In this video Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, introduces the first week of a 30‑day wellness challenge focused on building a sustainable meditation habit. She explains that a restless “monkey brain” is normal, describing how random neuronal firing creates thoughts that can spiral into negative thought trains, leading to anxiety and depression. Meditation, she argues, is simply the practice of retraining the brain to shift attention from these thoughts to neutral anchors such as the breath and the hands, thereby breaking harmful patterns. McColgan outlines a very short, beginner‑friendly 2‑minute body‑and‑breath awareness meditation, emphasizing the importance of starting small to create a lasting habit. She provides concrete posture options—sitting in a supportive chair, lying in bed, or using a cushion—along with practical tips for comfort and focus. The guided portion walks listeners through settling, breathing, hand placement, and gently returning attention when thoughts arise. She stresses that the practice should be done daily, gradually extending the duration (up to about 7 minutes by the end of the 30 days) as comfort grows. Throughout, she references the strong research base for meditation’s mental‑health benefits and frames the practice as a non‑hippie, evidence‑based stress‑reduction tool.
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I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, and today I'm coming to you with a meditation practice for the 30 Days of Wellness Challenge. It's the first year we've done it. I'm really excited to offer it. It's a totally free program, and for 30 days we're just adding lovely wellness practices to our life, trying to build a habit, starting slow and ending up where you can make some huge impacts on your life when you really take on these challenges. So learning to meditate is very stressful for some people. Over the years, I've just had so So many students come up to me and say that, you know, they can't meditate, their mind is all over the place, it's just crazy. So what I think is helpful to explain to people before you start a meditation practice is that your brain, if you have like a quote-unquote monkey brain where your brain's all over the place, congratulations, your brain is working perfectly and that's an awesome thing. Because of my training in psychology as well, I have a very different and kind of interesting perspective, I think, on meditation practice and the way that it works and the way that your brain works. And so the brain is actually pretty simple, and I think this can help explain why meditation is difficult and yet why it's such an important practice. So your brain is firing, neurons are firing all the time. It's an electrical impulse, boom, it fires, a thought's created. Well, that thought is pretty random. It's like You know, the reason people have depression and anxiety is typically, you know, we get on these thought trains that aren't even right or true or real. So my brain, my neuron fires, brain's working perfectly fine, creates a thought, and the thought is, "Ugh, I'm stupid," or whatever it is. And then the problem comes in when your brain creates that thought and then you start to attach yourself to it. And you're like, "Well, yeah, I really am stupid. Why did I screw up that thing that I did last week?" And you kind of go on and on on this thought train, right? And that's creating a pattern of thinking that's very detrimental to your life. That's what, again, creates a lot of depression and anxiety in people. So that one little fire up a neuron that created this random thought has led you down this path of despair, which is just silly, right? So this is where meditation comes in. You're retraining your brain to, instead of focusing on a random thought, to focus instead on your body or your breath or something else and to just catch yourself in those patterns. That's really all meditation is. There's nothing super fancy or magical about it, in my opinion. I mean, there is something magical about it because it's so good for people. And of all the different kinds of practices that us yogis do, meditation is one that has some of the strongest research behind it. So if you'll Google, you know, um, meditation research, you'll find plenty of results showing all these wonderful benefits to your brain. But the most important and the best one, I think, is to get you out of these negative thought patterns. And so if you look at meditation in that way, it really becomes a necessity in daily life. And it also becomes this thing that's not so kind of hippie dippy and crazy, but it becomes a real stress reducer in your life and a way to just create more happiness and more well-being in your life. And so that's why this meditation practice is part of our 30 Days of Wellness. The meditation I'm going to share with you now is pretty simple. It's a body and breath awareness type meditation. It's only 2 minutes. Anybody can do almost anything for 2 minutes. It's not that long a time, but that's kind of the point of our whole wellness program is you try to make these big aggressive changes. We've all done it before. You say, I'm going to stop, you know, eating this or doing that. And next thing you know, you've already given up because it was too much. But if you take small progressives steps on your way to creating a new habit, then the habit is much more likely to stick. So, for 2 minutes a day for this first week is all I'm asking for meditation. I'm going to lead you through it. Often guided meditation is a lot easier for beginners, so that's what we'll try. Where you do meditation— here's the other thing that I think is very interesting. So traditionally you have, you know, sitting cross-legged on the floor, knees