Yes, I Meditate (3/3)
Table of Contents
Yes, I meditate.
Getting past the stigma
I completely understand most people that fall into the camps of either thinking that it’s pretentious or the people that are wishing that they got enough utility out of it to continue after “that one time they tried”.
For me it was mostly things falling into place. I was past my 20’s and still figuring life out. I had been talking more with my dad at the time and he gave me some simple, non-pretentious self-help stuff like “Getting organized” and whatnot.
I sifted through that stuff as he was about to throw it away. I found a lot of readings highlighted with meditation.
I never took my dad as a guy that would do that, but we’re also an open-minded family and I have found a lot of relief in things like the Yantra mat… understanding full and well that it’s just “safe self-harm for cheap endorphins” at the end of the day.
It never stuck before
I bet I must have tried to meditate or relax in school a bunch of times or after seeing some anthropological documentary about monks somewhere… but like most people reading this it just never stuck.
It was too tied to the notion of religion or explicit spirituality. The benefits were never laid out for me clearly enough.
Finding the right format
But then I sort of found myself with some podcasts, like a lot of people do, while walking home one night. Fairly sure it wasn’t a Sam Harris podcast specifically, though Sam Harris has certainly become the face of secular, non-religious meditation in recent years.
I started with Headspace. It was this app with a calm male British voice. Back then it had quite a lot of recordings that it provided for free before it decided to pull tighter to make more revenue.
For a while I used his Waking Up app after getting “a scholarship”. That’s what Sam Harris calls the free trial he gives out to people who can’t justify dropping 90€ on meditation recordings. I’m no longer pursuing that route, but it served its purpose at the time.
What it actually does for me
The simple formatting made it easy to stick with. And in my most committed periods I definitely felt the benefits:
- Mental clarity
- Emotional resilience
- Fewer moments of intense negative emotion
- Greater focus
- Better sleep
- Better memory
Keeping at it
I’m not perfect about it… throughout tougher periods in a year I might dip out. But I know how much it helps me and I intend to keep the habit up because of it.
Resources
If you’re looking for a free, no-strings-attached way to get started, I’d strongly recommend Medito. It’s a non-profit, fully free meditation app with a solid library of guided sessions: no subscription tiers, no scholarship workarounds, just a clean and honest tool. The foundation’s mission is to make meditation accessible to everyone regardless of income, which sits well with me. It covers the basics well and is a great entry point if you don’t want to commit to a paid platform before you even know if it sticks.