A friend was going through a hard time at work. They knew I practiced meditation, and wanted to learn more about the practice. It has been almost a decade since I started. Here’s some of what I shared with them:
If you want to get started meditating, Headspace publishes some guided meditations at YouTube that I really enjoy, like this one on resetting. This 10 minute guided meditation at Spotify is also really nice. There are many floating around at Headspace’s website. I prefer downloading the files (there are many tools here at Hacker News), because YouTube often broadcasts commercials before the video and autoplays into another one.
Meditations of self-forgiveness particularly resonate with me, and I have found them very healing. I often meditate on this guide from Dora Kamau, whose work I discovered through Headspace. As I searched for that link, I came across this meditation that sounds promising. I look forward to trying that one.
On the days I feel less like meditating, it’s usually because I feel overwhelmed with work (“busy”), or I don’t want to feel a difficult emotion. Those are usually the days I need to meditate more. One way to ease myself into it is a short 3-minute meditation, which is so quick that it’s difficult for me to say no to.
You can get creative with how you meditate, such as with art (including IRL), or practicing micro meditations throughout the day (such as in an elevator).
The best way to illustrate the significant and subtle difference meditation makes is with an example: a few weeks ago, I was extremely jet lagged, and I tried reading a book in the hopes of eventually falling back asleep. The problem was my mind was racing. There was a lot of mental chatter, and my eyes darted from word to word without really reading. So I loaded up a 10 minute guided meditation, and closed my eyes and followed it. It felt nice, so I did another. And one more. I didn’t feel great during the meditation, my mind often drifted and there was still a ton of mental chatter. However, once I picked the book back up again, reading came much more naturally to me, and I was eventually able to fall asleep again.
As with many practices, the most important thing is just to do it. When your brain can stop worrying if you’re doing it right, paradoxically, that’s a good sign you’re heading in the right direction.