Week four down!

As my fourth week on my journey to happiness comes to a close, I have mixed emotions in my reflection of the week. I made time to try some form of meditation for four days this week, and I will be honest in my report. It was hard for me to sit through some of my meditation sessions from the Calm app, as they were on average about 20 minutes long, or longer. It was hard to stay focused and not let my mind wander or get anxious about the things I needed to do that day. I will say my favorite session was one where the goal was to help relax your mind and body to fall asleep at night, which happened successfully but without being able to stay awake for the entirety of the meditation. The speaker basically told a story about some sleeping bears in a very slow, gentle tone and described their bodies as they fell asleep, making my own body mimic the slow breathing, heavy eyes, etc… and before I knew it, I was waking up in the morning. I also tried a 3 minute “body scan” meditation, to ground myself in the moment and relax, which I did enjoy. I think the biggest thing I learned about meditation is that while I don’t mind it, I do need a shorter session to stay present and not get frustrated at the time passing or feel like I am wasting moments of productivity. I also tried a “counting meditation” on Wednesday, which I learned from one of my online classes that has “self care toolkits” provided by the professor! Counting meditation was one of the more challenging meditations that I tried, as you basically just begin counting and focusing on the act of counting, and when an interfering thought comes to mind, you watch it pass by like a cloud, then return to the count. I found myself getting frustrated by all of the interfering thoughts that kept popping up, but according to my professor the very act of returning to the count from those distracting thoughts is the act of meditating. I wasn’t able to make it past about 20 when counting, but it did really make my mind relax and studies have shown that this kind of meditation activates alpha waves in the brain. I cannot say for certain whether or not meditation actually caused an increase in my happiness this week, but I won’t overlook the sense of relaxation that I felt in a couple of my meditation sessions. I don’t necessarily think meditating is a practice I will keep up moving forward, but I am certainly glad that I gave it a try this week so I now have a less daunting and intimidating feeling towards it. I think meditating is definitely something that takes practice, and I think if I were to keep at it in the weeks to come it could be easier and beneficial to my mood. I only have so much time in the day to set aside for self care and doing things that will positively impact my mood, so I think I will allocate that time to working out, socializing, or just relaxing rather than meditating. Well, it was worth a shot!