I, like many college students, am extremely busy in my day-to-day life. I’m always running back and forth from classes and extracurriculars, while trying to balance that with a social life and getting homework done. With all of this to do, I rarely have time for myself and am almost constantly stressed out. So I decided to try a week of meditation.
According to Health Line, meditation can reduce stress, control anxiety, increase emotional health, enhance self-awareness, lengthen your attention span, reduce (age-related) memory-loss, generate kindness, potentially fight addictions, improve sleep, control pain, and decrease blood pressure. I took one look at this list and decided meditation was something I had to try.
Day one of my week of meditation was on a Friday. This was at the end of a very hard and stressful week. Before going to bed, I decided to try a “before bed” guided meditation. I just searched for it on YouTube and so many videos popped up. The video I watched was incredibly relaxing. It was only about 10 minutes long, and by the end, I was already in an incredibly calm state and drifting out of consciousness, which has never happened to me so quickly.
Saturday yielded similar results. I did use a different video, but I fell asleep just as quickly. Both videos seemed to concentrate mainly on breathing regulation. Once again, I drifted off into a peaceful sleep. Something I noticed for both Friday and Saturday was that I didn’t wake up during the middle of the night, which is something that regularly happens to me.
On Sunday, I decided to try a morning meditation. Once again, I just searched for it on YouTube. It was another roughly 10 minute meditation. Before I began meditating, I felt very fatigued physically and mentally and a little sluggish. I decided to try meditating rather than going back to sleep. After meditation, I felt so much more energized and ready to take on the day. This specific guided meditation was full of positive affirmations that just made me smile. During the day, I did find myself more productive with my homework. I’m typically a huge procrastinator, but I actually did all my homework in advance. I’m not sure if this was purely the meditation, but whatever it was, I loved it. However, when it came to night, I had much more difficulty falling asleep than the other nights, as I decided to try going to sleep without my night-time meditation.
Monday came around, and I went back to doing the night-time meditation. I used headphones this time and forgot my YouTube autoplay was on. So after I got all relaxed and started drifting into sleep, an ad started blaring in my ear. That got me out of the zone, which was a fail on my part.
On Tuesday, I decided to go back to night-time meditation (without autoplay) because I really missed the smooth and consistent nights of sleep I had been getting. There was a substantial difference in the quality of sleep between the nights I had meditated prior to sleep and the nights that I didn’t. Once again, I drifted off rapidly and had an amazing night of sleep.
Wednesday came around and I decided to meditate both in the morning and at night. I went with the same guided morning meditation I had previously, and once again, found myself ready to take on the day. I was more focused and energized throughout the day, and once again, fell asleep right away. Both meditations really helped me get through the middle of the week.
On Thursday I switched it up and did another guided meditation, but even when I switched up my routine, I had the same results – less time lying awake, and less waking up in the middle of the night.
Friday was my last day of this experiment. I decided to do a morning meditation, and once again, hearing all those positive affirmations really helped me be more positive before what would normally be a stressful day, and left me more focused and determined.
All in all, meditation is definitely something I will keep in my daily routine (especially before bed!). It makes it so much easier for me to fall asleep. Plus, it limits my screen time – had I not been meditating before bed, I definitely would have been scrolling through Twitter for hours on end. All the videos I followed I got from YouTube, so it’s easy for anyone to access. I would definitely recommend giving this a try. With the meditation videos I followed, it only took about 10 minutes of my time and proved to be totally worth it. I hope that through listening to enough guided meditations, I will be able to one day meditate by myself whenever I need to clear my mind, or just recharge.