Meditation is much more trendy these days and is becoming part of people’s daily routines. Meditation has so many great benefits that were over looked for a long time. People would say it meditation is “weird.” However what once was just part of a yoga practice, is now part of many people’s daily routines. There are now mediation apps with millions of downloads to help people meditate. I even found myself downloading one to see what all the fuss is about.
So what makes meditation so great? Well there are many health benefits for meditation, like ones listed in this article.
Some of my favorite benefits of meditation are:
- Reduces Stress. What’s not to love about this. Everyone could use some stress relief with so many crazy things happening in the world right now.
- Lengthens Attention Span. This is so needed these days. Despite not being a 3 year old; my attention span is similar to one. It seems cell phones have destroyed our attention span because there is always something new to read or to respond to.
- Healthier self awareness and mindfulness. I appreciate this because I want to be sure that I am self aware and being mindful of how my actions impact others but also mindful of what I need or want as well. It is a balance folks!
With all of these benefits, you think I would have jumped on board right away, and well, I tried. I trained in meditation through my yoga teacher training program I did at Devanadi, a local yoga school. During my training we learned about different meditation techniques of using mantras, guided meditations and focusing on the energies of the body. Within training, I felt that if I was equipped to teach meditation, I should be able to guide myself through it.
My training recommended to complete a 40 day meditation practice focusing on a specific mantra to build a daily routine. I found that despite knowing what to do, I couldn’t do it. Finding the time every day to meditate. was hard. I would get lost in my thoughts and not think I was doing it “right” so I would get frustrated. I kept trying to get meditation to be part of my routine and I just couldn’t make it stick.
What I thought meditation was supposed to look like…
What daily meditation is “supposed” to look like
But what my meditation actually looked like…
I put too much pressure on how meditation was supposed to look and feel.
So about a month ago, I was sitting at my cabin thinking I needed something…..and that something was to try meditation again. I decided to approach it a different way this time and I started to research meditation apps. There are many apps out there but two that are very popular: Calm and Headspace. So I went out to research which was better.
I came across many articles, like this one, that do direct comparisons between the two apps. Most of the articles I found seemed to say that Headspace was the superior app. It has more meditation type options, a cleaner interface, a wider ranges of mediation times (3-20 minutes) and it has daily meditation themes. Whereas Calm starts meditations at 10 minutes and has more limited meditation options, especially for beginners.
Since everything I read pointed towards Headspace, I downloaded it.
I started a 14 day free trial and dove right in. In the app I started with the beginner series and really enjoyed it. You can select if you want a male or female voice. This is a good option because if you don’t like the voice, it will ruin the meditation for you. FYI the male on Headspace has a British accent, which I am totally cool with but may annoy the crap out of you. After finishing the beginner series, I moved on to trying some of the daily themes. After that I branched out into walking meditations and going to sleep meditations. I really enjoyed the variety of meditations it offered and that not all of them had you sitting in one spot for 20 minutes.
This time when I was trying to build meditating into my routine, I gave myself more grace. I didn’t feel like I needed to do it for 20 minutes, heck they have 3 minute options! I also didn’t feel like I needed to always be sitting on a special meditation pillow in a room by myself to meditate. Meditation could happen laying in bed, while on a walk or just sitting anywhere really. I also didn’t feel like I had to make meditation a daily routine, it could be a most days routine.
After my 14 day trial, I was hooked.
I signed up for the annual subscription (it was $70). I thought that was money well spent. Meditation is helping me to feel more grounded, clears my head, reduces stress and helps me to have more patience and self awareness. It’s been about a month and I’ve meditated 33 times (Headspace keeps track of it for you 🙂 ). This means I’ve meditated almost everyday. Headspace has allowed me to actually get meditation to be part of my daily routine. For that, I am very thankful!
If you’ve struggled to make meditation part of your daily routine as well, I would suggest just letting go all of the pressure to do it “perfect.” Find the way that works for you. Whether that’s two minutes, walking or right before bed (just don’t do it driving!) or with your dog lying on your lap. If you keep it low key, it is much more likely to stick. Also, it helps to have an app that alerts you everyday 🙂
Have you tried meditation before?
