5 min read · Sep 5, 2019
Meditation has been a hot topic, especially in Western culture for the last 30–40 years, but has seen popular growth in the last 10 years or so. So, I wanted to try it out to see what all the fuss was about and if I would feel a difference, if any at all, from meditating. So I tried meditation for 30 days.
I now do this regularly usually during the evening as I find it has a lot of benefits — which I’ll explain later in this article.
Without further ado, let me take you through my personal experience from Day 1.
Now there are various types of meditations that you can experience such as mindfulness meditation, zen meditation, just to name a couple.
I found a beginner course online through YouTube and thought I’d give it a try — here’s the link if you’re interested. This 30 day course took me through the basics of meditation and the different types of meditation and ‘chakras’ involved. There are 7 chakras in the body and these basically symbolize the different centers of spiritual power and energy.
So, what is meant to be achieved through meditation? Well, there have been several studies conducted on the benefits of this which include, but are not limited to, less anxiety, less stress, relaxation, lower blood pressure, heart rate etc. These are known short-term benefits of meditation but there is now new research on the positive long-term benefits too.These include positive effects on the brain, improved sleep, enhanced memory, among many others.
According to Buddhist philosophy, the main goal of meditation is to be aware of oneself as consciousness, and gain clarity and liberation of the mind. This enables the person to be calm and free, not following any one thought.
For the first few days, there weren’t any noticeable differences and it was hard to put into practice what was being explained and instructed, it felt a little strange. I did realize however, that I was naturally sleeping a lot faster, as I was meditating just before I went to sleep in the evening.
I felt that the following days were slightly easier to grasp the idea of meditation but again, no real noticeable change in the way I felt. As I began to understand chakra further and what each of them symbolizes, I was able to focus on my breathing and expel some of the stray thoughts that came to my mind at random times. There were times where my mind seem to ‘float’ and not concentrate on my breathing, but I was able to refocus on my breathing before too long.
Honestly, in terms of benefits from meditation, I was not seeing or feeling any different so far.
After a week of meditating everyday, I was still finding it difficult to concentrate SOLELY on my breathing. Random thoughts were entering my mind from time to time, but I felt like I was improving at it. I was definitely seeing some positive changes in my ability to relax my body and mind as well as improvement in my quality of sleep.
I noticed I was slowly gaining some sort of control over my mind and what I was able to focus, or should I say not focus on, which was very interesting. It got me thinking about how this could translate into my everyday life and not just during my meditation sessions.
During this period, I was getting used to controlling my breathing and for the first time, I was starting to notice small positive changes in the way I felt mentally. I felt more positive energy flowing through my body and I was able to keep a more positive mindset and outlook. This could have just been a placebo effect, but I genuinely believe that this development occurred from meditation.
It also felt great to be able to just ‘be in the moment’ and relieve all the stresses of the day, even if it was just for a few seconds. I found that meditation also gave me time for myself to recollect my thoughts for the day that had just passed. It was a great chance to reflect and build self-awareness.
There were definitely a multitude of emotions and feelings that I experienced throughout this 30 day meditation journey. These ranged from agitation to inspiration, boredom to peacefulness and a lot of other emotions. But I actually really enjoyed the whole process and learning how to meditate.
Some of the things I noticed were: small increase in my ability to focus and ignore the distractions around me, moments of blissful peace which felt amazing in my hectically busy lifestyle and being able to control my mind and emotions better. These were probably the biggest changes I saw after 30 days of meditation.
I know that 30 days isn’t really enough to gain enough exposure to the full curricular of meditation but I was benefiting from the positive effects that meditation comes with. There were times when I felt it was a waste of time and I was so tired that I didn’t want to do it, but we all have these days.
All in all, I think that meditation has become a good habit that I’ve been able to continue and I would recommend giving it a try for 30 days — if it’s not for you, at least you can say you tried. If you’re looking to replace your bad habits with new ones, I would highly recommend making this one of the good habits. You can meditate in the morning or evening, whenever you have 10–30 minutes of time, I’m sure it will make a positive impact for many of you out there reading this.
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