30-Day Meditation Challenge: Week 1 Update

Happy Sunday! Last week I introduced my 30-Day Meditation Challenge. A challenge geared towards devoting time to daily meditation. With week 1 wrapping up, I wanted to do a quick check in. On Monday I listened Shelah Marie’s Meditation Mixtape. I love it because it has various meditations for topics like acceptance, work, and fear. I chose to listen to “acceptance” which is guided affirmations. This was a great way for me to start my day and set the tone for my week. I strongly recommend listening to Shelah’s mixtape especially if you’re a beginner. It can be found on Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube. This day, I sat at the park and meditated. It was a bit intimidating at first having to close my eyes in a public place, but I pushed past my fear and did it anyway. Once it was over, I felt relaxed. In that moment I was surrounded by a peace that lasted the rest of the day.

The rest of the week, I used an app called Insight Timer to track my meditation practice. The part of the app I use allows you to utilize a timer while playing ambient sounds. The background sounds help me ease into meditation.

Things I’ll do differently next week:

• Starting my day off with meditation. This week the only day I meditated in the morning was Monday and that’s something I want to change.
• Meditating outdoors. As I mentioned, the calmness I found while meditating outside was surreal. It’s a feeling I want to experience again and again.
• Longer meditations. While using the Insight Timer app I only meditated for 5-8 minutes. I want to increase this time to 10-15 minutes.

Takeaways:

• I believe when meditating you must find what works best for you. Some people use guided meditations while others meditate in complete silence. It’s about what’s most beneficial to you.
• Don’t be afraid to experiment. For me, meditating outside was a new experience. Because I faced a fear, I discovered something I now love.
• I strongly recommend both Shelah Marie’s Meditation Mixtape for guided meditations and the Insight Timer app if you just want to have sounds playing in the background. I believe this app also has guided meditations too which is something else to look into.

Overall, week 1 was a success and I’m excited for this journey. If you’ve joined the challenge let me know below how your first week went.

Take care.

Photo by Madison Nickel on Unsplash