I Skipped Formal Meditation For A While. This Happend!

I didn’t do a single formal meditation for a couple of months. It just happened. At some point, I just stopped doing them.

Spoiler: The world didn’t end, neither did my calmness.

I meditated daily for over one and a half years before that. Each day sitting still for at least 15 minutes. Most of the time it was more like 20 min.

It was great. It was helpful. But it also came with a downside. Timing.

I had to allocate a time slot for it where I am not too tired but also not at my peak for work. Getting work things done had a higher priority for me.

Besides, I felt getting controlled by the timer and spotted myself a couple of times to just long for that the timer beeps and this sitting finally ends.

I dropped the timer and started to use my breathe counting instead. I was counting it anyway as it helps me to focus. And at some point, it felt more natural to just keep counting my breaths and stop when I reach the number I set before.

So, instead of 15 or 20 min sessions, I did sessions between 50 and 300 breaths.

The annoying timing and control things just went away with that. It felt better to go by breaths counts.

However, somehow over this summer, I stopped doing those as formal sessions.

I just started counting breaths whenever an opportunity came. Be it waiting in line in the supermarket, making my tea, sitting on the balcony, or waiting in the doctor’s office when my daughter had an appointment for her brackets.

The calmness stayed.

On the contrary, when I did a formal session today, I experienced the restless beginning again. These first 5 to 10 minutes my mind and body need to arrive and sit still.

The thing is, you can meditate in many ways. Some ways work better for you and others don’t.

Test a few ways and pick the one which works for you best. Stay with it and practice.

And the calmness will stay.

-–

Jens

btw if you are new to meditation, take a look at our guided meditations for beginners to get started.

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