This is Episode 2434 of your daily meditation podcast.

I'm Mary Mechley and welcome back to Day 3 of our series this week.

This week our theme is an important one and it's one that you may notice the world could benefit from.

And that is improving your emotional intelligence.

All around us we see examples of how not to respond to stressful situations and we especially notice this in the news.

I think if you look around your world you might find that people are experiencing more stress as we continue life during a pandemic.

So when you are tempted to respond to stress in a way that's not so productive, think twice.

In fact that is your challenge this week.

Your challenge is to think twice before responding to stress in a way that's going to spiral you or others downward.

And take the high road and as you do this I want to share a little research with you.

I'm also going to be guiding you in a breathing technique in today's meditation.

When you calm your breath you're able to calm your emotional state.

I want to share with you also that one way to do this is by making sure that when you meditate your body is very comfortable.

In fact I recommend that if you sit on the floor on a chair or on your bed, prop your hips up with a cushion sitting on the edge of a cushion.

You'll notice that this rolls your hips forward taking pressure off your spine but most importantly it allows you to keep your spine nice and neutral.

And you're able to be more alert as you meditate you won't slump forward which tends to happen when you sit for a while even for a short while when you meditate.

And this is so important that in fact learning how to sit properly encompassed an entire day of my meditation teacher training.

And to help you do this I am often asked my favorite meditation cushion and it is from a company called Mindful and Modern.com.

You may remember a few weeks ago the interview with one of the co-founders of this mindfulness based company Nick he shared the entire theme for the week and selected all the meditation techniques for you.

You can go back and listen to that series called unlock your hidden potential and if you would like an incredibly comfortable cushion to help you meditate better and longer mindful and modern cushions are produced with a hundred percent cotton batting inside or a natural buckwheat hole.

That's my favorite I have a rectangular cushion that I sit on to pad my heels and knees and also a round buckwheat hole stuffed cushion that I sit on.

You can receive a generous discount of 15% off your total purchase when you enter the code meditate daily at mindful and modern.com that's m-i-n-d-f-u-l and modern m-o-d-e-r-n dot com again the code is meditate daily.

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