Meditation can help you survive the 21st century. Meditation offers a time-honored antidote to fragmentation, alienation, isolation, and stress — even stress-related illnesses and depression. Although it won’t solve the external problems of your life, it does help you develop inner resilience, balance, and strength to roll with the punches and come up with creative solutions.

Meditation is an age-old practice that can help relieve a host of ills brought on by the fast pace of modern life. All you need to meditate is a quiet place to sit, the ability to direct your attention, and a simple meditation technique. As long as you give it a well-intentioned try, you can't go wrong.How to prepare for meditationMeditation is simple to do and doesn’t require any special equipment.

Just as with any other activity that brings value to your life, you can maximize your meditation experience by following a few simple guidelines. Plan for meditation time: Do it consistently — day after day. Like running, playing tennis, or lifting weights, meditation requires regular practice if you want to build the appropriate muscles and skills.

When most folks first consider taking up the practice of meditation, they usually have a few questions they want to have answered — and when they get started, they come up with a few more. Here are the answers to ten common questions to get you started on your journey. Will meditation make me too relaxed or spaced out to succeed at work or school?

You might find mindfulness meditation is a great way to start your workday. By the time you arrive at work in the morning, you may already be feeling stressed out. After a hectic hour or two preparing the kids for school or haggling with your partner or dealing with some emergency at home, followed by a commute through rush-hour traffic, you may have gotten your workday off to a harrowing start.

Besides overcoming separation, basic meditation practices contribute to the healing process in a number of essential ways. For some help with meditation, check out these basic meditation practices. Love and connectedness As Dean Ornish, MD, reveals in his groundbreaking research, love is more important than any other factor in the healing process, including diet and exercise.

Mediation offers healing power through imagery. In her book Staying Well with Guided Imagery, psychotherapist and guided-imagery pioneer Belleruth Naparstek cites extensive research that establishes three basic principles behind the healing power of imagery. These principles help explain the effectiveness of meditations that use imagery extensively.

If you’re a budding meditator, family life poses a twofold challenge. On the one hand, you may feel inclined to invite, encourage, or even coerce your loved ones to meditate with you. On the other, you may find that the people closest to you disturb your fragile, newfound peace of mind in ways that no one else can.

Anything you do or experience can provide you with an opportunity to practice mindfulness meditation. But you may want to begin with some of your usual activities — the ones you may be doing now on automatic pilot while you daydream, space out, or obsess. The truth is, even the most routine tasks can prove enjoyable and enlivening when you do them with wholehearted care and attention.