I need to make changes in my life. I don’t feel well and I haven’t felt well for about 3 years now. I’ve had lots and lots and lots of medical tests and the results are all “You’re fine.” But I’m not… and I hear that stress and anxiety and depression can have a detrimental impact on your physical health. So exploring meditation is something I’m doing to try to fix how I feel. This is my start with the app Headspace.

Have you heard about Headspace? This is an app/website that is supposed to be an easy introduction to meditation. Anybody can get the initial 10-day program free, it’s the first level in their Foundation program and is basically 10 minutes a day for 10 days. Last year I did the Level 1 program for free.

It took me about 27 days to complete 10 days.

It was super hard to sit there for 10 minutes! My brain just goes and goes and goes, all around the clock. It does this at night too. I laugh when my kid is asleep in the car and then wakes up to immediately begin talking and telling stories. But my brain runs the same way even if I’m not verbalizing everything, I wake up and immediately start running through everything I have to do or feel I have to do.

Anyway, I finished, I set it aside and moved on. But now I’m seriously looking for change… I need to see if meditation will help me “simmer down now”.

So I BOUGHT 3 months of subscription to Headspace. Since I purchased something I figured that would help me keep going with this.

Here’s how Headspace works… there is the initial 10 day Level 1 program that is free. Then you can do the next 10 days, which is Level 2 of the Foundation program. Each of those sessions are 15 minutes long. I completed that about 2 weeks ago and then got scared of Level 3 of the Foundation program because it threatened me with 20 minutes of meditation time.

So I did several days of their 10 minute guided meditation as part of the “singles” collection. These are meditations geared toward certain goals that aren’t part of a whole course.

But I finally did the first meditation of Level 3, I managed to sit there for 20 minutes. And it’s hard to find 20 minutes of time to myself. Well, I’m usually by myself all day, but that’s devoted to my job. Part of me wants to say “Forget this, go to another program that is more interesting to you.” But I’m a perfectionist* (uh… part of the reason I’m overly stressed) and I feel like “I need to be a proper student and do this as they intended!”

Imagine that last sentence in a good British accent.

Meditation is not without challenge, but I’ve read too many things to brush it off as fiction. Still, I feel weird talking about attempting to meditate. Like I’m going to start burning incense, chanting with crystals in my hands and changing my name to Flowerchild Meadowlark. (Not going to happen.) It’s becoming more mainstream, but still fringe-y mainstream!

My time with Headspace will be up for renewal in December. I think at that point I will move on to a different program to test out and see how it goes.

*Perfectionism is stupid. FYI

Disclaimer: I paid for Headspace and this post has no affiliation with them. But to be transparent… gotta make readers aware of things!