I meditated for a month: Here's what happened...

So I've tried meditation for a few months now, but not fully committing to doing it on a regular basis. I'd do it when I had time on my days off, or when the mood struck. I'd always been fascinated by it but thought it was a lot more complex than it actually is. I'd searched in book shops/libraries and even asked for suggestions online, where I could find a decent book that would tell me everything I needed to know about meditation, until I found a book called Hurry up and Chill: A Beginners Guide to Meditation on amazon. For less than £7, it was a bargain and I bought it straight away, and when it arrived, I was delightfully surprised at its size. I was expecting a chunky book, just like any other self help type book. But this was only a small book, around 100 pages if that. It was short and sweet and stuck to the point with no malarkey in the middle. It also included some meditation exercises to do as you read the book and got me comfortable to the idea of meditation.

I knew that practicing meditation as and when I felt like it sporadically, wasn't going to benefit me much at all. So I decided to commit a month to try and meditate every night to see if there was an impact, benefit or change in my life.

Before starting my meditation journey, I wasn't really feeling myself. I struggled with sleep and struggled to wake up, I had severe brain fog and I remained in auto pilot mode more than I would be present, as the past 4 years have been the same routine without much change in work and at home. I had nothing to loose from trying meditation as I've heard over the years, the benefits it can have on your mind and wellbeing.

As well as the book, my next best meditation friend was YouTube! There are hundreds of guided meditation video's on YouTube, I quickly fell into a routine where I would meditate last thing before bed or in some cases, use it to ease me into sleep. Hell, I even fell asleep during meditation sometimes! The meditations I found myself going back to often was one by Depression to Expression- Guided meditation before sleep: let go of the day, and a channel called Great Meditation. Great Meditation has various meditations grouped by the length of the meditation. I often stuck with a 10 minute meditation, but there was a choice of a 15/20 minute meditations. Of course other video's offered longer and I saw a few up to 2 hours long but I'm not quite there yet!

Day 1- 7

I eased into my Journey with a 10 minutes meditation from The Honest Guys on the first night. It was a good first practice and I didn't fall asleep! I sat in the lotus position, but found my back hurt from trying to sit upright and not slouch for a long period of time. After the 10 minutes were over I felt immediate effects. I felt calm and content yet my body felt heavy. I felt so relaxed I didn't want to move!

On the second night I followed Depression to Expression's meditation and was able to lie down in bed for this. It was a good session, but I may have fallen asleep towards the end. I only woke up as I heard Ariana Grande playing in an advert before the next video came on. This is where I learnt to switch the autoplay off in YouTube, so if I did fall asleep during meditation, I wasn't woken up again.

On the third day, I woke up feeling refreshed and had a really good nights sleep. I had quite a positive attitude towards the day. I listened to the same meditation (depression for expression) for a few days and I was waking up before my alarm, feeling good and I was feeling Positive vibes throughout the days like nothing could get me down and it didn't! I was feeling great!

I was getting the hang of not falling asleep during the sessions, but learnt by day 6 why you need peace and quiet whilst practising. My cat Olaf had been a bit of a distraction one night, but somehow I managed to finish the guide. I also had my first mental shift during my practice (day 6). I wasn't sure if it was because olaf was being a distraction, but I had an intrusive thought come to mind and I could feel that my head was getting lighter and it was like I was zoning out of the meditation. However I did manage to re-centre my thoughts and ground myself, feeling my mind getting heavier and relaxed again and by the end of the meditation I was feeling relaxed and sleepy!

On day 7 I didn't meditate as I actually fell asleep on the sofa so when I woke up I went straight to bed to sleep. ah well, we all do it sometimes.

Day 8-14

Starting my second week of meditation, I wasn't feeling as positive as I had been in the first few days. I wasn't sure if this was because I hadn't meditated the night before or because I hadn't slept well. Or possibly both! By day 8 I was following a guide by Great Meditation a lot and it was my go to as it got me so relaxed and settled, I'd have a great night sleep and my mood would be better in the morning.

By day 9, I made a note in my journal that I needed to meditate at different times of the day and not before sleep (but this proved impossible as night time is the only time I get to have 'me time' without disstractions from the child or cat), and to explore different meditations other than relaxation. I skipped meditation on the 9th day as I was far too anxious to relax as Jodie was away with a school trip (oh the irony!).

By day 10 however, I noticed that I wasn't as overwhelmed by work anymore and I was just getting on with it and not overthinking like I usually would. I did a meditation which aimed to cleanse my energy, but I wasn't sure if I was doing it right. I find it hard to visualize at times but found my body relaxing that little bit more, even when I thought I was relaxed enough.

