Wellness Wednesday: Meditation, Grounding and Relaxing

For many years, I thought of meditation as a waste or one of those things for hippies or old people. I was taught grounding and relaxing techniques near when I hit rock bottom over two years ago. I am now realizing the benefits of these things and incorporating them into my daily life and how much better they make me feel in my life and my ability to conquer things.

I think sometimes you need to see things from a different perspective sometimes, not what you are built to think. Autism makes that difficult, but being in a journey of self-awareness and self-discovery has taught me that maybe I need to try some things that MAY help and that are proven to work. I know I have tried some things that I did realize were not logical, but these things have no merit to why I shouldn’t try them.

I have realized that as time has progressed in the past year that things are getting better and hope is there on the journey. I do not want to do the things I was even doing a year ago by not being honest or recognizing my triggers in life that can cause anger, anxiety, undue stress or trauma. I have to take care of things on my own time and that includes making my own time to do those things as I need to .

When you learn how to do the things you are taught and actually invest in it, it gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment. This is furthered when there is a benefit. The benefit of meditation is that I am able to be less stressed or anxious as I plan to start and end my day and I make these activities as part of my daily maintenance list, just like taking the necessary medications that I need to take, this has has helped me relax and forgo all my problems and just relax and take time to care for me.

Grounding, where focusing on things and being in the moment has also helped greatly in the effort of getting a sense of what the world really is and what I am thinking it is. It can be hard when our mind is skewed and we can be stuck on a thought or only think a certain way about something and not be able to let it go for whatever reason that may be. Grounding puts in the moment and makes us aware of the here and now and helps us regroup.

Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state. It is used in various forms in many religious communities and something I learned from both there and in the therapies that I receive. Its about finding a meditation that works for you. I have included videos of what I use, and they start and end my day as far as relieving stress and anxiety for 10 minutes each session. They have been mostly helpful each day since last week.

Lastly, Relaxing, while in many forms as you see it, sometimes for me its just laying back and putting on a relaxing video of someone driving through the mountains of West Virginia, Maryland or Pennsylvania to some good beats that help me calm down from a bad thought or a thought that I cannot get off of because my brain is continually there, usually after relaxing, it is better and I am ready to move on.

These are some of the new things that I do and some think of them as not valid forms of healthy wellness practices, and I was one of those for a long time, but now I see the benefits that they have provided me over the past week and help me through those challenging days.