- AtoZ Challenge 2024
- Gettting ready to AtoZ
- A is for Actually/Abundance
- B is for boo…. Brilliant things
- B is for Bad Idea Bears
- C is for Challenging
- D is for Dark #AtoZ2024
- E is for environment #AtoZ2024
- E is for Editing
- F is for Finders Keepers
- F is for Family and Friends
- G for Groups – AtoZ 2024 #MondayBlogs
- G is for ‘Only the Gods are Real’
- H is for Home
- I is for ‘I am, I feel…’
- J is for Jump (a poem)
- K is for Killing #AtoZ
- L is for Ludosport (what else?) #AtoZ
- M is for (e)motionless
- M is for Mourning
- M is for Meditation #MondayBlogs
- M is for Magic
- N is for normal
- N is for November
- O is for Outer Space
- P for Psychosis #Mondayblogs
- Q for quotables
- R for reality
- S is for singing and other music
- T is for Time and Travel
- U is for Understanding
- V is for Via
- W is for Wishes
- X is for Xray and other medical stuff
- Y is for Yesterday
- Z is for Zebras and ZZZZs
- And…that’s it – An AtoZ Rounup
M is for Meditation
I’ve always found that meditation is something that comes sorta easily to me. Well, kinda. My brain still does the whole ‘chasing ideas into the flow of information thing’ instead of letting them go sometimes, and sometimes, I’m really bad at objectively labelling thinking and feeling thoughts, but, I’ve found, overall, that meditation is great for me.
The thing is, it wasn’t always that way. It started, I guess, when the whole trend of working on meditations was something that was rolled out in the UK. I’ve been through the mental health system a couple of times, and the trend towards talking therapies has been a good thing, but poorly applied.
Case in point, me.
Before I went to my psych because my mood had dipped, badly, I could meditate. It wasn’t quite about how I did it, and I wasn’t as fond of guided meditations, but, as I said, my psych did something that sort of threw a spanner in the works when they told me that I couldn’t self-soothe, wasn’t meditating properly, and therefore put me in a position where I was overanalysing my meditation…which you can’t do while meditating.
I did a form of therapy called CFT, and while I was doing that, the nurse that talked me through it all worked out that I could meditate, but overanalysing had led to hyper vigilance, hypervigilance led to …not meditating and things got messy for a while.
Then I discovered two projects.
The first is called Digipill – but I found that very limiting. It’s exactly as it looks like on the tin. It’s almost like a prescription system that you choose yourself. But if you don’t know what you need….limiting.
The second – Headspace. Which changed everything. I tried Calm too, but I wasn’t so comfortable with that – Headspace though – I think it’s just the right layout – which is important – if you’re looking for something to get better with, it has to work with you.
So, go through the apps, do the trials, then settle into a routine would be my advice.
I spent the first two months using the sleepcasts to actually get to sleep. Then I started following the meditation projects. Every morning, I’d get up, I’d tell Alexa to run my morning routine, and while Headspace was integrated with Alexa, I meditated.
A few months down the line, a different therapist got to meet me and realised that I *can* self-soothe. (spoiler, self-soothing is whatever you do to calm down. If you’re told you can’t self-soothe and you do actually keep yourself calm, or calm yourself down, YOU CAN SELF-SOOTHE. I’m yelling that because, ultimately, I have to be clear that I lost a lot of ground to ‘you don’t self-soothe’. There wasn’t even an ‘appropriately’ in there, because obvious, some self-soothing things are better than others.
Meditation though, is one of those things that I really think is important to do as a vital self-care routine. I would even go as far as to say I think children should be taught it in school. I teach meditation techniques to support someone whose breathing a little too fast and feels lightheaded (the box breathing technique is a type of meditation. Doesn’t say you have to meditate with your eyes closed). I’m thinking about how to teach meditation while we’re warming up at LudoSport. And I use two apps now to meditate. Headspace in the morning. Vos * as a check-in and meditation system at night.
*Full disclaimer, it appears to have a little AI inside so it can answer you and contextually does well. It’s not a generative AI and I feel like it’s important to warn people that there’s a response and linguistic based AI inside (which only occasionally goes clunky), in case you’re entirely anti AI. I’m not. I wanted to develop AI to do what that app does and it angers me (and I’ll talk about it post AtoZ) that generative AI has screwed people over.
Yesterday's posts
S is for Singing and other music
Visit other blogs from the AtoZ challenge!
The Current posts in my AtoZ challenge are:
T is for Time and Travel
Visit other blogs from the AtoZ challenge!
My other posts are listed at The AtoZ of me and my inspirations
No visits today – I’m asking that you read my post, P for Psychosis.
Kai is a writer, author and avid reader. A mental health advocate, Ludosport athlete and coder. She’s the mother of two young adults, owned by two cats, and lives with her beloved in the Cotswolds.
