Meditation // Losing Focus

 

I've started meditating recently. 

When I say 'recently', I mean that I've been doing it on and off for about a month, but I've been taking it more seriously in the new year.

I guess the main reason that I started was to deal with stress and anxiety, but even without any of that, I've heard it's a good way to stay present, and to shut out negative or intrusive thoughts.

But ever since I've started meditating, I've noticed that I have a real problem with focusing.

I can't turn off my brain. I'm good for maybe 3-5 minutes, and then my mind wanders, I can't concentrate on what the 'soothing voice' is saying, and I keep opening my eyes when I shouldn't, just to check how long I have to keep doing this. Like my mind thinks I'm being punished for something by being made to focus.

Some nights I do quite well, and others... there's just no point.

Take last night, for example. I was meditating using the free app that I use every day, called 'Let's Meditate', and I was doing a meditation called 'Inner Peace'. Part of this involved imaging a stream in a forest.

Less than 5 minutes into imagining the forest, I started thinking about the film/book 'All the Bright Places' - particularly the area of water that was important to the main characters. And once that was in my head, I couldn't focus on anything else. I couldn't focus on the visualisation exercise, and I couldn't stop thinking about 'All the Bright Places'. In the end I just opened my eyes and watched the time tick down so that I could go to bed.

And I think this is one of the reasons that I've never tried to meditate before. I haven't learnt how to switch my brain off, and I haven't learnt how to bring my focus back to the present when my mind does wander.

But saying that, I do enjoy the act of meditation. I like taking that time (whether 2 minutes or 30) when I have nothing to do, when there's nothing expected of me, when I can just sit in the dark with my eyes closed and (try to) focus on breathing.

And while I do have trouble losing my focus, this has started to get better now that I'm practicing daily. So it's something that I'll be keeping up.

I also just wanted to mention the app again, 'Let's Meditate', because I find it really helpful. It doesn't have hundreds of meditations, but it does have a good range of sessions that focus on different things, depending on how you're feeling and what you might need to work on. 

One of my reasons for writing this post is so that I can come back to it when I've been meditating for a lot longer, to see if I can work out how to not lose focus.

Let's see how that goes!