Ecotrain Question of the Week: The Meditation / Chant Challenge. Meditate for at least 15 minutes every day for one week and write about your experience...

This week @eco-alex, the driver of the @ecotrain decided to spice things up a bit and make us do something different and that too regularly for a change. The passengers of the @ecotrain were asked to meditate for 15 minutes daily for a week and write about their experiences at the end of it.

I have known about meditation and its scores of amazing benefits since quite some time now. Meditation clears your mind, calms down your racing mind, helps you think better, improves your focus, makes you live in the moment, reduces your ongoing stress and anxiety, eliminates depression, improves your emotional well-being, helps you become more discipline, improves your relationships and is also extremely beneficial for your heart. Honestly, these are only a few of the benefits of this wonderful practice. I could go on and on about them, but since I already write verbose texts, it is better I save the words and your patience to read the actual message of this post. You can read more about meditation and its benefits here.

So I was aware of how amazing meditation is, but never really tried it since a few months back. I used to meditate for 2 to 3 minutes after ending my yoga practice every morning and even 2 to 3 minutes of mindfulness breathing meditation helped me calm down a lot. That being said, I was unable to cultivate the habit and do it regularly. When @eco-alex suggested it as the qotw, I was super-excited to participate in it because that gave me the perfect push I needed to get started with the practice and slowly turn it into a habit. So I started with this challenge last Friday and have done it for about 7 days till now. Yes I did not do it every day and I am honestly admitting to that, but I did do it for 7 days so that's about a week right? ;) Here are my experiences about that challenge.

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My Experiences with the 7 Day Meditation Challenge

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The first 3 days of the challenge were the hardest for me. I began with settling in a comfortable pose and setting the timer for 15 minutes, recalling a happy time to calm myself down and gently bringing my awareness to my breath on the first day. It worked fine for a minute I guess and soon enough, my monkey mind took over my sense of awareness and made me drift into thoughts far and wide. The monkey mind refers to our tendency to wander off in thought which the Buddha defined in the following words

‘Just as a monkey swinging through the trees grabs one branch and lets it go only to seize another, so too, that which is called thought, mind or consciousness arises and disappears continually both day and night.’ quote source

So before I even realized it, I was too swinging from one thought to another and could not focus on my breath for a long. However, having written countless books about meditation, I knew this was alright and something I must not be harsh about. I kept bringing back my awareness to my breath and body each time it drifted away and this happened like a LOTTT of times. However, by the end of the 15 minutes, I did feel a little better than before.

The same happened on the next two days too. I used to start my meditation session; meditate effectively for a little while and then wander off in thought. However, I kept trying to realign my attention on to my breath so I stayed in the present moment and not anywhere else. Honestly, writing about this stuff is way easier than actually doing it. Now that I was actually practicing what I had written in the many books I wrote on meditation as a ghostwriter, I realized how difficult it was to be aware of the present moment and nurture mindfulness. However, since I was determined to get better at it, I kept trying.

Although the first 3 days were difficult in terms of meditation effectively, the distorted meditation sessions I engaged in did provided me with some insight about myself. For instance, the many mindfulness meditation practices that I came across online suggested that you should not breathe deeply in the start and breathe in your natural manner at first. However, I figured that when I did take deep, slow breaths I was able to focus better and be more mindful of my breath and body. This helped me understood what strategy actually worked for me and try it more often. This also proved what I had heard in a lecture by Tai Lopez sometime back. He had said that there is no right or wrong, what works for you may not work for someone else so if you do come across something that states this is the best or the right way to do something, do not blindly accept and follow it. Instead, try and experiment with it for a while and see if it actually works for you. If it does, great, you can adopt it. If it does not, do not lose hope and look for something else that you can use to achieve your goal. So I figured out that breathing deeply did work for me and kept doing that each time I lost my focus in the practice.

This realization has now opened my mind to different ideas and I'll be trying more new stuff from now onwards instead of sticking to what i think does and does not work for me. Also, i figured out that one major reason why I am super stressed often is because I worry way too much about my son. Well, it is quite normal and somewhat mandatory for a parent, in particular a mother to do that, but worrying too much wasn't doing me any good. It was stressing me out for no reason and I was even drawing negative experiences towards my son and I in the process. So after dropping him off to school, I just needed to have faith in my Allah that my son would be happy and safe there and just stop thinking about him getting hurt or bored in class.

The days 4 to 7 were slightly better in terms of my chattering monkey mind. Its chatter had reduced a bit, but it still did bother me. Also, I did feel a little sleepy too as I became calmer. I did try observing my thoughts, but often I got wandered off in thought for far too long and felt a little stressed in the process so I centered myself and focused more on taking deep breaths. That did help me a lot. So far, I haven’t been able to make huge progress like I expected or wanted, but that’s alright. Everybody is different so they are likely to react and respond differently to different things. I think it is going to take me a little more time than @eco-alex I think to feel extremely happy and calm after meditating, but I am sure I will reach that point if I consistently meditate. So yeah, I am determined to turn this occasional practice into a habit and won’t give up on it this time because I know how amazing it is and it does suit me so I just need to be better at it to really reap its benefits.

Before I forget, I have become a little more aware of my thoughts and how they affect me, and have started staying more mindful of the present moment. If and when I notice myself drifting off into thought and feeling stressed in the process, I bring my awareness to the present moment and focus more on the task I was doing. It definitely helps calm my nerves.

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Have you ever tried meditating? How did it work for you? Do share your views in the comments below and thank you for taking out the time to read this.

Love and light,

Sharoon.

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I am a passenger on the @ecotrain which is certainly help me become better in life. Consider joining it too.

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