Tag: Meditation

Meditation Evolved, a Musing into new methods and techniques: Mental Health Awareness Month 2021

As I’ve drafted this article, I’ve thought about what I want to cover and how I want to cover it. I’ve written about meditation in the past, an article covering 9 months of meditation and my thoughts on making it a regular practice.

With the Pandemic this last year, I set a goal to meditate consecutively for an entire year, a goal that I will have reached as of publishing this article. This year I wanted to dive deeper into my practice and go beyond simply taking time out of each day to inhale and exhale.

In college, I meditated sporadically whenever I was feeling stressed as a way to cope beyond journaling and exercise. It felt like a missing piece to a puzzle that I couldn’t quite solve. 5 minutes a day was not a long time and time I gladly spared to slow life down and breathe.

Since 2019, I’ve suffered from terrible anxiety. Panic attacks that led to me freezing and the cause as of yet, I do not know. And then, the Pandemic hit. My stress was through the roof, so I decided to try meditation again and this time see what could be with daily practice. 5 minutes became 10 minutes and 10 minutes became 20 with seemingly no fuss dedicating the extra time to just be with myself. I’ve tried 30 minutes based off of studies but 20 minutes is adequate for most of my needs.

I feel better and my anxiety, to my knowledge, is lessened. There are breathing techniques to calm to help with sleep and there are others that help manage anxiety and ultimately dispel it altogether. Whenever I’m stressed, I tell myself to breathe.

At the moment, I’m currently exploring the lessons on Headspace, craving knowledge of what meditation can be. Headspace recently released a Netflix special and it helped quantify and refine my methods.

For the first time in my life this last year, I’ve started having conversations about meditation with my friends, having previously thought I was relatively unique in the interest. While my friends are new to meditation, I’m happy to see that mental health is becoming a topic at the forefront of everyone’s minds.

A couple weeks ago, I finally reached the 365 day milestone, solidifying meditation as the longest continuous habit I have ever done. A year of my life spent, breathing and learning, it honestly feels great.

My life at the moment is extremely chaotic. My mood shifts from hope to despair from day to day and my anxiety prevents a lot of the complex goals I’ve set for myself from being completed. I’ve started running again but meditation has proven the strongest for calming myself. This May, take time for yourself and remember to breathe. The world is in chaos, so it’s imperative that we slow it down for ourselves. Look inward and start with 5 minutes. Listen to the sounds around you and simply note thoughts that arise. This is the year for looking inward.

4 Things I’m doing to stay sane during the apocalypse

So the world has ended and you don’t know what to do. Social norms have disintegrated overnight and you’re left to your own thoughts. You slowly feel the insanity creep as you lose track of days and time starts to become irrelevant. While we’re not quite at the point where I can make use of my horseback riding and archery skills, I thought it might be fun to cover some tips and tricks I’m doing to keep sane. Remember when I used to do bullet point articles? Yes, it’s that time again! Without further ado, let us jump into number one:

1) Meditation –

My go to recommendation, especially now. Where our world was once filled with noise, we now have upon us a forced quiet. There is no more go, there is only being in the moment. Like any skill, meditation is something you teach yourself. We are wired for connection, so being able to disconnect yourself from the world is invaluable for a pandemic. The hardest part is simply the act of starting. I love meditation and I still find it hard to simply sit down and start the meditation. I meditated for 9 months straight the last time I was unemployed and the health benefits were immediately noticed. Back then I did 5 minutes a day and eventually 10. I wore a sleeping mask and typically had my window open to feel a breeze and listen to the leaves rustle. Eventually I stopped when I started working but have once again been meditating off and on. If your chest is tight, just take a little time to breathe deeply. My meditation is quite enjoyable right now and I went ahead and bought a game called “Playne” to help. 9 months of blind folding myself was great but that can be taxing. With Playne, I simply start the game and I can choose different ambient sounds like a creek, wind, or rain to listen to while I meditate. It also has a visual world and a story (as well as guided meditations) so it’s been well worth the $15 I paid. I’ve been doing 20 minutes a day and for me, it completely rids me of anxiety for the rest of the day.

