Meditation! Something I'm sure we've all heard of and maybe even been a little
confused by; or at least I was until a couple of weeks ago one of my friends
offhandedly mentions that she does meditation everyday and has found it's
really helped her mental health. Obviously I talk a lot about mental
health on this channel, mental health is a very prevalent thing in my life and I
am always looking for ways I can improve my general mental well-being- so as soon
as this idea of meditating to help my mental health got stuck in my head it
was there and it wasn't coming out until I tried it. Meditation is a technique
used to focus the mind and gain mental clarity, it's most commonly used as part
of a religious practice to help general mental well-being, to reduce stress, to
increase focus, and so on and so forth. from what I found it seems like
meditation is most commonly associated with Buddhism and Hinduism but both of
these religions practise meditation slightly differently and every culture
that practices meditation does so in their own individual way. If anyone comes
from a culture or a religion that practices meditation please feel free to
share your wisdom about meditation in the comments because I'd love to know
more about it from the perspective of someone who actually knows what they're
talking about. Meditation is said to be very useful for managing anxiety and
depression so you can understand where my interest came from so I decided I
would try seven days of meditation to see if it would help me and document it
for the Internet for anybody else who was interested.
Now I have to be honest with you, this is my third time trying to film this video.
The first two times I tried to film it I'd get two or three days into meditating
and then just give up which is pretty ironic considering the fact that
meditation is all about focus and mental clarity: listen, I can't focus on anything,
I have a very short attention span. I can't keep up with things, I don't know
the meaning of the word consistency and I was really hoping that among helping
with my mental health that was something that meditation would help me
improve as well. So day one my first port of call as it is in most areas of my
life was to use an app- I decided to go for Headspace because I had seen
approximately 7,000 ads for headspace on YouTube videos so I thought it was
probably good. So my first meditation session didn't achieve much. I found that
in the moment of meditating I was feeling quite calm but after that it
didn't really have any effect on my brain in general. "So- that's really close,
I don't like that. So I just did my first session on Headspace honestly I can't
say I'm feeling any more relaxed than I was earlier but I've only done it for
five minutes. I did get really distracted though because I recognised the voice of
the narrator I guess and um I want to see if I can find out who it is because
that was really distracting me" It was really nice to take a few minutes out of
my day to just relax and not really have to focus or think about anything in
particular but generally it didn't really do much. "I'm in my dressing gown
and not wearing any wakeup and I literally just got out of bed- time to
meditate! I need to get up, get dressed, get ready for work, put my makeup on,
which obviously is a very stressful thing so perfect time to do some
meditation I think. Because I'm using my phone to film this and also obviously
using an app on my phone to meditate I can't film the actual process but here
is a dramatic reenactment of what I look like- and then it will get a bit of this
as well- okay got all the action right there."
Day two again followed the same sort of theme that it was nice to take a few
seconds out of my day but in general I didn't really notice
Changes but this was when it became pretty apparent to me that my depression
wasn't something that was going to be really managed using meditation. There
have been studies showing that meditation can be used to help treat
depression but for me personally the whole way through these seven days I
didn't notice any change in depression at all the only thing I did notice is
that some of the meditation sessions I was doing while helping me to feel a
little bit more motivated but in general anxiety was sort of the main focus here
which I was happy with because I am a very anxious person. I'm literally like
one of those nervous dogs you know, every morning I wake up anxious and every
night I go to bed sang to sleep by my own racing thoughts.
