What I learnt when I meditated every day for a month
What I learnt when I meditated every day for a month
When I set out to write this blog series I initially wanted to share the philosophical side of yoga to show how, for me, yoga is about so much more than just a physical practice. I started by writing about the chakras and journeying through them to explain how I used them in my everyday life and my yoga practice. There can be an assumption that yoga is primarily a physical practice and therefore your body needs to look or act a certain way to enable you to partake. As I began my teaching journey I found that the things I connected with the most were the philosophical areas, and yoga became a lifestyle, a way of guiding me through life as opposed to simply a practice.
As my blogs unfolded we started at the root chakra, Muladhara chakra, to ground ourselves; then once we were centered moved up to Svadhisthana chakra, our sacral chakra, the place of creation and creativity. Our third chakra, Manipura, or the solar plexus chakra, is the space where our ego resides - a place of transformation and change. Anahata chakra, our heart chakra is the place for love and loving kindness and comes before we move to the throat chakra, Vishuddha chakra, the space where we communicate and speak our truth. The sixth chakra, Ajna chakra, is the place where our third eye resides, gifting us wisdom and intuition, bringing us up to today’s blog, the seventh chakra, the Sahasrara, or Crown chakra.
Sahasrara is the chakra that helps us to derive meaning. This is where we go to answer life’s questions; to understand ourselves. This is the chakra dealing with belief systems, and these can mean individual things to everyone. We deal with more metaphysical elements; understanding, consciousness, managing the flow of thoughts. One of the best tools we have for balancing this chakra is meditation, which can help bring balance to the mind and soul; helping us manage stress and burnout and something that can have the power to help us on a physical level when we can build it into our routines.
I love meditating. I feel a benefit from taking time out in my day to reflect, clear my mind, calm my senses and sit in stillness. Despite feeling so great from meditating I found that in busier times I was struggling to prioritise it. After a tough month when I had let it slide down to just nine sessions in one month I decided to set myself a challenge of meditating every day for a month to see what benefits a committed practice would offer me.
Here’s what I learnt from this experiment and some key takeaways. Find out what I loved, what I struggled with and what surprised me.
Every little counts
Some days my meditation was simply five minutes of downtime; connecting with my breath and inviting stillness. It didn’t need to be in a space that I had created or with candles lit and a mantra. Sometimes if I had a busy day ahead I would wake and take five conscious minutes to breathe and set an intention for the day that I would focus on, sometimes I would be retiring for bed and take just ten minutes before turning in to calm my breath and still the body. Meditation as a practice is extremely flexible and shouldn’t feel like a daunting or overwhelming task. Making it little and often can help to build meditation into a habit from which you can explore with longer sessions if need be.
You can pick and mix how you meditate depending on what you need
I tried lots of different styles of meditation over my 30 days. If I was doing a yin class or a yin self practice then I would pick an intention to work with and allow my breath and intention to draw my focus to make the practice a meditation.
When it was an evening meditation one of my favourite things to do was a yoga nidra - which translates as yoga sleep - a trace awareness meditation to help prepare me for sleep that soon became a firm favourite.
Morning meditations and lunchtime sessions were often used to focus me on the day ahead, often using an insight timer guided meditation. Guided meditations are a fantastic resource to help you get started with meditation and there are multiple apps on the market that you can use.
If I was having a challenging day then I would pick a grounding meditation to help me feel centred and build in some breath work to calm down my nervous system and help me relax. If I had high energy and a positive outlook then working with positive mantras helped me to channel that energy. Matching my mood and needs to the type of meditation I needed helped to act as a salve when I was feeling vulnerable or fragile and as an amplifier when I felt energised.
It can feel like a luxury
There were days when I had longer and could create a space to meditate. It felt like a self care routine and setting aside the time to meditate for 30-40 minutes in a comfortable space could transform my day. It couldn’t happen every day and was for a special treat but I would really recommend any meditation practice builds in the occasional luxury session, whether it’s weekly or monthly. Think about what you love, what would make you feel your most relaxed and in tune with yourself, and create that space for as long as you can afford to and see how you feel afterwards. My winning recipe was my favourite candle, lying down rather than sitting up, covered with a soft comfortable blanket, eyes covered with a mask (a colleague introduced me to Space Masks, which are next level divine, and a guided yoga nidra meditation playing softly on the speaker. Pure bliss! This was the meditation I was most likely to have one of my cats plop down on my chest and fall asleep on me during - they must have sensed my deep sense of calm and peace and decided it was perfect nap fodder for them!
I didn’t realise some of the places I was carrying tension until I properly relaxed
With a regular yoga practice and focus on wellness, I am good at finding time to relax and restore. It wasn’t until I practised meditating daily that I realised how much deeper I was able to go. The first time this occurred I was following a guided meditation wearing ear buds and felt one of them starting to slip out. I had been carrying so much tension in my jaw that when it relaxed my ear buds shifted position and began to move. The bliss of relieving that tension and really feeling my body soften and relax was wonderful. Meditation was having as strong a physical benefit for me as it was a mental one. It wasn’t a long meditation either, it was a ten minute guided meditation before sleep about ten days into my experiment.
Meditation takes us out of our every day, allows our mind to stop focusing and fretting and to just be. This can sometimes feel like a release so don’t be surprised if other tensions are released when you practice regularly. I found a couple of sessions I had tears flowing when I was letting go of things I was holding onto. It somehow felt clarifying rather than sad, and as it was a natural thing my body was led to I clearly needed to let them out.
Discipline is key…
Setting myself a challenge to meditate daily meant I had to make it a priority and give myself the discipline to make the time. This meant creating boundaries and balance that I found really helpful to find the space and time for daily wellness. If I knew I had a busy day coming up or would be out in the evening then it meant setting my alarm fifteen minutes earlier in the day to allow for a morning meditation. I used a wellness room at work once a week when I was in the office and kicked off my shoes and put on the ‘do not disturb’ sign to do a guided meditation in my lunch break.
This was what had really been holding me back in the previous months when it had been slipping; I had made a choice, even if subconsciously, to de-prioritise my meditation practice. We make time for what is important and unless we check in with ourselves that we are actively prioritising something like meditation, it can fall down to the bottom of the to-do list. It’s not always easy to make this a priority - life is busy! So I found that blocking out time for this or checking my schedule and working out when I wanted to take time out to meditate made me consciously choose to follow through with it.
… but compassion is required
I set myself a challenge to meditate every day for a month. I managed 30 days. It was a 31 day month! There are going to be times when we set out to achieve something and fall short. This is where it becomes important to hold compassion for ourselves and allow this to be. The day I missed was because I had planned my meditation to be in the evening due to a busy day schedule and then spontaneously met up with a friend and ended up having a later night than planned. It was a lovely meet up, full of joy and there would be no point berating myself for missing my meditation. Life happens! A little compassion goes a long way.
This month I’m reading… ‘A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again’, by David Foster Wallace. It’s a collection of non-fiction works by DFW and his pithy wit and sharp observations have me giggling every other page. Something a bit different, something a bit fun.
This month I’m listening to…Dorothy Guthrie’s yoga nidra track on amazon music - I’ve spoken about yoga nidra a lot in this blog and this one is my current favourite