bent, all these things. I have really bad knees, and I can tell you that if I had to meditate for longer than maybe 5 minutes, it really creates a lot of pain and lasting effects in my body that are not good. So over the years, I've had, uh, had two ways that I do it, and this may or may not work for you. Um, but what I really recommend, especially for beginners, even if you're very flexible and can sit on the floor, I would sit in a chair, sit in a comfortable chair with your feet flat on the floor and has good support on your back. That's going to put you in the best position that you can easily breathe, that you can focus on meditating instead of being focused on pain in your body. The second way, and this one is slightly maybe more controversial and more challenging, is to meditate in bed. I often meditate to begin my day after I'm fully awake and I've been lying in bed. I settle back down, I create a meditation feeling and focus, and then I meditate while I'm in bed. So the problem with this for a lot of people, especially if you're trying to do this at night, is that you just fall asleep. And so you kind of lose— you know, it is an awesome way to fall asleep, but you might lose the benefit of the actual meditation. So just decide what works best for you. If you do it in the middle of the day, maybe laying on the bed is fine if that's the way that you can get most comfortable and focused. Again, sitting in a chair with your feet flat on the floor. Where I'm recording today, I don't happen to have a chair, so I'm going to do it in a more traditional sort of yoga way, which you would you have a meditation cushion, or you might roll up your mat to have something to sit on. And you also, most ideally, would like to sit in a position that allows your knees to be below your hips. That's very comfortable for most people. And then a long, straight spine. So, because my Insight Timer, which is what I usually like to use, is on my phone, which I'm using to record this, I'm going to use my computer to set the 2-minute meditation. And then I will lead you through the practice. So we'll just have like a couple of seconds at the beginning to kind of, you know, settle down and get focused, and then the 2 minutes will begin, and then, you know, at the end we'll have the ending. So let me just make sure that the sound is on, and, uh, we'll get started. Begin getting settled into your seat, feet flat on the floor, and hands come together, right hand over left as it rests in your lap. And begin breathing in and out through your nose, long deep breaths. As you inhale, feel your chest and belly expand with air.
And as you exhale, feel your belly press towards your spine. Inhale, expand. And exhale, belly to spine. So as you find your own rhythm of breath, Inhaling and exhaling through your nose. Begin to bring your awareness to your hands. Feel how your right hand is laying on top of your left, and feel the connection of the back of your left hand with wherever it might be touching your body, your lap or your leg. And then as you continue to focus on breathing in and out through your nose, and one hand on top of the other, start to notice if your brain goes towards any other thoughts. Whenever you might have a thought, recognize it, acknowledge it, and then simply bring your focus and your awareness back to your breath and on your hands. As we explained, thoughts pop into your mind. That's not directed thinking. That's just your brain doing its job.— and that's your 2 minutes.
So as you can see, 2 minutes really isn't very long at all to meditate. Just as soon as you start to get settled and start to breathe deeply, it's just about over. But again, that's why we want to start you out slow so you just get used to the practice. You just get used to bringing awareness to your breath and to not getting on that thought train. So as you start to get more used to this in the first week, and again it's every day just simply taking 2 minutes, but you might think to yourself, wow, this is really, you know, doing me some great benefit here, that's a little too short. So if that's the case, don't even use this video. Just sit down with your Insight Timer, set it for maybe 3 minutes or maybe 4 minutes, or maybe it's just 2. It's what whatever you have time for. And again, you're starting slowly to build this up. So maybe there's a day or two where you're like, oh, this is super easy for 2 minutes, and then you think you're going to extend it, and then you go to extend and you're like, wow, I'm sitting here a long time. So that's all I'm asking for the first week is 2 minutes each day. And it's that very simple practice of just settling your body, starting to breathe, not trying to create any sound or anything with the breathing, just very normal in and out, but really being aware of that expansion of your chest and belly and then the pressing in as you release the air. That's one physical anchor to focus your brain. And then the second anchor of focus is your hands. So again, anytime a thought comes in, we're not getting attached to it. We're just recognizing, yep, there's a thought, not even right or true. Now I'm focusing on my hands.
So that's it.
So that's the first week's meditation. Uh, next week we'll increase a little bit and over the 30 days we'll eventually get up to 7 minutes, which again is not too long, but it's because I want to create a nice habit, and I want to create a situation where you're not feeling like it's a burden. And then as you do the meditations and you notice what a great benefit it is to you, my hope for you is that you'll continue meditating over the whole of 2019 and then extend it as what works for you. So again, thank you so much for joining us, and I hope you enjoy your 30 Days of Wellness Challenge.
