Day 64 of "Figuring it Out" - My First Ever Guided Meditation

Kia Ora! Happy FRIYAY!! Are you ecstatic that it's the weekend tomorrow? I sure am (even though literally every day is the weekend for me at the moment) - but I'm trying to make sure that I do lots of my errands and chores during the week so that I can use my weekends for some more me time and actually catch up on reading, which I haven't done lol. Melbourne weather today is cold-ish and a bit overcast but it's not freezing so that's a bonus. Like I feel okay in a hoody and jeans.

PIN IT

I also woke up super early this morning and had a little bit of energy (so yay) and managed to get an early morning walk in and do a lot of the upstairs cleaning + I even cleaned out my wardrobe and washed all my makeup brushes which has been something I've been putting off doing for way too long. So hopefully tomorrow morning I won't have too many extra things to do. Hopefully only a few downstairs areas to clean (and washing to catch up on so fingers crossed it's nice tomorrow so I can hang my washing outside LOL). My weather app says a high of 21 so that'll be good!

And for today's blog, I thought I'd focus on the topic of meditation. I've been working on some self-care things and wanted to write my very own guided meditation and make a YouTube video - so please please please give it a listen (even if you don't like meditation, the views will definitely help me) and if you do like meditation, give it a go and let me know what you think. Also quick trigger warning - I talk a little bit about anxiety, panic attacks, and medication in here just FYI.

Also, please be really nice with the constructive criticism - this was my first one and it's in no way absolutely perfect (but thank you to my friends who have already given it a go + given me advice for the next one). I think the next one I'll try is a sleep meditation and then maybe I'll explore some astral projection ones but they can take a bit of time to write so bare with me! I also want to experiment with vlogging, as I keep saying, but getting this kind of content out there is one step forward for sure. See the YouTube video below! Please give it a watch :D

I did also want to go over some of my previous experiences with meditation, but I quickly realised that I'd done that in a previous blog post. You can see it "here." However, it was only brief and only talked about the positive sides of meditation that I've experienced. So here's a bit of a better breakdown:

• The main reason I started meditation was after I'd finished my masters and with exploring lots of the pros about New Age stuff during my research, I wanted to give it a go myself, and back then, I was really really struggling mentally. It was almost daily panic attacks and my anxiety was so bad I had medication for it (luckily I don't need it anymore but that's just some background context to show you how bad it was at the time).

• I decided I was going to give meditation a go and I tried to do it solo a few times, it took a lot of goes and me trying to figure out what position would work best for me e.g., sitting down cross-legged or lying down (lying down works better for me than sitting up for some reason). At first, I really struggled with the concept of just focusing on my breath because I couldn't sit still for long and would get really jittery quite easily.

• Anyway, I finally managed to sit still for long enough (well I did start lying down so I think that helped) to meditate and the first proper times, not too much happened. But then, one afternoon while I was meditating and as I've talked about before on the blog, I started to feel like I was floating on a soft fluffy cloud OR sorta like you're flying but not in your body at the time. I hope that makes sense and apparently, a lot of people spend years trying to get to that type of out-of-body experience while meditation. I thought it was cool.

• I then decided I wanted to switch to guided meditations or try them out and see what I preferred better and spoiler alert, it's guided meditation because you focus more on someone else's voice and I find it easier to relax. So I was getting really good at doing these almost daily and was feeling really good about myself, good things were happening, and my life was good at this point. Negativity was going away and then one day I found myself doing a guided meditation when I was in a super depresso espresso mood and I will never ever do that again, I started imagining really scary stuff while I was meditating and I knew that it was my brain and I'd be able to shut it off but I just had to stop. Luckily, I haven't had too many scary experiences like that and tend not to do a meditation if I feel really really down. I don't think everyone has these sorts of experiences, I think for me it was just a really dark day and it unfortunately manifested into my meditation time. But 99% of my experiences meditating have been good.

• I then moved on to try out guided meditations like "Astral Projection" and "Connecting to Your Higher Self" and I really enjoyed these. The astral projection ones make it a bit easier to obtain that out-of-body experience and connecting to your higher self or meeting your spirit guides is super relaxing because it makes you feel like you're own the right path. I also genuinely believe my spirit guide is an owl. But yeah these are some great ones. I have yet to try "Lucid Dreaming" because I just don't know if I'll be able to get to that stage, but if you've tried it, let me know what it's like. Maybe I'll try in the future. We'll see.

• I then stopped meditating for a really really long time (almost 6 months I think). I tried to do it when I first moved to Melbourne but I don't think my heart was in it and then I met Luke and started to try doing it a bit more but just not on a daily basis. I found that doing it less but still regularly worked a bit better for me. And at the moment, I'm trying to do at least 10 minutes a day, whether it's a quick one in the morning, a 10-minute astral projection before bed, or a full-on sleep one I just put on to fall asleep too, I am trying. Luke's also ordered both of us some new headphones (so I think that'll encourage me to do it a bit more before bed).

• I've also heard stories of people who get up at 4am just to meditate (apparently early morning is the best time to do it) and omg as I'm writing this I can see a pigeon walking right outside my office window haha I thought that was funny. Anywho. I think I'm more of a night meditation person UNLESS I have something important to do that day. Sometimes I also like a random midday meditation just to bring my focus back.

And now I'm trying to write my own guided meditations also and I'm so excited. I'll be happy if I can help at least one person. But I really hope we can get some views on the YouTube video and I'll use this next week to write more guided meditations and keep practicing recording them sorta thing because it's not going to be perfect the first go.

I think that's all for today! Tonight we're having dinner with some of Luke's cousins and then this weekend (maybe Sunday) I think we're going to get some more Christmas shopping done (and buy a tree weeeee). Can't wait to put up a proper tree (well a fake one but you get the jist).

For today's question, I want to know, if you had to pick a theme song for your life, what would it be and why? Let me know in the comments below. I cheated for this question and took a Buzzfeed quiz to help me. You can also do the quiz "here" but I got the song Fight Song - Rachel Platten. Honestly, what a throwback but I do like the song and definitely resonate with it because my mind is all over the place a lot of the time. But yeah, let me know what yours is! Oh my gosh, Buzzfeed Quizzes would make such a good blog topic. Hehe. I love doing Buzzfeed quizzes, they're so mindless and fun.

That's all for today! Thank you for reading another daily blog!

Ka kite,

Much love,

Ash xx