Mason Montgomery – @MasonGoms
When many people think of meditation, they think of people sitting with their legs crossed and humming with their hands out.
This does not have to be the case. When I meditate I lay on my bed relaxed. When I first got into meditation I would search guided meditations on Youtube because I had no clue where to start. Now that I have gotten into it a bit more I just sit in total quiet, focus on my breathing and let my thoughts run through my head.
Dan Harris said something really interesting about meditation on the Joe Rogan Experience. He talks about meditation like a video game where you can’t move on if you want to move on. When you’re in meditation, you have to just let the thoughts come to you and you cannot try to push them away. Letting these thoughts into my head and forcing myself to deal with my negativity has helped lead to many of the benefits I feel.
I started meditating because of the trouble I was having with sleep. The only way I could fall asleep was with some kind of background noise (mostly Netflix) on in the background. This, in turn, caused restlessness. Whenever I would try to fall asleep in complete silence one thought would creep into my head. Spiders. My arachnophobia caused me to think that spiders were crawling on me and just fill my mind with thoughts of nothing but spiders. At first my mind would go haywire and the little voice in my head would just yell “stop” over and over again. Once I began to focus on my breathing just coming and going from my body I was able to stop my brain from panicking. I was able to now focus in on my thoughts and reassure myself that the spiders are just a figment of my imagination. I am now on a path to getting over my fear and my sleep has improved in the process. I am now also better at confronting stress in everyday life using the same technique I used to help me sleep at night. When I feel myself getting overwhelmed I bring my thoughts inward and focus on controlling my breathing until my mind clears.
Quick shout out to @Jay_Azeltine for sparking my interest in meditation and helping me find where to start.
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