Today was the 21st day since I’ve made it a practice to start my day with meditation. I feel like I’ve made some progress. I’ve built up from about five minutes to going for 10 minutes. I have learned a lot from the practice, but obviously I am also now aware of what a novice I am at meditation. I plan to keep this up because while it takes just a short time to make this daily ritual a part of life, the benefits radiate out to so many areas of life: emotional, mental, relaxation, clarity, focus, awareness. It is well worth the effort. If you want to make meditation a part of your daily routine I recommend you stick with it for a few weeks in a row so you can get into it.

(The benefits of meditation are subtle: it’s not going to fix all of life’s problems . . . but it makes life’s problems seem like less of a big deal. And that’s pretty cool.)

What I learned: it’s really not about any specific moment that happens while you are meditating. It is about the ongoing, long-term, practice, and how that affects you as a person.

When I look back at the first week of meditation, I wasn’t getting much from the practice. It mostly felt like a hassle, a chore. It takes staying with something a little while to see why you want to stay with it.

Here are my posts on the past 21 days of meditation:

Days 1-6  : Off to a rough start!

Days 8-9 : feeling grounded

Day 10 : Legs up the wall pose

Day 11 : be chill

Day 12: This stuff works!

Day 13: gifts of the practice

Day 14: now it’s a habit

Days 15 & 16: Science & Meditation

Days 19: Practical benefits of the practice

Day 21: what I learned.

I plan to continue this practice. My style of learning about something is to be the eternal dilettante, always the beginner, never the expert, always trying new things. If meditation is something you are interested in check back here from time to time, I plan to post interesting and easy to use meditation techniques, such as different mudras, breathing practices, and styles of meditation (Tibetan vs. Zen for example) as I learn more myself.

Namaste!