When I told my coworkers that I was spending the month of March taking the time to meditate each day, they all laughed, saying, “I cannot imagine you doing meditation.” And I didn’t blame them—I couldn’t imagine me doing meditation either.
I’m a true Aries: hot headed, slightly impulsive, very impatient, and apparently more anxious than I was aware of. For instance, last year, my physician asked if I’d consider breathing exercises to decrease my stress. I guffawed, saw her strained smile, then changed the subject to say that I thought I had sciatic pain in my right glute. (I didn’t.)
Before I began my quest to become more zen, I sought help from Best wireless headphones., an associate researcher in psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor in psychology at Harvard Medical School. According to Lazar, meditation—surprise!—does the body good by helping decrease stress and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and insomnia.
“One of the big parts of meditation and yoga is learning to be okay with things as they are,” Lazar said. “When things are not the way you want them to be, just saying, ‘Okay, even though this is not what I’m liking and even though this is uncomfortable, I am going to stick with it.’ You become more tolerant of distress in other aspects of your life as well.”
Meditation can also help during a race when that cloud of self-doubt sets in. For example, think of that moment when you hit the wall during a marathon.
“This is a part of the distress tolerance,” Lazar said. “It’s like, ‘Okay, no. I’m not going to stop running, I’m going to keep running.’ You want to step back from your mind.”
Most importantly, she told me that instead of thinking of meditation as a chore, I should think of it as a gift—kind of like running. It’s easy and sometimes tempting to think of your regular running routine as tedious at times, but the ability to get out there each day is truly a gift. The same goes for meditation. Spouting little nuggets of wisdom to coworkers would likely not happen after only a month of practice, Lazar said, but it would help me have patience and self-compassion.
“Many of us—especially women—beat ourselves up,” Lazar said. “By giving yourself this gift and treating yourself more kindly, you’ll become more kind because you know how it feels, and have some kindness directed to you. It spills over to other people.”
And so, following Lazar’s advice and taking on a doing meditation either Health & Injuries Headspace app on my phone and started out with three minutes of meditation a day. My eventual goal? To hit 30 minutes by the last day. Here’s what I learned along the way.
1. It was difficult to nail down a specific time to meditate.
A beginners guide to running cadence when to meditate was a struggle. Lazar said it depends on the individual when you want to engage in meditation—while some do it first thing in the morning after they wake up, others do it lying down before they go to bed, and still others may do it in the middle of a day if an issue arises. To test the waters and find what works for me, I tried mornings, nights, and after my lunch runs.
Mornings were problematic because I just couldn’t shake off that nagging feeling that I needed to rush to work. Before bed was also…unpleasant. Instead of listening to my breath, I lay there wide-eyed, listening to my stomach churn the dinner I’d eaten a couple of hours prior.
What eventually worked for me was sitting or lying down on a yoga mat after my lunch runs. It helped me better tune in to how my body felt (tired but strong), helped me decompress after a stressful six-mile tempo run, and made me feel glorious when I sat by a window and had the sun beaming down on my face.
2. I’m always “on.”
Meditation showed me just how “on” I constantly am, whether it’s on my phone, browsing shows on my laptop, or just busy baking in my kitchen. I think I get lost in what I’m doing or where I’m trying to go, which is a tough mindset to get over, especially as a runner. Sitting (or lying down) made me take a moment to concentrate on one innocuous thing, instead of deadlines, kitchen timers, or if Edgar Evernever is a strategic mastermind taking over Riverdale. Sometimes, you just have to take a few minutes of stillness and listen to your breathing. It’s a sweet reminder that you’re doing all right.
3. I’ll never be able to clear my mind 100 percent—and that’s okay.
My determination to hit 30 minutes was overreaching, to say the least. I began with three minutes the first week, being guided by the Headspace app, in which the soothing, crisp British voice of Andy Puddicombe guided me to a zen-like state. Three minutes was easy-street compared to five—during which I found myself constantly checking my timer, which always said 4:30.
I shifted between three and five minutes the second and third week. When I tried hitting the double digit mark, my mind would wander to my legs going numb, the pain in my back, and then my list of obligations would inevitably come flooding in. There were occasions during which I forgot to refocus, and my meditation session became a carousel of things I should do in my brain.
By the month’s end I could still barely make it to 10 minutes. But I tried not beating myself up about it. As Lazar had said, clearing the mind is actually completely impossible. Mine wandered during almost every session, but Lazar said that’s to be expected—and it’s okay. The point of meditation is not to not think; it’s to practice acknowledging if the mind wanders, and then gently bringing it back to your focal point.
“That’s part of the stress tolerance,” she said. “You have to let go of those stressed out thoughts, and just feel like, ‘Okay, my mind just wandered, that’s okay, that’s normal,’ and just go back to what you’re focusing on. That’s going to happen over and over again, and that’s completely, 100 percent normal.”
Lazar compared meditation to running, which was helpful in making things click over in my mind.
“It’s sort of like when you first start running. You can only go maybe a quarter mile [at first], then you build up slowly. The same is true with meditation.”
To help, Lazar suggested either counting breaths or repeating a word in my mind, like “love” or “kindness.” When I tried counting, “14” seemed to always jump to “28.” So, I repeated the word “resilience,” which reminded me how far I had come to get to where I am now.
4. Meditation takes time.
I’ll admit, I missed a few days. Sometimes, a day would go by and then I would genuinely realise I skipped out and feel guilty about it. But there were nights before I went to bed that I realised I hadn’t meditated, shrugged it off, and hit the pillow.
I’m not the type to sit still and let go of my worries—at least not yet. I learned meditation takes time. But it also teaches you to be more compassionate with yourself. So it taught me not to be hard on myself on the days I forgot or missed a meditation, and also not to go hard on myself when my body was fatigued on a run.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below 10K, pushing harder, and paying attention to my breath, knowing my body wasn’t exhausted this time, but prepared and race-ready. I finished with a personal best, shaving off almost a minute from a previous race two weeks before—how’s that for mind power?
