Two years of uninterrupted daily meditation.

I started meditating during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown after watching a Lebron James advertisement on YouTube. I signed up for the Calm mindfulness app afterwards. I started with the Train Your Mind with LeBron James’s calm session, and it was so good I had to get the premium version. I struggled to stay consistent at the start of my meditation journey, but I eventually got into a groove with time. I was dealing with a lot of changes, chaos and challenging moments, such as losing my mum and getting laid off during the pandemic. It was an extremely tough period, and anxiety was an emotion that was reoccurring during that moment in time.

I initially started following through with the Morning Wake Up session with Christian Slomka. The session is usually 5-7 minutes of standing sequences and I ultimately moved to guided meditations by three of my favourite guided meditation teachers on the platform: Tamara Levitt, Jay Shetty and Jeff Warren.

To say that meditation has changed my life is an understatement. After the initial struggle of inconsistency with meditating, on December 27, 2021, I finally committed to meditate daily for at least 15-20 minutes every morning. Since making that commitment, I have meditated first thing in the morning non-stop for the last 730 days, and it is by far one of the proudest and most exciting practices I have stayed consistent within the past five years. I usually listen to 3 different guided meditations every morning.

Meditating daily has transformed how I look at things and my approach to the various unending vicissitudes of life. As author Wayne Dyer often said, “When you change how you look at things, what you look at changes.” Some of the benefits of meditation include reduced anxiety and stress, enhanced self-awareness, help with sleep and emotional health, and it is a great tool for understanding the bittersweet nature of life. The core lesson I learned from meditating consistently in the past two years is that everything in life is transient and impermanent. Some other utilities found with the daily meditation session include exposure to ancient wisdom and insights into various studies, and it has also become one of the sources of inspiration for my daily writing session.

I also use my daily meditation to anchor my daily writing session on this blog. Since June of this year, I have tried to write an article every day under the musing category of this blog. Most days, I don’t know what to write about, but after listening to guided meditations by Jay, Tamara and Jeff, I usually expand on a topic they discussed or find a similar subject matter I can write about for the day. My daily meditation experiment has been very transformational, as the momentum I have gained from completing the meditation each morning has given me more confidence to conquer the day and believe more in myself and my abilities.

Meditation

Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – Kafka and the Doll
Throughout our lives, every one of us will experience gain and loss. Material things, experiences and people will come into our lives; we will enjoy them for a while and then experience an ending. Gain and loss are an inevitable part of life, but it is possible to soften our loss experience.
Inspired by a true story, Kafka and the Doll recounts a remarkable gesture of kindness from one of the world’s most bewildering and iconic writers. In the fall of 1923, Franz Kafka encountered a distraught little girl on a walk in the park. She’d lost her doll and was inconsolable. Kafka told her the doll wasn’t lost but instead travelling the world and having grand adventures! And to reassure her, Kafka began delivering letters from the doll to the girl for weeks.
There is no doubt that loss will inevitably be hard, but we need to tend to our broken hearts. We must wrap ourselves up with compassion and offer a place for our pain to land. But we can soften the wave of grief by remembering the nature of impermanence. Like everything, our emotions will change, and loss will lead to a new birth.

“Each night the crickets sing of impermanence. Their songs remind us that whenever one thing ends, so another begins.” – Cristen Rodgers.

Daily Jay with Jay Shetty – A Centered Response

Aikido is a Japanese martial art form of fight that consists of offensive striking, pinning and joint locking. Aikido is strongly influenced by meditative practices from India and China, which emphasize physical and psychological well-being. Aikido’s approach begins the moment you step on the mat with a concept called “Centered Response.” Fighters pause to ground themself and connect with their inner strength.
Aikido acknowledges that in life, we are not always in touch emotionally and intellectually with what is going on within us and around us. We are not present or attuned to the moment, which can hinder our reactions to dangerous situations. When you’ve mastered yourself, you can better defend yourself.
When we are off balance or disconnected from ourselves, it is hard to feel what life throws at us, but centring boosts mindfulness, allowing for deeper self-awareness, listening, and observation.