Being a college student means having loads of classes, papers, exams, and club commitments, all while making time for friends. With all of these activities taking up your time, at least for me, health went right out the window freshman year. Now, as a sophomore in college, I’ve learned to integrate mental and physical health into my daily routines.
How did I do it? Practicing the act of meditation.
Some say that meditation is useless, as “it’s just breathing,” but it’s so much more than that. Meditation helps you build skills to manage stress, something almost all college students could benefit from. It also helps you focus on the present moment, throwing out all other thoughts and distractions away. You don’t have to meditate for very long; it’s quite common to only meditate for ten minutes.
My story with meditation didn’t start in college. It actually started when I landed my first job working the front desk of the world’s very first drop-in, secular meditation studio, Unplug Meditation, located in the heart of Los Angeles. For three years, I worked with a handful of meditation practitioners who taught me their very best stress-management skills, which boosted my confidence in my academic career, social life, and managing the stress of becoming an adult while living almost 2,000 miles away from home. Here’s a few things I’ve learned about meditation and mindfulness:
Meditation can make you more self-aware. After meditating the first couple times, I immediately recognized how much self-awareness I lacked. By breathing in for six counts, holding for six, and slowly breathing out, I realized how I often forget to sit in the present moment and notice my atmosphere. I started noticing how many thoughts were going through my brain at once, but once I let go of the thoughts and started breathing in the moment, I could appreciate the present moment for what it is.
Meditation can help you learn how to better manage your anxiety and stress. When I started college, I had zero patience. I’ve always felt a surge of anxiety before exams, interviews, or even just speaking in class. When I felt anxious, my breathing would get shorter and more rapid with a sense of disorientation. By just practicing breathing in and out, focusing on counting up and down for a selected amount of time per day, my anxiety levels have dramatically dropped in times of “mental crisis.”
Meditation can also improve your memory. While working at Unplug Meditation, one of the teachers I was most familiar with told me that each time you practice meditation, more blood flows to your brain, allowing for our brain to have better memory capacity. No wonder that once I started meditating I had an easier time memorizing terms on my Quizlet sets!
So, while I no longer work at the meditation studio, I’ve gained valuable experience that has changed my perspective on how to live my day-to-day life. Now, before exams, stressful social situations, interviews, or any event with a potential anxiety factor tied to it, I just breathe in and out. I’m way kinder to myself than I was before I learned how to practice mindfulness. While it’s cliché, I believe it has the ability to change your life, too. You should try it sometime.