Today marks a month since I started practicing meditation. I never thought that I would do something like this. If you asked me about it a few years ago, I would probably laugh at the idea but now that I have been practicing this for a month, I can’t imagine going a day without it.
Yesterday I was telling someone at work about it and I was asked what the difference was between this and yoga. I explained that while I also practice yoga and meditation can be a part of it, I mostly practice yoga for the physical exercise of it, and I do meditation to help me clear my mind and start the day right.
Mostly I do meditation by listening to music and/or to audio meditation guides that I find online. There are people who share recordings that help guide you during your meditation. It can take a while to find the right one for you and it’s more of a hit and miss kind of thing until you find what’s best. What I focused on are meditations that involve visualization and affirmations. Given how stressed I often felt pre-pandemic (and even more now that we’re in one), meditating this way has given me a more positive outlook during my day to day life. It helps me to calm down and relax and to focus on what I want my day to be.
After a month of doing this, I can happily share that I have not had a low moment in the entire period that I have been meditating. That is new for me, since I get stressed easily and too often. Even when things have gotten challenging at work, I have found myself, as my meditations suggest, focusing on the good instead of the bad to help calm myself down. As I have heard in my meditations, it’s about focusing on the good and what makes me happy (which is where BTS comes in, to be honest). That doesn’t mean I ignore the bad that is going on. It just means I should acknowledge the negatives and if there is nothing that can be done about it, I move on. As one of my audio guides said, “If any negative thoughts arise, observe it, and then let it go.”
Another thing that my meditation has helped me with is loving myself more. The affirmations that are given during my practice help me to have more confidence in myself and encourage me to love and take care of myself more, something that I have often taken for granted given how busy I often feel. It also helped me to slow down and appreciate life and the blessings around me more.
Another benefit I got from my meditation? Prayer and a better relationship with God. I know most people would think that meditation kind of diverted away from religion, but for me I feel that although I am not religious, I am spiritual. I believe in that higher power we call God. During one meditation session I had I kept feeling this urge to pray, so after the meditation, I did.
My family is Catholic. I was raised Catholic. So most of the time our prayers are memorized ones, something that I sometimes cannot connect with because I felt they were not personal. Most of the time I only pray on purpose when there are people I would like to pray for, other than that, it’s the memorized prayers and whenever my mother wants us to pray together.
When I prayed that one time after meditation, I cried so much. I felt this wave of relief and love and it has encouraged me to keep praying and keep up this relationship with God again, something I have not done in a while. I have been praying daily again since then. To be honest, I realized that I haven’t prayed for myself in years. I felt that I haven’t done anything deserving of being blessed by God and that I haven’t been blessed with anything I have asked for myself anyway. But after the meditation and the affirmations I had, I came to realize that I am worthy, and that the only reason that I felt I wasn’t getting what I wanted for myself was that I never even asked. Frankly, I think I never even tried. I never made the effort to do anything for myself to get to that point where I could say, “God I’m doing what I can, would you mind helping me with what I can’t?”
With meditation, I have now gotten to that point. I am loving myself and taking care of myself more. I am consciously going after my goals instead of just living day to day like a lifeless drone. I’m praying daily again. And with all my efforts, in just a month people have also been telling me that I am looking better too. I have lost weight and I am livelier than I used to be. I have meditation to thank for that. It gave me the push to do the things that I ought to.
I know that practicing meditation is not for everyone. I just want to share that for me, it has done a lot of good. I hope that I can keep it going for a long time. I haven’t felt this good in a long time. I really want it to stay that way.
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