30 Days of Meditation

November 10, 2023

I do not like meditating. I’ve been running for a couple years now, so I use that as a substitute. I have tried meditating in the past numerous times. I’ve gone through the free month on the Headspace app, and maybe a few times I felt really good after doing it, but not good enough to continue. I’ve tried the Waking Up app as well, but man Sam Harris’ voice will put you to sleep. I’m not a fan of paying for apps, so that doesn’t really help either. The last thing I remember trying was NSDR, but I couldn’t get into it and I started getting really annoyed at seeing Andrew Huberman everywhere I looked on the internet. I’ve been really interested in Transcendental Meditation cause I’m a huge David Lynch fan, but they pretty bluntly encourage you to pay someone to teach you how to do it. I might try this in the future, but getting started

I’m constantly wanting to practice writing as it’s something I want to get better at, and I’ve also had this idea to try 30 day challenges to push myself and learn new things, so I’m going to give meditation a go. I’ll continue to report my progress and tweak my methods to get the most out of meditating.

Day 1

I set a timer on my phone for 10 minutes. I tried to focus on my breathing, and on inhales I would breathe deep and think to myself “I’m breathing in,” then the opposite while I exhaled. I’ve tried in the past to come up with a mantra as you would using Transcendental Meditation, but that has never worked out well for me. For more than half the time there was a tree trimmer or something outside and my dog started barking, but I had 3 minutes or so of quiet I suspect.

I rested in bed covered up in a blanket lying against some pillows in more of a sit up position. I left the window open and had my eyes closed.

After meditating I didn’t feel any better or worse. I’m slightly hung over and tired from not getting a decent nights sleep on a regular basis (2 young ones at home), but I have been noticing that I have been getting distracted quite frequently and that continued into my time meditating, so that’s something I’d like to work on.

In the future I will try to schedule my time out more appropriately, and go into meditating with a better frame of mind. I might also try to close the curtains and darken up the space.

Day 2 (11/11/23)

I’ll keep it short. I basically forgot, so during a shopping trip I meditated for 5 minutes in my car. It still counts in my mind, but it was right in front of a grocery store and an ambulance drove by. Oddly enough I think it went better than yesterday. I’ve also called the local TM trainer place and scheduled an appointment for the 28th of this month. I tried to meditate with my daughter and explain her the process and she seemed to understand for the most part. I’ll try to remember that this is something I’ve made a priority moving forward.

Day 3 (11/12/23)

I remembered, but I forgot again. I tried to meditate while we were putting the kids to sleep, but that was a dangerous prospect as the lights were out and even sitting up I started to get that pre-sleep hallucinatory effect after a few minutes. I snapped out of it and luckily I was able to make it downstairs to meditate for 5 minutes. I’ve been antsy for some reason all day, so I was pretty distracted again. Tomorrow I’m hoping to be able to block time out where I can relax, hopefully in the quiet. I’ll probably try and look up meditation techniques as well.

Day 4 (11/13/23)

I got my day started right more or less! After dropping off the kids, I made it home around 8am or so and did a 10 minute Yoga Nidra guided meditation. I liked it a lot. I’ve tried Yoga Nidra before, I remember liking it, but I think the guided meditation was around 20 minutes or so, which seems like too long of a time. I felt really good afterwards, very relaxed and even a bit refreshed. I’ve heard people who talk about Transcendental Meditation mention meditating twice a day, so I wanted to try again during the afternoon when I’d feel more fatigued. I did the same meditation around 2pm and although I almost dozed off, I still felt really good afterwards. It was a solid reboot. The guided meditation was really helpful because it kept my mind from wandering. The only thing I need to try is using headphones rather than leave my phone on the bed. Additionally, I was disturbed both sessions by someone messaging me – so the phone vibrated against the bed, which was pretty jarring but I tried not to let it bother me too much. I’ll keep using the Yoga Nidra video as a guide for now and definitely try to follow a schedule and use headphones.

UPDATE

Totally gave up. I meditated for a handful of days more and neglected to write about it. Hell yeah, brother.