To Meditate or Not

I’ve never been a big fan of meditation. I just don’t get it! How does sitting  around trying not to think help bring peace and serenity? You might be asking, “Have you ever tried it?!?! You can’t knock it unless you’ve tried it.” Well, I have tried it. A few years ago I took a summer class and one of the books was 8 Minute Meditation. The book taught the reader how to meditate in simple steps and in short amounts of time. I tried every step and even blogged about my experience. After that experience I’ve never meditated again.

Until now.

I’m the kind of person that listens to signs that the universe sends. I listened to a podcast that talked about the awareness meditation brings. I argued with her. Soon after, I watched a video that talked about mindfulness and meditation in education. Two days later I read in a book about the importance of meditation. Hmmm. The next week I heard about it again. Twice. Maybe the universe was trying to tell me something. I decided I needed to look into it. So, like any mom, when I decide I need to make a change, I include the kids. I told them I needed to start meditating so they were going to learn how to do it with me.

We started with the definition I heard on a podcast—“Meditation isn’t about stopping your thought processes. It’s being able to focus on a target.” You pick a target to focus on—your breath, a mantra, your body, etc. When your mind wanders, and it will, notice it but don’t judge, just bring it back to your anchor. Meditation is the art of noticing that your mind has wandered and bringing it back to your focus. So for two minutes every morning we meditated, trying to non-judgmentally bring our thoughts back to our anchors. I said we would try it for a week.

One week went by and I wanted to quit. I didn’t feel like it was doing anything. But, because I had shared my reasons for wanting to meditate, Braedi would not let me quit. Plus I heard ANOTHER podcast about a meditation success story so I had to keep trying. But, we need to try something different.

Have you heard about Headspace? It was another one of those things that I’d heard several different times in different ways. It’s a cool app that teaches you to meditate. This guy with an awesome accent walks you through the process of how to meditate. It’s very peaceful. We’ve been using it for 5 days (it keeps track for you). I feel peaceful afterward, but I can’t say that it’s carried over to any other part of my day. But we are going to keep trying and hopefully we will see some of the benefits. Soon.