Take a deep breath. Most people have heard this phrase as a means of relaxation or a calming strategy. However, while this phrase may feel useless, the simple act of taking a breath and concentrating on breathing is helpful, but not without purpose. A way to exercise this act is meditation. This week, I tried meditating for 15 minutes every day, to see the impact.

Wednesday: Meditating is something I never thought I would do, which left me feeling extremely skeptical about whether or not this challenging exercise would do anything for myself. I started with a five minute guided meditation. The meditation began by saying to find a posture that felt comfortable and then focus on any points of tension. The meditation told me to accept the points of tension in my body as best I can, which sounded a little odd to me, but I did the best I could to accept them. The rest of the meditation focused on awareness, of the surrounding area and of my own body. The meditation ended by encouraging me to befriend my pain and discomfort. Much to my surprise, I ended up feeling a bit more relaxed. Upon reflection, I realized that the meditation had not once told me to breathe, which really shook up my preconceived notions of meditation, leaving me pleasantly surprised.

Thursday: Since I felt the meditation I tried yesterday worked relatively well, I used it again. However, this time I tried the meditation right when I woke up, as opposed to before I went to sleep, which is what I did on Wednesday. Since I used the meditation right when I woke up, I felt there was more of an impact throughout the day, through feeling more relaxed and focused on my tasks.

Friday: On Friday I tried a different meditation that focused more on breathing. I was guided to breathe at different paces, sometimes breathing more rapidly and sometimes doing heavy breathing. This meditation felt much better to me because instead of just telling me to do things.

Saturday: Since I had more time on Saturday, I decided to do a longer meditation in the morning. It had breathing exercises and grounding techniques and also instructed that I should lay down while doing it which was a shock to me.

Sunday: After a week of trying new and varied meditation techniques, I finished off the week with the five minute mediation I had started with. While it maybe was not the best meditation I tried this week, it felt very full circle. Trying meditation was definitely something outside of my comfort zone and while I will not be meditating everyday, it is definitely a useful practice.