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I Meditated Every Day for a Month to Get My Anxious Mind to STFUCould 30 days of meditating be the secret to obliterating stress? |
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"As with starting any new habit, it takes some effort. I recommend starting with a guided audio meditation," says Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center and author of "Fully Present: The Science, Art and Practice of Mindfulness." "It's helpful having someone talking you through until you get the hang of it."
UCLA offers a weekly podcast, as well as free guided meditations covering a variety of topics. There are also meditation apps, such as Headspace and Breethe -- the latter of which I leaned on for my foray into meditation.
Once I knew how I was going to meditate, I needed to make the commitment, according to Lynne Goldberg, meditation expert and founder of the Breethe app. "Decide what motivates you. Determine your intention, and then commit to honoring it," she advised me over the phone in the preternaturally soothing voice I'd come to know very well through my ear buds over the next thirty days. For me, my intention was about alleviating stress, but other reasons to begin a practice could be finding "me-time" or learning to control your temper.
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