Progress with Meditation

A few months ago, I wrote about my troubles with meditation. After convincing myself that I was 'no good at meditation' many years ago, I'd found myself having to do it for class assignments. I'm happy to report that after some practice, my attitude is changing and I'm improving. I've really started to notice the benefits, too.

I set a goal for myself this year to meditate 3 times a week. Whether I stick to that or not really depends on whether I need to meditate. When I was on holidays from work, I didn't meditate at all. If I'm having a stressful time, I tend to meditate more often. On some days, I even think to myself: "I can't wait until lunchtime so I can go to the library and meditate!"

Since I started meditating again, I've noticed that I'm less anxious and react in a calmer way to stressful situations. People around me have commented on the difference as well.

The meditation resource I use the most is an app called Insight Timer. It has both a timer with background noise, and many guided meditations to choose from. It's been fun finding the guided tracks that work best for me. Not all of them do. One that I tried sounded good: lying in a field and looking at the stars. However, the visualisation began while it was still light and described the sun setting. I've always found dusk to be a very depressing time of day (I don't know why, it just is) so I didn't enjoy that one very much.

Two of my favourites from the app so far are Mountain Meditation by Andy Hobson and Melting Stress and Anxiety Away by Lisa Abramson. After listening to Lisa's track for the first time during my lunchbreak, when I went back to work I was so relaxed that I kept dropping things and people remarked on how my mood had drastically changed!

I still don't think I'm very 'good' at meditation. I can only clear my mind for a few seconds at a time before I start thinking about things again. Sometimes I'll be thinking through things for a few minutes before I even realise I'm doing it. This doesn't worry me as much as it used to though. Every day and every session is different. As much as it's a cliche to say it, meditation is a practice. You will never be perfect, you just need to keep trying. Now that I'm starting to accept that, meditation is much more pleasant and I look forward to my sessions every week.