Is There a Better Time To Meditate?

During this remote period, I find myself getting too caught up in social media, negative news, frustration and anger from others, and just overall hardships resulting from from COVID-19. One way that I find that I can help this is through meditation. There are many types of mediation, and some help for different reasons.

Body Scan Mediation: This is a form of mediation that can take seconds or an hour, depending on how much you can get into it. Simply close your eyes, scan your body mentally, and feel if something is wrong. For example, if you’re having pain from sitting too long, using body scan mediation is a way to identify that and see what you can do about it.

Loving Kindness Meditation: This one speaks for itself. If you’re loving and kind to yourself, you can put out more kindness into the world. This mediation is a part of a guided meditation to have kinder thoughts about yourself, develop better feelings toward yourself and the world, and be able to eventually put that out into the world.

Yoga: While many might not consider yoga to be a form of mediation, I believe that any way to relieve stress, center yourself, and feel better can be meditative. Yoga can improve mood, reduce pain, and increase energy, therefore is definitely a form of meditation and a way to take time out of each day to relax and understand what you’re feeling during the pandemic.

Breath Awareness Meditation: This mediation can be done anywhere and at any time, guided or unguided. Breath awareness is the ability to take a moment to deeply breathe, sit quietly, and settle yourself. The ability to only focus on the breath allows other thoughts to become unimportant and distractions to leave the mind, which can make you feel better.