Meditation: Calm, How to Meditate: The Big Idea Length: 10 minutes Where: Home Office/ Guest Room, Los Angeles How It Felt: Short & Sweet!
For my third meditation with the Calm app, I decided to start at the very beginning. They offer a 30 day “How to Meditate” program that seemed like a great place to refresh the basics. Even though I’ve been meditating for years, technically, I’ve never been focused, consistent, or intentional with my practice until now, so I want to relearn from the ground up.
It was a quick session and started with Jeff Warren’s personal story (and a wild one at that!) which led into a simple, super basic meditation. Because it was so elemental, I found myself entirely relaxed and able to follow along. It was like taking a quiz on addition when you’ve been trying to figure out long division, and my brain was thrilled to find some ease.
I loved his thoughts about creating “space” inside your mind through meditation. I am someone who has what most would consider a hectic or chaotic life (organized choas!)- my work has me constantly doing new and different things- auditioning, on set, on stage, etc- we split our time between two separate homes, usually I am traveling often, working toward multiple creative endeavors, trying to give back however I can, and keeping up an overactive social life. Plus we both have huge families, I have three step-kids, and Steve has more than a full workload at his job. I love to read, I’m always in a class of some kind, and I try to keep up with what’s happening in the world…
What I’m trying to say is….yeah. It gets pretty cluttered up there!
Usually, the best thing I can do is take a full “defrag” day, or “Introvert Day,” as I usually call them. It’s time and space alone with no agenda and nothing to accomplish, and it’s the difference between me going crazy and me being a nice, (semi-)normal human. During those days, it really feels like my brain goes to work sorting all the new information I’ve taken in recently, organizing it, analyzing it all for patterns and insights, putting it away in the proper places. It’s necessary and not always easy to schedule.
Perhaps, however, there is a way to do this more steadily with meditation! I did feel, after a busy day, that I had a bit of breathing room in my mind once I took some solid, deep breaths and let it all go for a few minutes. Will be interesting to see if a regular practice cuts down on my dependence on consistent full mental shut downs!
I also loved the quote that was shared at the end of the session (see below). Reminds me of another one I love and subscribe to completely: Happiness is an inside job. Excited to keep working from within and finding how it effects all the rest!
My Year of Meditation 