I’ve spend many years working on my meditation practice. I’ve meditated at the yoga studio, at home, on the High Line in Hell’s Kitchen, before bed, upon waking, and smack dab in the middle of a stressful day. I’ve done walking meditations, guided meditations, and the popular don’t-scratch-cough-or-move-at-all meditations. I’ve tried chanting Om, mantras and my personal favorite, the Sa-Ta-Na-Ma Meditation that involves bilateral movement of your fingers.
I’ve tried staring at candle flames and chilling out to the sweet sounds of a sitar mixed with Tibetan singing bowls. I’ve used machines that make fake thunderstorms and other forms of white noise, frequently imagined ocean waves cresting upon a beach as well as simply achoring to the sound of my breath.
The one thing I’ve never been able to do is a daily, no matter what, meditation practice which is embarressing because it’s not that hard. You sit, close your eyes and ignore all the crazy thoughts in your head by focusing on your breath instead of all the crazy thoughts in your head.
I have lots of friends that meditate daily and swear by it. I definitely have the time to meditate and certainly realize that it doesn’t require an hour out of every day. Yet I can’t seem to act on this impulse.
Which brings me to the $64,000 question. Am I failing to meditate or failing at commitment in general?
I think it’s the latter. A general failure to shake things up when it comes to my daily routine. So in honor of that, I will hit publish, hit the Noisli app on my phone and then meditate. If you’d like to join me, when you finish reading this post, feel free.
Focus on your breath for five minutes and see how you feel.
LindaBP 
When I was doing yoga at one of the local studios, I went through 1.5 hours every week of relaxation and flailing in a controlled manner in every direction. I always came away feeling tired, more relaxed, and it turns out, angrier. All the little things that had been building up became worthy of ranting about (to myself) for the rest of the night.
It took me a while to figure out what was happening, and my best guess is that, through relaxation, I relaxed all the social niceties and polite barriers that kept my frustrations penned up, and it would all come rushing out. That’s when I realized I had to not only let go of my inhibitions, but also let go of the anger and frustration I was carrying for days (or weeks). They tell you this, that you need to let go, forgive others for whatever, in order to be at peace for yourself, but I don’t realize how much I was holding onto even when I had physically relaxed. Seeing what percolated up after yoga gave me something to mull over and figure out why I was still angry about it all.
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I’m taking a course right now and it’s about regulating your nervous system and one of the keys to do it is to follow your impulses, deal with whatever emotions come up and let them out – so kudos to you for processing and not pushing down that anger!
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