Is Meditation right for You?

Feature by Simran Bharadwaj

Image by Freepik

Speaking from personal experience, meditation is not for everyone. It can be difficult to find the time, or a quiet place to sit and practice breathing exercises and clearing your mind. It may feel like you have too many racing thoughts that you can’t clear from your mind when trying to start meditation. However, meditation can benefit emotional balance and attention by providing a sense of calm and peace. Meditation is not just the typical relaxing sounds that require you to have the ability to clear your mind. There are also many meditation resources that can be used to fit your needs whether you are a beginner and brand new to meditation, or want to focus on more specific areas. 

Meditation can include breathing exercises that help you release tension and stress from all areas of your body. Progressive muscle relaxation is in the category of meditation and mindfulness that can help individuals focus on each part of their body and release tension that they may not even know they are carrying. 

Meditation Apps for Meditation:
Insight timer is a free app that provides meditation music, as well as guided meditation. Recordings are of varying lengths and there is even a customizable meditation timer that you can change depending on how much time you have available. The app has focuses on different categories including sleep, anxiety, and stress

Calm provides sleep stories, breathing programs and relaxing music. The app provides many different programs that can help fit your needs, and just like Insight timer, it is customizable depending on time you have available and provides guided meditation in various topics. This app is $12.99/month.

YouTube Channels for Meditation:
Goodful is a very useful channel that has meditation videos ranging from five to 15 minutes. The videos are all guided and has categories such as self-love, sleep, anxiety, and even a video specifically for beginners. 

Even if you are unsure whether meditation can help you, I would recommend turning to short guided meditation videos for primary exposure to meditation. Therapeutic techniques may not always work the first time around. Try finding the right meditation videos or recordings that work for you!

Author

Simran Bharadwaj is a pre-professional licensed mental health therapist in New York City. You can contact Simran at [email protected] and read more blog posts at www.mwr.nyc.