Be Interrupted
If you have young kids, try to find a time where you won’t be interrupted (maybe after bedtime or before the kids are up). Meditation requires the ultimate focus, and distractions truly take away from the benefit that this incredible practice has to offer.
6. Add Sound
Adding meditation music in the background may further help enhance your focus and your meditation practice. There are many online playlists to choose from, along with various guided meditation tracks, helping you tap into your unconscious mind while reaping the benefits of heat therapy!
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References:
- 1. https://academic.oup.com/nc/article/2016/1/niw007/2757127
- 2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24395196/
- 3. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0889159112004758
- 4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23724462/
- 5. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24395196/
- 6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6422146/
- 7. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1607735/
- 8. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18396259/
