5 Reasons Why I Meditate

This article was originally published on Thrive Global.

It was January of 2011 when I was first introduced to the practice of meditation. I was at Pure Yoga — a posh Upper East Side yoga studio in NYC — for part 1 of my yoga teacher training. Although I had been practicing yoga (asana practice, or the physical practice of yoga that is) for a few years by then and enjoying the spiritual aspect of yoga, I had not taken up the practice of meditation.

By the time I signed up for my yoga teacher training, I understood that meditation was the ultimate reason the physical practice of yoga was invented (so that one could sit comfortably for long periods of silence —though I, like many, consider the physical practice of yoga very much a meditation in itself, a moving meditation that is) and that the spiritual masters meditated to achieve enlightenment and prescribed to others to do the same. And yet, I had kept my yoga practice meditation free up until that point.

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