Meditating (almost) daily for four months. Here’s what I learned.

It’s early October and the Czech Republic is introducing lockdown 2.0, that’s about to last four months (and counting). I feel upset. I understand the need to protect society, but I don’t trust our borderline autocratic government and I don’t really trust their promises on anything. My normal life is taken away from me, as from so many others, but what perhaps hurts the most is the loss of yoga studios.

Yoga. The stretching, the balancing postures, the sweating, the heavy breathing, chanting mantras, breathing exercises, sitting in silence and — oh — the wave of calm that washes over me during each class and stays long after. But this ramble is not about yoga, it’s about meditation.

I’m not gonna lie, the first lockdown got to me pretty hard and I was determined not to let it happen again. So I identified my biggest source of stability — yoga classes, and then I tried to identify what in them makes the biggest impact. And I figured out, it’s the sitting in silence element, which some call meditation. I typed “meditation” into Youtube’s search field and off I went.

First things first.

I’m not gonna lie. Youtube’s selection of meditations is pretty bad. I spent a few days there and I quickly realized I needed a more reliable source of guided meditations. It’s a bummer if you just want to meditate for a few minutes and you spend half an hour scrolling through immense selection of “healing vibrations 450hz chakra cleansing hug your inner child” videos choosing the right one, because what do I know how many Hertz my inner child needs. I just want to meditate for 5 minutes, please.

Here’s where the immense selection of meditation apps comes to play. I have tried several and I found some benefits in most of them. What I consider most important though, is the fact that these apps offer ‘courses’ or ‘programs’ or ‘plans’ that are designed to teach you meditation techniques. And that’s the real life changer. Let me walk you through a few.

Focus on your breath

Seriously though. Try to find the spot in your body where you feel your breath the most and aim your focus there. Take a few breaths like this and now, how do you feel?

I don’t know about you, but just one or two breaths like this immediately calms me down. Now I attribute this to regular practice, because I seriously didn’t get this quick bodily response a few months ago. There are so many health benefits to breath focus, which I can’t recall and am too lazy to google, but one that comes to my mind is the reduction off stress hormones. Which, like, you know… makes you feel better and makes you live longer.

Sitting with your emotions

Now this is a long run, probably a life long journey, but I have find that since meditating regularly, I generally feel calmer, even when freaking out. I know it sounds weird but you have to trust me on this homie. I also noticed that meditation has become my go-to response to unpleasant feelings, instead of obsessing, stressing, texting everyone I know or being intensely irritative. It does not always make them go away (them being the impersonation of my negative emotions), sometimes it doesn’t even make me feel better, but it always makes me calmer. Which really can work with emotions happening at the same time.

Getting rid of negative emotions is not the intention. It wouldn’t work anyway, as they are what makes us appreciate the happy emotions. So either we want both or we want neither and everyone desires to be happy, Dalai Lama says so. The intention is to observe what is happening and distance yourself from the rush, that our minds are.

It’s a process

You are going to get better. If you sit in meditation (or snuggle under a blanket for what I care, just keep your spine straight) daily for a 5 days, you will already feel the progress. If you start with 3 minutes, you are gonna be able to do 5 by the 6th day. But if by the 10th day you do 10just fine but it suddenly becomes difficult by the 13th day, you should know, that it’s normal. I trust you to be socialized into higher education enough to be able to abstract this very concrete example to a very simple lesson — progress is not linear.

Also, if you understand this, it’s going to make your life so much easier in so many spheres. I am still struggling with this, but I am trying to remember that it’s alright and that I just have to keep on practicing.

I have learned other things, obviously. Like I am learning to include my environment into my practice. I am learning to intensely focus on a particular thing and separate details. I am learning to visualize. I am learning to do body scan and notice sensations and emotions. I am learning a lot about myself and also I am becoming calmer and more content.

I want to leave you with this poem, that I’ve recently read and it resonated with me.

Sit and be still

Until in the time

Of no rain you hear

Beneath the dry wind’s

Commotion in the trees

The sound of flowing

Water among the rocks

A stream unheard before

And you are where

Breathing is prayer.

WHERE BREATHING IS PRAYER by Wendell Berry