What I Learned from Meditating for an Hour
After meditating for years at only 10 minutes at a time, I challenged myself to be mindful for 60 minutes. Even in this “short” period, I had ups and downs leading me to learn a lot about myself.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, in the corner of this empty guest room, but I can feel that it’s longer than normal. The pillow I placed on the floor is beginning to feel nonexistent and my back is starting to slouch as the wall fails its job as makeshift chair. I didn’t choose this position for comfort. Instead, I chose the room for its quiet and solitude and made due with what was available to sit on.
I shift a bit, turning the pillow without opening my eyes to try to maintain a good posture. I know at this point my first long meditation attempt isn’t perfect, but my goal was simply to challenge myself. That I have achieved. It isn’t long before I begin to feel something new.
The meditation started off normally. My mind was super active jumping from one thought to another, but rather than this continuing for the entire practice, I felt as if I arrived at a place where I had run through all my thoughts. It must’ve only been 30 minutes before my mind was completely empty, and I was alone in my body. Like Nik says in his article, I felt like I was reaching for thoughts that were no longer there.
It was an extremely surreal experience. It took me what must’ve been a few minutes before I realized, but then I began to feel trapped. My anxiety peaked as I began to think of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the author of the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and the late editor of Elle who became completely paralyzed left only with the ability to blink his left eyelid.
I have no idea what he was experiencing, but for a moment, I felt like I couldn’t escape, and I imagined, he felt something very similar. As my anxiety rose, I remembered to return to my breath and to allow these thoughts to pass, like a lonesome cloud passes through the sky. Over the next 30 minutes, this feeling came and went until the voice over my Bose headphones said the time was up.
I used the Headspace app to guide my 60 minute meditation just as I usually do for my shorter daily ones. The guidance was simple enough to not be a distraction, only providing me with a reminder to return to my breath every 5–10 minutes.
Initially, these feelings were scary. The anxiety I experienced was the same I’ve had before a flight or before skydiving which was very interesting because it felt so real. It felt like there was a true threat to my life. The difference was that they were induced by nothing other than myself and my mind. There wasn’t anything to blame it on. Rather than externalizing my problem and coming up with an excuse, I had to take full blame because there was literally nothing else.
“My diving bell becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly”
― Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
This realization was huge. If my mind is always the source of anxiety and fear, and it isn’t externalities that are the problem, then I should always be able to control it. Obviously, this is easier said than done, but in theory it should work.
I gained validity for this idea from a recent Finding Mastery podcast episode with Dr. Rachel Zoffness on the Science of Pain where she discusses the biopsychosocial components of pain. This means that pain is as much a result of the thoughts in your head (past experiences, conditioning, anxieties) as it is a result of biology and societal influences. That means you can feel pain solely from your thoughts or you can control pain by controlling your thoughts. If we can do it for something as complex as pain, we can do it for anxiety and fear as well.
There are many moments in my life where I feel anxious. I always know it’s happening when my vision narrows, my heart rate increases, and my stomach gets upset. These are my symptoms of anxiety and fear taking over. But, what if this wasn't the case?
What I have gained from this hour is the realization that the source comes from within and through experience and practice I know it can be tamed. From studying, I see a mindfulness practice as the solution to this control problem. This brings me back to Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, who said,
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Mindfulness has shown me the stimulus and also allows me to widen that space between it and the response. The larger this space is the more opportunity I have to utilize self-control and choose my response. More specifically, from these stimuli, choosing not to experience anxiety and fear, and instead, responding positively for growth. I know I haven’t gained this self-control yet, but I have learned something about it.
To me, self-control isn’t a destination. It is a journey that has its ups and downs. Through meditation, I continue to grow this skill and continue to face up to the challenges this world continues to throw at me.
“There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” — Seneca