I was waking up earlier in the mornings and getting things done which was refreshing. There's definitely a correlation to me waking up earlier when I meditate the night before. I'm waking up 10-30 minutes before my alarm goes off (around 6am), which was so unheard of and unlike me.

Through days 12-13 I didn't meditate and I could feel the difference within myself, even in just the short time. I felt so tired and lethargic and constantly wanting a nap. The brain fog was back and I wasn't thinking as clearly as I had been and my energy levels were next to 0. It's amazing at how I've gone from one end of the scale to the other in 2 days of not practising my meditation. I knew I had to get back into it in order to make myself feel better again. So I followed a guide called "The Higherself Meditation". It wasn't a great session as I was interrupted by my cat again and i'm noticing corrolations between the disruptions and intrusive thoughts, but I couldn't shake them off like the last time. Maybe because I wasn't in the best state of mind to do so?

Day 15-21

Moving forward from what I learnt, I'd woken up at around 6am with only 6 hours sleep and felt exhausted that I snoozed my alarm a few times. 0 to bad meditation = Groggy, tired me. I stuck to the 10 minute meditations I'd started on to get me back on track and found my mood was steady and not fluctuating as much though the day and I wasn't giving into negative attitudes either.

On my 17th day, I had a new experience during my session. I was listening to a 15 minute guide and for the last 5 minutes I could see grey and black shadows dancing as if my eyes were open. I saw what looked like silhouettes of people walking around me in a circle and swirls forming close to my eyes. It felt like there was a hand waving in front of my face. I didn't feel scared and I continued with my meditation until the end. When I opened my eyes at the end and then closed them again it was all just black again and back to normal. Am I progressing with my meditation? I've still yet to look this up, but I'll let you know when I do!

Over the next few days, I wasn't feeling my best and this affected my meditation sessions, I would either not get into it or just fall asleep. and I noticed a negative cycle starting where when I didn't feel up to it my sessions would be bad and because they were bad and I wasn't feeling them I was feeling even more negative.

So to jazz things up I did a Body Scan guided meditation by The Honest Guys. It involved imagining a healing light starting at your feet and making it's way up through your body. Visualization doesn't come easy to me and I found the guide to be a bit jumpy as to how the scan was done (it went from hips to hands up to the shoulder, but back down to your pelvis up your torso). Might try another body scan that's a bit longer for me to go at a pace that suits me.

Day 22-30

Despite the ups and downs at the beginning of my meditation journey, I was starting to fall into it quicker and relaxing almost immediately. I wasn't as tense as I thought I was. I was staying alert and still awake by the end of the meditations and still seeing the black and grey swirls, although not as prominent as the first time.

I explored different guided meditations such as chakra cleansing, where I was visualizing the colours and aligning them to the area they represented. I did feel my body almost buzzing slightly when it was over like I was charging!

As the days went on my visualization was getting better, my mood was plateauing and feeling like I was in a constant state of contentment. I wasn't overthinking in work, I remained calmed during trying times where I would usually have my two-pence in it. Even though the changes weren't as dramatic as when I first started, they were taking hold in a subtle way and keeping me grounded and level.

During these last few days of my meditation month I had fallen in work and hurt my knee quite bad (missed a couple stairs and landed on a stone floor). But it gave me the chance to do a healing meditation. My knee was swollen and blue from bruising and I was hobbling when I walked. Although the healing went all over my body, I did feel tingles in the knee that took most of the force. By the next day my knee wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Almost a week on from when I fell, it looks worse than it feels. My range of motion is back to normal (as is my walk) and the swelling was gone in 2 days. I'm not saying it worked a miracle and sorted my knee out, but I like to think it was a part of the healing process along with the camomile tea (which has anti-inflammatory properties), keeping the knee elevated during sleep (a lot comfier than I thought too), and resting it when I could (I didn't take any time off work). It's been an interesting experience!

Conclusion:

All in all I have definitely experience more positive benefits from meditating than I have negative. I'm still waking up before my alarm, my mood is still level and I can maintain it through stressful times. It's easy to spot the patterns of when/why I have a bad session, and in all honesty not every session is going to be a good one but I can now identify the triggers that could make it a less than positive one i.e. being too tired, distractions aka the cat. My visualization is getting better and I'm feeling more in tune with myself.

I will definitely carry on practicing meditation in the future and keeping consistent with it, now that I know how quickly things can change when not practising it. It's enough of a motivation to keep going!

Sidenote: During meditation I would feel my face become itchy and when I read up about it I found a few articles saying that the itch comes from your Ego mind that's trying to distract you from your meditation and sabotaging you. This made sense to me as whenever I was distracted for even just a second, the intrusive thoughts would quickly show up trying to sabotage my practise. sometimes it won, sometimes it didn't.