For around three months now I have been meditating on a regular basis. It came recommended to me by my Occupational Therapist, and although a little sceptical, I’m pretty much up to give anything a try.

I decided to start when Noodle went back to school after the summer. The school run in the morning is always a big stress and exhausting, no matter how organised I try to be. Often fatigue would hit on the walk home and that was my day already set for a shaky start. So, I set my meditation time to just 10 minutes between the school run and rushing off to work.

The results were incredible. Meditating for 10 minutes was like a super-power nap. Just taking that short time to do nothing but concentrate on my breath was life-changing. It completely cancelled any fatigue I might have been feeling. This dramatically changed the way I started my days. I am now more focused and balanced.

After just a very short time I started to really look forward to my 10 minutes. It’s a little space of time just for me. The house is quiet, phones and TV are off. In the past, I would have taken the fatigue I gained on the school run to work with me. I might have it shaken off by lunchtime, it might have lasted all day. It made working difficult, like working with a toothache, I often struggled to focus or even care!

Meditation is not about sitting on the floor, legs folded, saying “ohmmmm”

Meditation is actually incredibly uncomplicated, just a simple focus on something natural, like your breath, or your body touching the seat etc. My OT recommended that I always sit in the same position, holding my hands in the same way, but how I would sit, was completely up to me. She advised that I should think of a seating position that I could adapt on a busy train, should I ever need or want to. And it works. When I sit down upright, place my right thumb into my left palm, I instantly feel calm. My body is learning to associate it with the meditation.

Another thing to note is that every day is a bit different. Some sessions are easier than others. Some mornings my mind wanders a lot, other days my focus comes more natural. All of this is completely normal and part of the journey.

Now I’ve been meditating for a while, I will look at guided meditations for different purposes. I use the Headspace app and the paid option offers a lot of different meditation subjects including Self Confidence, Relationships, Anxiety etc. There is even a section for children. The first 10 sessions are free on Headspace, so you can try it out yourself. Over this short time, I have become a firm advocate of meditation and should probably get shares in the app as I’m recommending it so much to my friends. I should add, I have not been sponsored to write this post in any way.

So will you give it a go? 😉
Feature Photo by Josh Adamski on Unsplash