If you have never meditated before, then don’t let the word or idea put you of until you read this. It’s one of the biggest ‘edges’ you can get in Forex trading and I’ll some it up quickly.

The main problem with Forex traders is the not the strategy, but the traders inability to remain detached from trades, due to fear and greed. The main benefit of meditation is to create a state of pure inner peace and tranquility. Fear and greed simply cannot survive in this state. Nothing is lost through meditation, in fact, there are a almost countless things to be gained. The lack of greed doesn’t make you less ambitious in any way shape or form, it heightens it in a sense that is only known to mediators. Let me run though some of the other scientifically proven benefits of meditation, I’ll include citations.

• 1. Overcome stress completely (University of Massachusetts Medical School, 2003)
• 2. Boost your creativity (ScienceDaily, 2010)
• 3. Improve your sex life and increase your libido (The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2009)
• 4. Cultivate healthy habits that lead to weight loss (Journal Emotion, 2007)
• 5. Improve digestion and lower blood pressure (Harvard Medical School)
• 6. Decrease your risk of heart attack (The Stroke Journal, 2009)
• 7. Help overcome anxiety, depression, anger and confusion (Psychosomatic Medicine, 2009)
• 8. Decrease perception of pain and improve cognitive processing (Wake Forest University School of Medicine, 2010)
• 9. Increase your focus and attention (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2007)
• 10. Increase the size of your most important organ — your brain! (Harvard University Gazette, 2006)

And here are some of the problems that traders face.

• Interfering with trades, constant re-assessment of the market
• Lack of discipline
• Fear after losing one or more trades. Letting that fear affect the decision of the next trade
• Greed after a few big wins, trading above the required risk reward ratios. Thus putting the account at risk
• Not seeing trades as independent situations. Basing decisions on recent wins and losses, spelling disaster.

Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.” -Buddha

It’s a fairly common fact that 70% or more of your trading success is down to the psychology you posses, and not your charting skills. Meditation gives you a wholesomely realistic view on life, it create a state of pure inner peace so winning a trade or losing a trade are the same. They are all just events rippling out from the state of peacefulness. Different sides of the same coin. Win, lose it doesn’t matter.

The Buddha said you must practice joyful participation in the sufferings of the world. This doesn’t mean you aim to lose your trades, it mean when you do (which as a trader you will) you will see them as just leaning, you can be happy and joyful about the lesson you just leaned as opposed to the misery and suffering of losing some numbers from your trading account. A calm disposition is equally as important as developing chart skills, if not more so.

The negativity that surrounds some traders when they lose, often becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Literally the negativity in their minds attracts more negativity and makes them makes make more and more poor decisions. What do you think is more beneficial, to freak out and get your self worked up about a situation (losing a trade) that was in the past and there for now completely irrelevant and un-changeable, or calmly taking stock of why it happened and create some new neural pathways that you can learn from? Obviously the latter is going to far better for you short and long term. That’s why I developed a routine for meditating twice a day, in the morning and evenings. It’s totally clears your mind and makes trading a lot more fun, and more importantly profitable.

Relishing every moment in life, as if you chose it yourself will bring you great power. You can take power from every situation, nothing becomes positive or negative, they are all simply just events to deal with at the moment they happen. I can say with almost certainty that the non-mediators reading this, spend most of their waking life trapped by the constant ‘mind stream’ of reliving past situations, wishing the future to be a certain way, playing out fantasy’s that will likely never happen or are totally irrelevant. Some times these go on for years, in fact some go on for entire lifetimes. Seemingly simple problem that never get solved, why? This constant mind stream is not actually in fact you.

You are not your mind.

You mind is like a computer algorithm that is separate from your being, it will constantly try and run through it’s sequences to solve problems. If none are present it will search and find some, relevant or not, in most cases not. It will dig up old situations or project possible future events to try and solve, but of course it never does. It needs the problems there to survive. Its a simple machine but it will overrun your life if kept unchecked.

Most people wrongly assume that they are their minds, they identify with the insanity of their minds and create false egos based on protecting what they believe to be true. When the real truth is that the mind is simply a tool, to be used when required to solve life problems when they arise, and then to put the tool down again when the problem or situation is over. This might all sound like a shock or possibly for some, unbelievable, even cooky, but it’s absolutely true.

These are not my ideas, I’m simply bringing them to you to help you in your trading. If you look deeply now, you will know it to be true. You will certainly have had one or two situations where the mind stream was broken for just a few seconds, during a long bout of exercise, jumping off a high diving board, driving at high speeds or any other high intensity situation where you mind simply stops and your subconscious takes over . You will have felt the peace I’m speaking about ever so briefly then, and if you have you will know what I’m saying is right. Meditation will give unlimited access to that state. I never believed any of this until about 3 years ago when a dear friend (RIP Bob) gave me a book called the power of now. If you want to go deeper in to the subject I recommend reading it.

So what is mediation?

Simply defined it’s pure focus. What pure focus creates is space in the mind stream that let’s everything that’s left come to the surface. What’s left is an ineffable inner peace and tranquility that is unmatched by any life event. It may take a few attempts when you first start to see any benefit, the older you are the longer it will take. You need around one min per day, for every year old you are. Our minds have a layer of stress created crust that takes sometime to break though when you first start, but there is literally no end to how deeply you can go with it. When you first start the peace will only really be present during the meditation, but the more you progress, and the more your body and mind get in tune with each other, the longer it will last post-mediation. Enlightenment is essentially getting the constant state of meditative peace so stay with you during normal activity (of course, what that brings is for you to find out). Anybody can achieve this, it’s not reserved for spiritual gurus or the like, every human contains the seed of enlightenment.

Are you ready to give it a shot?

There is literally no downside to trying, I recommended giving it at least a few weeks before you make any final judgment. The only regret I have in life is not being shown how to meditate sooner, and if I can help just one person access the power contained with in it, then that will mean a lot to me. If you are still unconvinced, and I wouldn’t blame you, have a look at all thee famous folk that mediate. Even Rupert Murdoch the biggest media tycoon in the history of the plant mediates!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_learned_Transcendental_Meditation
http://tmhome.com/experiences/famous-people-who-meditate/

So how is it done? I do not profess to be a great teacher of mediation. Just a thankful student, so the best I can do is send you my collection of guided meditations. It’s as simple as pressing play and listening to what the teacher tell you to do. Sign up in the box bellow to get instant access. If you get anything out of it, then I suggest a professional coaching session from www.tm.org. I will cost you about $500 bucks but is well worth it and comes with life time support and re-training. I am not affiliated with them, and receive no advertising revenue.

If you would like to start now I have a collection of about 15 hours worth of guided meditations in mp3 format, just load one up on your iPod and the teacher will guide you though each one. Just sign up below and let me know where to deliver it, and I’ll send you the full 15 hours in high quality mp3 format now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Su2X7PgQuo

[Here is a great meditation to get started, find a quiet space, sit with legs crossed or a comfortable position and press play]