I tried meditating for a week, and it changed me

People close to me know I am anything but calm or relaxed. Maybe it’s because I am a dramatic high school student, or maybe it is because I am a senior waiting for college decisions to make their way back to me. So when I was beginning to think about meditating my eyes slowly rolled to the back of my head. This should be interesting, I thought to myself.

For this little experiment I used the app Headspace. The first two days started off being user-friendly as they were only three minute-long meditation sessions. These are seemingly simple and short amounts of time but are actually fairly difficult to sit through (for me anyways). I was unfocused and would often check the time left remaining in my session. I will say that the male voice who led the sessions was very calming and could almost put the listener to sleep.

As I continued to do these sessions repetitively, it became much easier for me to focus. I decided to stay around 3-5 minutes the whole week, because of the fact that I could barely sit through a shorter length, let alone 10 whole  minutes. I began to see the uses of meditation and would even meditate without the app when I needed it (trust me, I needed it). For example, I was having a particularly stressful day at work and my anxiety was sky high. Due to this I took five minutes to meditate and then felt ready to go back to work (without the shaking hands this time).

I would encourage everyone to try meditation; it is popular for a reason! Having anxiety, I find it amazing to find something that works for me when I really need it. Before this, I thought meditation was absolutely pointless and impossible (such a fixed mindset). The truth of the matter is that taking care of your mental state should be a priority for everyone, especially students. You need both a physical and mental health in order to live your best life. Students at Homestead today need to learn to find ways to take care of their mental health; trying meditation could be the first step.