The Sydney CBD's Got a Brand New Drop-In Meditation Studio
Reserve an armchair and de-stress on your lunchbreak.
The modern world can be very demanding. Whether it’s the stress of dealing with an impossible letter lineup in Words with Friends or never feeling you're truly free from your work email, life's day-to-day pressures and our inability to switch off from screens and stimulus has led to a rise in mental health problems among young professionals. Luckily, the easiest way to counter stress and poor mental health (apart from jogging, which is the worst) is through meditation, which is what the good folk at Centred Mediation in Sydney’s CBD can help you with.
Though it’s not the first modern meditation centre to crop up, but it’s Australia's first guided meditation drop-in studio. This means it's one of the best for busy people and full-time workers as their 30-minute guided meditation session are designed to chill you out on your lunchbreak and don’t even require you to sit cross-legged on the floor in your ironed suit pants. The centre is set up with comfortable armchairs, where you repose with a cup of tea and allow your brain to stop worrying about quarterly fiscal doodads and synergy feelings. Sounds pretty dreamy.
Studies indicate that even a small amount of meditation is incredibly effective in preventing stress in the long term. Science folks in cool white coats will tell you that stress, the release of adrenaline and other fight-or-flight hormones in response to threatening stimuli, has a compounding effect. Those who are chronically stressed may develop an overactive amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for instinctive survival reactions) and beat neural pathways into the brains that take a fair bit of work to reprogram. So meditation, far from being a stereotypically hippy pursuit, is technically a life hack to help reduce your current stress levels and prevent stress from spiralling out of control in the future.
Centred Meditation offers these bite-sized classes at optimally convenient times for workers, from Monday to Friday with sessions running in the morning, around lunchtime and after work. Classes start at $16 for a casual class, $14.50 per class with a ten-class pass, or they offer great value monthly passes for $139. Consider this your investment in a gym for your mind and remember: healthy bodies and healthy minds are never mutually exclusive.
Find Centred Meditation inside the City Mutual Building, Level 10, 66 Hunter Street. Call (02) 8006 1403 or visit www.centredmeditation.com.au to reserve an armchair.
Images: Dollar Photo Club and Centred Meditation.
