It may seem like learning how to exhale at the beginning of your meditation is a pretty small thing to worry about.  However, there are reasons that are both physiological and spiritual for you to know the difference.  Today I am going to talk about each of these reasons so that you can best know which is optimal for your practice.  Spoiler alert: they are both acceptable but not for all instances.

Many people nurture a meditation habit to help themselves become calmer, more focused.  In short, they do it for themselves, which is totally cool.  The better thing to know is that you're not just making you better, you are making the world better.  Come listen how.

There are other focuses for meditation; other objects or sounds to help you become mindful.  However, none of them are as prevalent as your breath.  Today I will discuss just why that is.

Whether you are just starting out meditating or have been doing it for years, there is one thing you always here; focus on your breath.  It may sound like a simple concept, but is it.  It certainly will be after today. In today's episode I am going to talk about what exactly that simple little phrase means.

When was the last time you got sick? If you had a cold, wouldn't you want the symptoms to last a little less? Heck, wouldn't you want to be able to get healthier faster? If you answered yes to these questions, it's time to start meditating.  Mediation increases your immune response and allows you to heal faster.  However, sometimes you do get sick, and the last thing on your mind is meditating.  Well, there are ways to continue your practice while sick, and I talk about it today.

if you have meditated even once, you no doubt experienced a sense of calm, you relaxed for the amount of time in your session.  However, mediation isn't simply about experiencing the benefits within your seated practice, as you become more proficient at meditating, sticking to a daily habit, you will begin to see how the benefits are making their way into your daily life.  Today I talk about ways to facilitate that process as I talk about four ways to extend your mediation practice into your day.

Ian White Maher is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and has served churches in New York City and North Carolina. Presently he lives at the Cambridge Zen Center, one of the largest residential Buddhist temples in North America. He is a retreat leader, spiritual director, and is working on a book about the possibilities of spiritual transformation. To see more of his work visit his website at ianwhitemaher.com

Will Henshall is the founder of Focus@will, the streaming music service designed to increase focus and attention. I am rebroadcasting this episode to help listeners understand what better focus can be like. Of course we all know that meditation leads to increased focus as well.

Grant Sabatier is the creator of Millennial Money, a personal finance, investing, and entrepreneurship community dedicated to financial independence and early retirement. At 24 he was broke and living with his parents.  Fast forward5 years later and he had made over one million dollars.  It took hard work and many hard hours, but the greatest outcome was the ability to live a fuller life, a deeper life.

Since discovering meditation in his mid-40s, he has used this engineering mindset to understand how mindfulness works and how we can use it for real-world applications. So apart from the obvious health benefits, Tom teaches authors how to ‘meditate’ to get inspiration and words for their books. He works with businesses showing them how to tap into light bulb moments on demand. He also teaches how we can change the nature and speed of our thoughts so we can get more done in less time.