Finding Calm

Meditation has long been a practice that I’ve viewed as beneficial, yet impossible. This battle with meditation began in graduate school while researching and implementing a mindfulness based meditation practice for first year physical therapy students. That entire sentence is very ironic. We (as grad students) learned the basics of mindfulness based meditation, practiced it ourselves, designed a program, and monitored the outcomes of the first year students. Not surprisingly, we saw lower stress levels, higher feelings of confidence and productivity, and improved grades. And yet, even this wasn’t enough to spur a practice of my own.

Fast forward to present day. For the past year I’ve been obsessively reading books and listening to podcasts related to self development, business development, and life hacks. One of my favorite authors/podcast hosts is Tim Ferriss. His books (The Four Hour Work Week, The Four Hour Body, and The Four Hour Chef) are amazingly insightful, real world applicable, and look into creating maximal outcome using the minimal effective dose - in everything from fat loss to income generation. His podcast is excellent as well. He interviews people who are at the top of their field, experts in whatever it is they do, from actors to chess prodigies to angel investors to athletes. He dissects their habits, thought processes, favorite books, etc in order to filtrate nuggets of wisdom and actions that you can implement in your day. One thing I found fascinating is that approximate​​ly 80% of the people he interviews have some sort of meditative practice. These are the best IN THE WORLD at what they do. They might be on to something.

So where to begin? That has always been (and usually is) the hardest step. Luckily, a blog post of Mr. Ferriss’ (this is unwittingly becoming a fan post) listed the apps that he uses regularly and recommended two meditation apps - Headspace and Calm. After checking both apps out, I downloaded Calm. And it’s wonderful.

Calm is a free app that does have a membership option as well. The free app provides you with 20+ peaceful sounds and scenes to choose from, guided meditations, a meditation timer, and (best of all) “7 Days of Calm”. “7 Days of Calm” is a weeklong program of 10 minute guided meditations with the goal of teaching the basics of mindfulness based meditation. Currently I’ve completed day 5, and I can already feel differences. Peace, improved breathing, less reactivity, better mental focus, and less stress, to name a few.

And this isn’t surprising. I won’t even begin to go into all of the scientifically proven benefits of meditation but I will link you to this amazing website that explains many, many of them. The folks at liveanddare.com have done a great job of accumulating statistics, data, and information. View the website here.

Like any other wellness and health habit, consistency is perhaps the most important factor. And like all habits, this takes effort and practice to achieve, and is easier to do with support.

I implore you to join me on this journey. Let’s find our calm together.

LP