Meditation Sessions 23 & 24

For the last few sessions I've been using a podcast from TheMeditationPodcast.com
It's worked out pretty well so far. I find the animal sounds to be a wee bit distracting, but this is the first one with the tones that made me zonk pretty hard.
Today I couldn't get my brain to shut up long enough to really zone out, but that's ok. I have a gazillion things I need to sort out over the next few days so I'm not really surprised.
Just sticking to the routine and making sure I get it in daily, because I can tell if I haven't.
I don't know why I never did this before, but I'm glad I've started!

Meditation Sessions 20, 21, and 22

No repeat of weirdness, though I never got past the noise stage again and into the silence stage. Going to dig for some more focused points of interest for meditation to experiment with throughout this week. I've seen a lot of interesting things about the Monroe Institute. They use the same technology as the recent meditation I've been listening to and the same stuff as my sleep music uses. They hide tones in the music to send signals to the brain to trigger things in the brain in order to help you relax and to sleep longer and deeply. The cd worked for me for years, but in my apartment, with a fan blowing all the time, I don't think the tones are as effective. I know it all works better through headphones. Someone I know had given me a sample of the Monroe Institute to listen to on public transit back when I first started taking the bus and train to work, as a means to help soothe me from the distress I suffered from the crowds riding during rush hour. I remember almost missing my stop because it had put me to sleep. Oops. So it was a short lived experiment. I might have to see if I can dig up that cd and give it a try under the more controlled conditions of "meditation time".
I am still noticing a marked difference between when I meditate twice a day vs once per day. I sleep better if I've had my evening meditation and morning helps me with everyday annoyances. I get far less tweaked by the rudeness of others or by everyday stressful situations... and I don't hate traffic like I used to. I just go with the flow now and I'll get to my destination whenever it is that I get there.
Definite improvements to daily life. Though extremely stressful situations require further exploration (hence the digging into more situation specific guided meditations)
For those interested:
The sleep CD was this one that I got from amazon several years ago. I love that CD!

Meditations 18 & 19

I had a weird moment in meditation today. Well, 2 of them. Usually when I meditate, I get to a point where my thoughts become this sort of roar of the crowd that you'd hear in a stadium. Just a bunch of noise, with individual stuff popping out now and then. Well today it just all sort of stopped, and then around the same time I realized that I wasn't breathing and I really needed to breathe. It  happened twice and it kind of freaked me out. After doing some googling, it would seem that this is a normal part of the process, but then again there were also people who were saying things like "have a paramedic standing by while you meditate, I do." which yeah. Har har. So I have no idea.
I will have to look into this further and explore. I did a double meditation this morning in an attempt to settle my mind after little sleep and nightmares. A friend suggested that I may have just fallen asleep, which is entirely possible, but I didn't have that feeling of just waking up like I normally do nor that sudden jerk upright when you nod off. This was something I had not experienced before.

Meditation Sessions 15, 16, & 17

Seems like this number should be higher. I've only missed a couple of times.. I'll have to peek at when I started the challenge.
After some conversations with my significant other, I think I'm going to do some meditation exploring today for my evening session. I'll have to dig around to see if I can find what I'm looking for. It sounds like I'm getting close to the point where everything goes blank. For now, while I can't shut my brain off, I can at least get it to the point where everything is a dull roar. So when I get about half way or 3/4 of the way through, the specific thoughts all sort of start to blend together to just being a lot of background noise. I can't stay in that mode for too long as individual thoughts start jumping out and then I have to start over again, but I can get to just general noise. It really is just like noise. It's so strange. It's like a stadium filled with people all talking at once, and you can't really make out anything that anyone is saying for the most part, but randomly a bit of conversation will jump out and you can hear it... and eventually it falls back into the general roar of the crowd. That's the best way I can think of to describe it. I used to think that I didn't have a whole lot going on in my head, but a few weeks of this and I now know otherwise. I can't ever shut it off.

Checking back, it's been 3 weeks (as of tomorrow) I've missed 3 to hit my once a day goal. I know I've missed at least 3 days.. I'm guessing it was more like 4 or 5 days since I managed twice a day for a bit.
I had a weekend that I didn't do it, and noticed the lack of meditation immediately in my mood and the grumpy directions that thoughts wandered into. It's also harder to meditate when my kids are visiting. I'm finding I have to do it either really early or really late, and then I tend to doze off.  I have a new work schedule starting soon and with school starting for the kids, it's going to take a little more planning to get it into my day, but well worth the effort. 

Meditation 14

Oh boy, I can certainly tell when I miss meditation now. Such a small thing makes such a huge difference in the day. Concentration is improved, overall mood is improved, and just everything goes more smoothly when I get that morning meditation in. Today, I was running late.. so no meditation, and now my day is just draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagging and everyone is annoying me. Hee Hee. So no more rushing in the mornings. I need to get that in!

Meditations 11, 12, & 13

It's been a little busy recently. I'm happy to report that I've been keeping up with my meditations. I did miss one day when I wasn't feeling well, but it makes such a difference in my day that I don't like to miss it. I see big changes all around when I keep it up. Now I need to explore some of the other facets of interest.

Meditation - Sessions 8, 9, &10

In standard fashion, I'm bored with listening to the same one over and over. So I did another by Meditation Oasis that was specifically music for session #10.
I'm managed at least one session per day this week. Things have been rather hectic, so I've been having to make time for it. I might start looking for situation specific guided meditations to help combat some of the things that I struggle with from time to time. The one I did yesterday morning, helped me get completely centered for the day. I really kept my focus all day in spite of a lack of sleep the night before. I felt calm and ready for anything.  We shall see how this morning's meditation helped out.
The deep rest one I did for #9 was not so helpful. I struggled to keep my thoughts from wandering all over the place, and from being able to achieve any sort of meditative state. That's what is prompting me to seek out situation oriented guided meditations. I want to see if they can be useful for future stress relieving sessions.