10 Amazing Benefits Of Meditating Every Morning

My morning routine has been the same for years: I wake up at around 6 a.m. in eager anticipation of my first meditation of the day. I start by freshening up in the bathroom, then I go back to my bed and sit with my eyes closed for 20 minutes before getting ready for work. I’ve been following this routine each day for more than a decade.

Ironically, I don’t consider myself to be a particularly disciplined person. Like many people, I don’t look forward to doing things that don’t provide me with some type of immediate gratification. But I stick to my morning meditation routine because it not only leaves me with a tangible feeling of clarity to start my day, but the ripple effects of meditating extend throughout other important areas of my day and life.

Surely you’ve heard about all the scientific benefits of how meditation changes your brain and rests the body. But here are 10 practical, unexpected benefits that occur as a direct result of a consistent morning meditation routine:

For men, the cortisol released during meditation can increase testosterone levels, which results in more energy while working out. Plus, your workout will seem much more enticing when you’re more rested and less stressed—a by-product of morning meditation.

Men might not talk about it, but we all want to be great lovers. That means not only having strong muscles but also having a healthy libido. You may find meditating provides you with more patience and sensitivity when it comes to being present with your partner.

Meditation activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which triggers a deep state of relaxation during the practice. So even though you may wake up from sleep still tired, after meditating for 20 minutes, you’ll get energy-boosting endorphins that’ll help you spring to life without having to rely solely on caffeine. However, caffeine also activates the sympathetic nervous system, so if meditation alone doesn't do it, hopefully you can go from two cups to just one.

The “busy mind” syndrome occurs because you don’t have your mental spam filter activated. Imagine if your email didn’t have a spam filter, and for every relevant message, you had to sift through hundreds of messages related to money scams, Viagra, and inkjet printer cartridges. Meditating helps filter out the internal and external “noise” and negative self-talk that can sabotage our otherwise sharp, clear perceptual acuity.

You’ll find that meditation allows you to more easily drop into a “flow state” in which you become adaptable to change. Unexpected traffic jam? No problem. Someone blows their horn at you in a parking lot? All good.

Meditation is like kryptonite to stress, with the primary side effects being increased happiness, better sleep, and more creativity. If there ever was a perfect solution to dissolving stress, it would be daily meditation.

Numerous studies have found that when you're stressed or sleep-deprived, you reach for bad-for-you foods. After building up momentum from your morning meditations, you may discover that cravings for doughnuts, fried foods, or lollipops also dissipate and get replaced by a craving for healthier, cleaner foods that the body will have an easier time digesting and turning into fuel for you to operate at a higher level. This is due to drop in cortisol and more intentional existence.

People who have difficulty multitasking tend to be more accident-prone, especially while driving. Meditation has been shown to increase your ability to multitask, and coincidentally it makes you a safer driver.

Although meditation is not a substitute for medical treatment, it has been shown to reduce pain, making it an ideal complement to more traditional approaches to health and wellness. I had daily headaches in my early 20s, and they didn’t go away until I changed my diet and began meditating.

Because daily meditation helps to release stress, it can make you more compassionate — and in the process, you become less judgmental and critical of others.

Here are some techniques to kick off your morning meditation routine: