1\/22\/16<\/p>\n
For years, my mom has tried to make meditation a habit in my life. I\u2019ve tried it a number of times, and each time I\u2019m just as frustrated as the time before. People say you learn how to meditate and it takes practice, so it\u2019s possible that I just haven\u2019t practiced enough. I think I\u2019ve found that the attempt to meditate is more stressful than helpful. Quieting my mind and thoughts is a major challenge for me. My personal contemplative practice, outside of class, has more to do with gaging how I feel. I\u2019ve dealt with anxiety throughout my life (mostly starting in my high school years) and the ability to really assess how I feel has been a process \u2013 getting my thoughts straight is sometimes impossible. It\u2019s important to me, and helpful, to know how I\u2019m feeling. I\u2019ve come to be able to do these \u201cmental check-ins\u201d with myself a few times a day. I find myself doing them on my commute to school, sometimes in the middle of class, and at night when I reflect upon the day. It\u2019s become a more natural, non-forced practice.<\/p>\n
I like being able to do these check-ins because even though it\u2019s not about quieting my mind, it\u2019s still very introspective. Doing it multiple times a day also allows me to shift the way I feel because it\u2019s rarely consistent throughout the day. These check-ins are not just mental, but physical too. Often my body is tense or my stomach feels anxious without me being aware of it, but I think it\u2019s important to be conscious of it. For me, it\u2019s not only helpful to know how I feel but also understanding why I feel the way I do, so asking the \u201cwhy\u201d question is necessary too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
1\/22\/16 For years, my mom has tried to make meditation a habit in my life. I\u2019ve tried it a number of times, and each time I\u2019m just as frustrated as the time before. People say you learn how to meditate and it takes practice, so it\u2019s possible that I just haven\u2019t practiced enough. I think I\u2019ve found that the attempt… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-contemplation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/ps301\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}