Day three was when I really started to notice that I was starting to feel the
effects of meditation for the previous two days, I was feeling calm in the
moment of meditating but it wasn't really having much of an impact on my
general mindset for the day- day three was when that changed. "I've got a pretty
full-on day today I'm going to see one of my friends in Tilbury spontaneously
and I'm also seeing my dad today and undisclosed to time because my dad and I
don't plan things he's just like hey I'm in your city and I'm like cool let's go
and hang out I'm not as stressed out about that as I usually would be. I love
to travel but I I mean traveling still stresses me out
the fact that I've gotten up gotten dressed I'm ready to do things today, to
leave the house for the first time in far too long, I'm embarrassed to admit
the length of time it's been since I actually left this house so I'm feeling
pretty good I'm feeling pretty relaxed. I actually I found that my mind was
wandering a lot less which is good I'm guessing so I think it's going pretty
good so far" after three days I noticed I was
actually beginning to remain calm and remain relaxed for some of the time
after meditating. Day 4 was one of the best days I have had in a long time
day four was a good day not just for meditation but in general- day four
of meditation was brilliant really such a good day I
really enjoyed that day. I woke up on day 4 feeling really really anxious much
more than usual, and I meditated in the morning and I found I just felt so ready
to start the day after that. "This morning I did the 'first run' meditation on
headspace which was 12 minutes long and I did that while I was running this
morning and usually when I'm running I'm thinking about running and thinking
about how much I hate running even though it's worth it in the long run it-
helped me to focus and it was really really motivating as well I found it's so much
more motivating than just running listening to music or anything. I found
that as the week has progressed and as I've been meditating more it's been
growing on me" During day 4 I also took some time out of my day to do a
20-minute meditation session that I found on YouTube for depression because
I noticed the depression was creeping up on me I didn't find that had much of an
impact on my mood in general. Days 5 and 6 were both pretty much the same- I did a
session on headspace and I felt really calm after that I felt really relaxed
and again ready to take on the day. Not only that but I also noticed I was
starting to employ the techniques I'd learned through meditation sort of
without realizing, one of the things I picked up from headspace was this idea
of visualizing your thoughts as like passing cars so you can acknowledge that
they're there but you don't really have to pay them any mind because they're
just zooming by, they'll be gone soon- it's there and wow it zoomed away, it's
gone now... One of the things I picked up from headspace was the idea of
visualizing your thoughts like passing cars on a busy road. You can acknowledge
them but you don't really have to pay them much mind because they're going to
be gone soon and I live on a busy road so this visualization is perfect for me
because I get the full experience. And this idea and this visualization I found
I would just start doing when my thoughts were getting too much for me I
am very very easily overwhelmed, my brain moves at a very fast tempo I'm surprised
my head hasn't exploded yet because of how fast my brain moves so that was a
really great thing to visualize and to remember that I don't have to pay the most
attention to all of these millions of thoughts racing through my brain all the
time. They're there, I can acknowledge that
they're there and I can accept the fact that they're there but I don't really
have to pay attention to them and that really helpful really super helpful
thank you well done ten out of ten helpful. And finally here we are on day
seven- so overall this week I found that meditation has been really useful for me
for helping to manage anxiety and it is definitely something I'm gonna carry on
I found that meditation has also helped me feel a little bit more motivated
which is good because motivation is something I struggle with especially now
that I'm sort of in a weird limbo period where I'm not working anymore because I
have to prepare to go back to University but I'm not quite back at university yet
so I'm just sort of sitting at home stagnating not really knowing what to do
with myself. I'm just sort of sitting there like mold on a banana just sort of
feeling a bit uncomfortable and now you're feeling uncomfortable too because
I just said that. I'm definitely gonna take out the full headspace subscription
because I've noticed that they have a headspace and Spotify combined
subscription and also you can get student discount on that one and you
know Spotify is my most used app. There are tons of free meditation resources
out there there are thousands of videos on YouTube there are loads of free apps
that will give you free guided meditation, that's what I was using on
headspace for this whole week- I was using the basic pack which is completely
free but I do want to take out the full subscription because they do have some
really specific types of meditation on there they have one for going on a
vacation they have one for leaving home they have one for getting to sleep and I
want to explore that that sounds interesting to me. But it is really
important to remember that if you're using meditation to help you manage a
mental health condition meditation can't be used to substitute any treatment
you're prescribed. Have you tried meditation? what did you think of it? Let
me know in the comments. Around 90% of the people who watch my videos are not
subscribed to my channel so if you like what I do over here and you'd like to
see more of it please feel free to subscribe thank you guys really
much- thank you guys so so much for watching I really hope you enjoyed this
video and I hope you are all having a wonderful wonderful day filled with no
stress and no anxiety just happy thoughts and positivity I'm gonna go
make myself a coffee because I only got four hours of sleep last night! I will see you
soon, Bye!
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