Mid day nap or meditation challenge - 30 days

27/30

 

28/30

 

I forgot to update the completion. Challenge completed. Not in the most exemplary way, but anyway.

 

I'm joining this challenge a bit late, I know This post is a commitment to 30 days of meditation. I haven't yet come up with a set of rules that I will follow during the challenge, those will have to come after a few days when I know what I have given myself into.

Today is 0/30, e.g. no meditation, just a commitment to start tomorrow.

 

Good, I guess it's time to take this again after a year as well. Been doing little breathing exercises before bedtime. I'm planning to do about 10-minute meditations sometime in the afternoons.

 

Cool, thanks for joining me

1/30, had a 20 minute meditation at the beach this morning, was wonderful. It was a kind of aha-moment as well, I realised the flies were not in the way, they were there and helped me in improving my concentration.

 

2/30

 

1/30

10 minutes watching thoughts. Got distracted a couple of times.

 

3/30. My mind was very noisy today so I extended the meditation with ten minutes.
6 minutes of concentration training, focusing on my breathing
14 minutes of nothingness, dragging my mind back from wandering thoughts
10 minutes extra concentration training.

The first 6 minutes went really fast so I will try 10 minutes tomorrow. The following 14 minutes were ok but could have been slightly longer, will go for 15 minutes tomorrow.

 

2/30

I want to learn to cope with uncertainty even better, and I hope meditation can help me in that.

 

I would be meditating right now but I have a mild headache.. If it passes I will try to this evening.

 

4/30

 

Would you like to elaborate a bit more on that? It sounds interesting.

 

5/30

 

4 and 5 / 30

Yesterday it was already the evening when I did the meditation, and today I almost forgot it.

 

6/30

After six days I can say one thing:
2 scoops of coffee followed by meditation => mediocre experience
1 scoop of coffee followed by meditation => good experience
no coffee followed by meditation => awesome? ... haven't tried. Will do tomorrow.
It's as if the whole noise floor goes up several decibels per scoop of coffee.

Another thing I can tell is that I probably have a rather quiet brain. I never watch news. I've always engaged myself in social media at a minimum. Introvert as I am, the amount of external information that flows into my brain has always been low. The quieter my brain is, the quieter thoughts and memories I hear. That said, as soon as I get some new impressions, these will be the dominant thoughts for some time. After they have faded for a while, the memories that don't fade anymore will become the strongest ones and I start to think about the same memories over and over again. Thoughts that I don't really want keeps popping up whether I want them or not. Today I realised that this is the case because of the low noise level in my brain. With few new impressions and with no news feed, my brain has no option but to think of things it already knows. A Tedx presentation I saw once taught me that things that are coupled with strong emotions are remembered the most. That should mean that memories coupled with strong emotions should pop up first in a silent brain. It's a relief to understand why I think about certain things.

Another I begin to understand is how and what the comfort zone really is and how it works, how it's connected with actions, emotions, thoughts and sensations. More on that soon.

 

I guess yesterday's mark should have been 4/30, so its 5/30 now.

Maybe, some time later.

Interesting hypothesis. Could well be so.

 

7/30

 

7/30

Easy going, there's no need to try hard here. Just remember to come back when you get lost in thoughts.

 

9/30