Take a deep breath and hold it in. Now without releasing the air, breathe in some more. Keep breathing in until you can’t anymore. Breathe in until you can feel that tightness in your chest and your lungs are fully inflated. Count to 30. Breathe out. You should feel a rush of dopamine and an instant sense of relaxation.

When I first tried Kundalini, I could only describe the feeling as an intense runner’s high or what I imagined to be the rush of hypothetical drugs in my system. If you didn’t try it just now, it’s definitely worth your 30 seconds. My limited experience with deep breathing exercises is evidence that the world of mindfulness is a powerful tool for mental clarity and emotional stability. In the past, I’ve used running as a form of meditation-- where the rhythmic pounding of my feet on the sidewalk puts me in a trance that I could continue on for hours. Running is my go-to form of therapy after a stressful day or overwhelming feelings of anxiety. It’s only recently that I’ve realized that I haven’t yet given traditional meditation a chance. Making Sense with Sam Harris and closing my eyes for a few minutes in yoga with my mom doesn’t count in my books.

So why meditate? Meditation is the habitual process of training your mind to focus and redirect your thoughts. I think of it as a tool to enable self-awareness, develop concentration, increase pain tolerance, and establish healthy sleep patterns. Through self-inquiry, you can recognize thoughts that may be harmful or self-defeating, allowing for greater awareness of your thought habits and the autonomy to steer them toward constructive patterns.

The key point here is that meditation is not simply a passive observation, rather a technique that employs attention and awareness in order to better understand the mind’s functional behavior. In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation. In meditation, when you observe your mental faculties, you naturally improve their efficacy. Thus, meditation is also an important technology.

On a more personal note, meditation is a platform to decipher feelings of meaninglessness, complacency, loneliness, and desire. I believe that understanding how one’s own mind works is a superpower. It’s the key to decoding how you naturally operate and what the deep-rooted motivations behind your goals are. Through my brief attempts at self-guided meditation, I’ve become aware of how wildly my mind wanders. The habit of reminding yourself to return to the present moment grounds the way I now navigate my day and get work done. But there’s so much I have yet to try. There’s transcendental meditation, breath awareness, progressive relaxation, and metta (designed to promote feelings of compassion and love). As with any trained skill, the more you practice, the better you get at it. In the next six weeks, I hope to decode more parts of myself through intentional, technique-driven meditation.

Take a deep breath and hold it in. Now without releasing the air, breathe in some more. Keep breathing in until you can’t anymore. Breathe in until you can feel that tightness in your chest and your lungs are fully inflated. Count to 30. Breathe out. You should feel a rush of dopamine and an instant sense of relaxation.

When I first tried Kundalini, I could only describe the feeling as an intense runner’s high or what I imagined to be the rush of hypothetical drugs in my system. If you didn’t try it just now, it’s definitely worth your 30 seconds. My limited experience with deep breathing exercises is evidence that the world of mindfulness is a powerful tool for mental clarity and emotional stability. In the past, I’ve used running as a form of meditation-- where the rhythmic pounding of my feet on the sidewalk puts me in a trance that I could continue on for hours. Running is my go-to form of therapy after a stressful day or overwhelming feelings of anxiety. It’s only recently that I’ve realized that I haven’t yet given traditional meditation a chance. Making Sense with Sam Harris and closing my eyes for a few minutes in yoga with my mom doesn’t count in my books.

So why meditate? Meditation is the habitual process of training your mind to focus and redirect your thoughts. I think of it as a tool to enable self-awareness, develop concentration, increase pain tolerance, and establish healthy sleep patterns. Through self-inquiry, you can recognize thoughts that may be harmful or self-defeating, allowing for greater awareness of your thought habits and the autonomy to steer them toward constructive patterns.

The key point here is that meditation is not simply a passive observation, rather a technique that employs attention and awareness in order to better understand the mind’s functional behavior. In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation. In meditation, when you observe your mental faculties, you naturally improve their efficacy. Thus, meditation is also an important technology.

On a more personal note, meditation is a platform to decipher feelings of meaninglessness, complacency, loneliness, and desire. I believe that understanding how one’s own mind works is a superpower. It’s the key to decoding how you naturally operate and what the deep-rooted motivations behind your goals are. Through my brief attempts at self-guided meditation, I’ve become aware of how wildly my mind wanders. The habit of reminding yourself to return to the present moment grounds the way I now navigate my day and get work done. But there’s so much I have yet to try. There’s transcendental meditation, breath awareness, progressive relaxation, and metta (designed to promote feelings of compassion and love). As with any trained skill, the more you practice, the better you get at it. In the next six weeks, I hope to decode more parts of myself through intentional, technique-driven meditation.