31 Down, A Lifetime To Go

The day has come. It is the end of my chronicled journey.

On the first of this month, I began this 31-day journey of capturing a month's worth of mindfulness experiences, reflections, and resources that have played a role in the development of my personal, professional, and academic life. These experiences ranged from times of silent meditation, YouTube videos, and various other media sources that became intertwined with the 44,640 minutes in the month of July 2011.

So what did I learn?

1) Mindfulness DOES have an impact on one's physical well-being
As I've engaged with the practices of mindfulness and meditation over the month, I found a slight difference in my overall physical state. This month in particular has been extremely stressful. This may be due to a combination of an altered work schedule, increased work demands, and heat, but my body took a significant beating, but was able to remain strong. Mindfulness practice provided me with tools necessary for ongoing evaluation of my state of being (body scan), and helped to institute moments of recovery and stress management (STOP). Without them, I may have crumbled under the pressure of everything taking place.

2) Calm, Ambient Music is key to my process of going deeper
I made several attempts throughout the course of the month to go longer in my meditation time frames (40+ minutes). I had made several efforts at it in silence, but had major difficulties with either falling asleep or becoming overly distracted by my thoughts. During the occasions that I utilized video/audio guidance, I was able to maintain a clearer conscious by incorporating a background stimuli to block out extraneous noises that would prompt the mind into questioning and exploration. Audio without guidance proved to be more beneficial than that with guidance as it allowed me to form my own personal guidance deep into the present moment of mindfulness. Ambient music and soft instrumental tones were the best.

3) Mindfulness is everywhere
It seemed that everywhere I turned, read, walked, breathed... the term "mindfulness" was present. At the very start of the month, I walked into a Barnes and Noble in the Clarendon area to make a quick scan of the psychology section for a book I'd been looking for. Though I didn't find the title I was looking for, I did come away with a count of 37 different titles using mindfulness as a basis of their work. Mindfulness is everywhere! It's presence in clinical research and studies is also growing, and has been an ever-present tool in the practices of substance abuse treatment, psychiatry, medical treatment, and family therapy.

4) Mindfulness will aid stress management, but won't eradicate it instantaneously
For whatever reason, I expected to have a significantly lower rate of stress during the course of the month. Although I did experience some reduced tendencies of stress related reactions in situations (i.e. traffic, sudden changes), my overall level of stress may have increased slightly over the month. My practice over the month revealed a great deal about my physiological reactions to stress, and I can say that I grew more in my level of acceptance of those moments, and in reducing the number of "2nd Darts" that I would allow myself to be impaled with. The amount of stress in my life during the past 31-days was a roller-coaster, but weren't as frightening, surprising, and painful as those of past month. Much of that was related to being aware of my body's reactions to the moments of rising stress.

5) Lovingkindness Meditation is a necessary prescription
I found myself returning to lovingkindness meditation on almost a daily basis for a sense of safety, health, and compassion. It was amazing to see how much my mind and body relaxed following 5-minutes of meditation. Although the scripts of recitation may have altered from time to time, the overall feeling of acceptance of myself was what mattered the most.

Although 31 days was all that I committed to reflect upon through this blog, my journey of mindfulness practice will continue onward. I learned a great deal about myself over the past 4-weeks and learned even more lessons than those conveyed above. As I now prepare to enter into work with the CFS in less than 3 weeks, I believe that I have included a vital trade that will not only be an asset to share with others during the course of therapy, it will be vital in the daily maintenance of my own life.

For that, I will be ever grateful.