Ready. Set. Stop. - using meditation to stay sane

“I would like to meditate but I don’t know how to.” “I can’t meditate because I am a very agitated person.”, “Meditation seems very nice, but it is just not for me.”

I've heard these sentences from many different people and I've also heard them in my own head before I actually gave meditation a try. Now, after years of practicing meditation I learned that it does not matter how you do it - sitting up or lying down, in silence or with a mantra - or even for how long you do it. The only thing that matters is that you do it.

I used to think meditation was something that only monks could do or that one should be at a certain level of spiritual zeness to even start. In other words, I was quite skeptical about the whole concept of meditation and I did not identify myself as someone who could sit still for any longer than 60 seconds. So what changed?

Well, it turns out that beyond all the amazing scientifically proven benefits of meditation on your immune system, neurological patterns and on making your cells younger for longer it also simply just … feels good. And it has been helping me feel good for the past 5 years (when I do it, of course).

First of all let me clarify what meditation looks like for me: it means sitting down for a minimum of 5 and maximum of 15 minutes a day while listening to a guided or unguided meditation from the Headspace app. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to share some of the ways in which meditation has been helping me to achieve emotional balance and higher productivity (yes, because an unbalanced state of mind is not exactly productive):

1) To tune in to radio me: imagine your mind was a radio station. Now, what do you think you would hear if you tuned into it? Most days what I will hear is a perfect narration of my to-do list. “Do this, prepare that, call that person…” But then I give it a couple of minutes so that other thoughts can come to surface. This way I can acknowledge the type of feeling I’m carrying with me into my day. If it is a good feeling, I’ll nurture it. If it isn’t - spoiler: usually isn't - I’ll set an intention that serves me and empowers me for the rest of the day.

2) To go out of the mind and into the body: this is probably the most recurrent reason for me to stop whatever I'm doing to sit down and meditate. Anxiety, sadness, worry or just excessive mental chatter usually show themselves in the body. Tight muscles, headache or restlessness start to present themselves. In those moments I fight the temptation to answer “just one more email” and take a meditation break. Here even a 5-minute pause makes a huge difference in bringing relief to the working mind and creating clarity of action. 

3) To go out of the body and into the mind: even though it sounds controversial, meditation also helps me to go out of the body (aka external world and distractions) and into the mind to find out what is really causing a certain feeling of discomfort, impatience or very irritative mood - you know, the type that makes us become rude and moody for no apparent reason and easily disturbed by daily setbacks. By meditating, I am usually able to identify what triggered the domino effect in the first place and gain perspective.

To make it very clear, I do not see meditation as a one-time fix, but as a tool that can be your ally every day of your life if you allow it to. Just as I choose to build physical resilience through physical activity, I choose to practice meditation to build mental resilience. That does not mean that I no longer experience an unbalanced state of mind but it does mean that I can better recover from it whenever it arises.

At the end of the day, what really matters is taking a moment of pause. On a daily basis we ask our friends, colleagues and family the question “how are you?” but we usually fail to ask ourselves that very same question. This is what meditation means to me. A moment to check-in with myself, my feelings and my thoughts. By doing that regularly, I can create mental space and shift focus back to what I can control: my breath.