Worthwhile Wellness: What I Learned From Five Days of Guided Meditation
When I first thought about trying meditation for five days, I was intrigued, but also a little nervous. I’ve never been a routine type of person. I tend to wake up one day feeling incredibly inspired and too sluggish to follow a plan the next.
But despite my reservations, I thought meditation could actually really benefit me during this time in my life and I was excited to try it. After dealing with financial anxiety, conflicting racial identity and entering into adulthood during the coronavirus crisis among other things, I’ve forgotten what it feels like to enjoy being alone with myself.
Meditation has been proven to benefit the mind and body in so many ways including regulating anxiety, reducing stress, increasing focus and improving overall wellbeing.
I’ve been to a few meditation classes in the past that always left me feeling a level of imposter syndrome. I felt like a spectator in my second-hand leggings while everyone else in their Lululemons chanted mantras without question.
As a biracial, Asian-American woman, the version of mindfulness we’re spoon-fed always felt too elitist and white-washed for me to be a comfortable participant.
Our spirituality is marketed as an “alternative lifestyle” that makes you interesting and worldly if you’re white and wealthy, but too much of a stereotype, too other if you’re not. It’s rare for me to be able to speak my language, wear traditional dress and consume my cuisine without facing racist commentary. There’s a hurtful double standard that allows white folks to practice aspects of our cultures without consequences.
Navigating the digital meditation space as a woman or non-binary person of color can be daunting at best and acts as a reminder of erasure at worst. Hearing our voices and listening to our stories is a huge part of the healing process.
Going into this week of meditation, I wanted to be selective with the mindfulness teachers I chose as an influence. I spent several hours browsing the most popular apps like Headspace and Calm looking for BIPOC teachers with little success.
I found Insight Timer on a blog while researching BIPOC mindfulness spaces. This app is far from perfect, but if you dig a little deeper, you can find powerful teachers like Lalah Delia, Alexandra Elle, Liza Copla and Wendy Chan, whom I relied on for most of the week.
But, by far my favorite resource I found is Liberate, an app created and led by BIPOC voices with meditations specifically for the black community as well as people of the global majority.
Day 1
I started with what I thought was a simple 14-minute energy cleanse titled “Sacred Waters” taught by Lalah Delia. In retrospect, it would have been easier to start with a shorter session.
Sitting still was difficult. It’s a lot harder than it seems to reach a headspace where your mind doesn’t wander. Simple things like the sound of cars or the smell of cat litter became big distractions.
But for a moment, I felt more relaxed and at peace than I have in months. With the help of Delia’s words, I envisioned myself floating in my internal sacred pool, allowing the negative energy and stress from my life to be replaced by pure positive energy from the water. The hardest part of this first day was just getting comfortable being vulnerable.
Day 3
I was so ready to tackle a longer session on Wednesday following a shorter Tuesday session. But sometimes, life has other plans, and after dealing with never ending mundane problems and work, I finally sat down to meditate before bed. I sat in my safe space and grounded myself in a 12-minute decompression-themed session.
This more physical meditation really connected my mind and body to relieve stress. I had to tense my shoulders, neck, temples, and legs upon inhaling, and fully release upon exhaling. Usually, after a day like this, I go to bed with a feeling of defeated exhaustion. But, meditation relieved a lot of the excess stress I felt and allowed me to sleep deeply and peacefully.
Day 5
On Friday, my final day, I attempted a 21-minute meditation by Delia titled “Inner Gardening Care.” This was by far my favorite meditation and involved the creation of our own internal gardening space. I watered aspects of my life that I wanted to flourish and pruned away other aspects to allow room for growth.
I was able to immerse myself deeper into the meditation than I had all week for the first 10-minutes. But, I lost concentration as we veered into the 15-minute mark.
I struggled to fight off anxiety during the day after Thursday’s session and I realized, much like with therapy, there are some problems that are circumstantial and unsolvable. The best you can do is nurture a healthy mind and allow yourself moments of peace.
What I learned
Like any intentional practice, meditation takes a lot of work. I went into this week ready to embrace any level of growth and was pleasantly surprised with the results! Looking forward, I’ll definitely be incorporating mindfulness into my daily routine.
With guided meditation specifically, I was able to create an environment conducive to positive thinking at any time of the day. There are two takeaways I’ve gotten from this experience:
1. Find any space you feel safe with limited disturbance; it can be a room in your house, a space in the yard, or even a public space with your headphones in.
2. Begin with a short and sweet session to practice being fully present. Five minutes is a great start!
Life gets in the way sometimes, but a couple of minutes a day of inner peace makes it easier to manage and heal from stress, anxiety, and trauma. Thinking about practicing meditation and mindfulness used to be a source of anxiety for me. This week helped me to get over my fear of judgment and take steps to live a more mindful, whole existence.
Written by Autumn Sevy
