Week four, stress- no more!

For week four on my journey to happiness, I am going to add in the practice of meditating to my daily routine, for at least four days this week. Meditation is something I’ve never participated in, and it has always been something I feel slightly intimidated by or even a little reluctant to its effects. I have always had some sort of underlying idea that meditation was for those yogi, “zen” type of people who have time to sit around with legs crossed Indian style chanting “Ommmmmmm” until all of life’s worries disappear into thin air. I, for one, am not that kind of person. There are things to be done and tasks to complete and especially as a college student, there are no minutes to be wasted in the busy days of my life. However, to ignore the abundant empirical evidence that meditating for a short time each day does indeed have positive impacts, would be ignorant of me and perhaps keep me from finding a much needed peace in the stress of my everyday! Some of the earliest records of meditation come from the Hindu tradition of Vedantism, dating all the way back to 1500 BCE. Mediation is not only a practice trending and circulating today, but has been a popular form of de-stressing for a long, long time. There are many different forms of meditation, most of them falling under the two broad categories of focused meditation and open monitoring meditation. I think there is value in taking time out of each day to center yourself and focus your attention inward, finding perspective and a sense of peace to keep you moving forward. I just don’t necessarily know how to achieve this type of practice and have little to no experience with meditation, which makes this goal a little daunting for me. I have downloaded the “Calm” app to help guide my meditation for this week, and hope to not only reap the benefits of de-stressing and boosting my overall mood, but also to learn some new techniques to help my idea of meditating become a little more tangible and less ambiguous and fearful.