2) Exercise –

My love, hate activity. Another show stopper that reminds me how poorly designed we as humans are. There are only benefits to exercise so you’d think the brain would prioritize it over all else. Yet it doesn’t, so you have to trick the brain. It might be easy to justify not exercising right now since all the gyms are closed but you can indeed, exercise at home. This article may foreshadow some topics to come but for now I just want to introduce you to some ideas you might not have considered before. Before the pandemic, I rode public transit and spent about 40 minutes of my commute walking. On weekends, I made it a habit to go to the bouldering gym. If it sounds sad that I built a bouldering gym in Animal Crossing, you’d be right. If you don’t know what Animal Crossing is, shame on you. What’s not said is an idea I had to turn exercise into a game. If I could make it fun, then my brain would want to do it in the future. As a planner, I like to have versatility in my approach. Bouldering was fantastic and is missed dearly but I also set up my home for exercise. 10 years ago I bought the iron gym and that was not so fun; this year I bought “Ring Fit Adventure” for the Switch, which is very fun. The game works as follows; you have a ring that you use to work out. You push and pull the ring to build resistance in your muscles. There’s a variety of activities to choose from ranging anywhere from upper body workouts to yoga. The second brilliant aspect is the joycon leg strap, which you strap to your leg and you can jog within the virtual game world! The game itself is an RPG (role playing game) that has enemies to defeat, clothing to unlock, and a world to save. If you hate exercise, learning to turn it into a game (or better yet, buy a game) is the way to go. I also just downloaded Pokemon Go and bought the Pokemon Go Plus accessory, which allows me to play the game while keeping my phone in my pocket. While I’m avoiding the outdoors as much as possible right now, I take comfort in knowing that should I get too agitated, I can go for a walk and train Pokemon, because lets face it, it’s extremely hard to stay inside 24/7.

3) Cardboard –

No, I did not make a typo; since this is my list, these are my rules. Ok, so this is more about DIY projects but I’m still going to talk about cardboard. It started after I bought a switch and was unhappy with my job. I did a little soul searching and my goal for the last year was to recapture my long lost childhood magic. I used to build when I was younger. I would take apart mechanisms and turn them into art. My favorite was the fencer I made from a mini radio. There was an antennae I used as a sword and the speaker covers made a great mask. The fencer has been lost to the ages, but the memory has not. And then there was cardboard. Large boxes made forts and smaller boxes were broken down and repurposed. I once made a house for Mario and Luigi from boxes, complete with stairs and a chimney. While I don’t remember much from my cardboard days, I do remember the long forgotten love of crafting. So when Nintendo came out with Nintendo labo, I said, “why not”? I’ve built a piano, a fishing rod, and even a steering wheel (and motorcycle wheel) for Mario Kart and I was able to recapture a little of my long lost childhood magic. I’ve also built a fully functional virtual reality headset out of cardboard, so thanks Nintendo for making me smile in a way I haven’t smiled in a very long time. So moral of the story, do DIY projects. This covers a wide range, from sitting down and assembling your electric bike to fermenting hard cider and kombucha. I’m talking about projects you can sink hours into.

4) Play Video Games –

So this is a habit I never really considered having a huge impact on my behavior and overall welfare. Typically, video games have been historically frowned upon as a hobby. Fun but ultimately a waste of time. When I did the math, however, this was far from the case. Take TV for example. You are simply sitting, you are not engaged. As far as brain development, there is none. You enjoy a story and that’s it. The Office might get a laugh and Jersey Shores might make you cringe, but the highs are lows. The best you can truly achieve with a show is a documentary. Netflix has been on point for content and the documentaries have been reminiscent of what the Discovery channel and History channel used to offer; a thirst for knowledge, quenched. But even with the best documentary, I would feel like shit if I spent the entire day sitting around watching it. Every once in a while, fine. But every day? Unfathomable. Video games I can play every day and I never feel my time is wasted. My brain is actively working when I fire up a game. If you want to learn from a game, you can. The stories are typically beautifully written and you are playing through the game, living the experience. The closest I’ve gotten with TV is choosing whether to take the grappling hook or the slingshot with Bear Grylls in “You vs. Wild”. Fun, but not on the level of a game. Want to learn a foreign language? Download Duolingo. Gaming is fun and there’s no better time to jump in than the apocalypse.

And that’s it! 4 things that I’ve been doing to keep sane in the apocalypse. Hope you enjoyed the article! As mentioned, I have an article planned for each of the topics covered today but it’ll take time as I need to play the games consistently before I publish. The “Cardboard Mechanic” article is ready though, I just need to put thought to paper and take a couple photos! And if you like my content, don’t forget; like the post, follow, and share with your friends! The traffic will help the blog grow and will help bring in revenue as more ads are views; I’m a one man army, so the money does help! Last week, I received my first patron over on patreon, so huge shoutout to Tara for the support! If you feel inclined to donate, below is the link to my Ko-Fi and Patreon pages:

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Thanks for reading and all the support over the last 5 years! I’d like to ask the question back to you; what are you doing to keep sane on day 40 (I think, oh my) of quarantine. What are some of your personal tips and tricks for staying sane and positive?

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