Do I Really Need to Meditate?

The answer can be different for everyone.  However, I would recommend it for everyone.  In this post, I share some information about meditation, some apps to help you practice the skill and how it could work for you.

What is meditation anyway?

The definition is the written or spoken discourse expressing one’s thoughts on a subject.  Meditation is about getting inside that deep, dark space in your brain that contains your thoughts and feelings and sometimes has the answers you’re looking for.  It is a skill that must be practiced too, because it’s not easy to perfect. There are a variety of ways to meditate, but as a beginner, focus on guided meditation until you can hone the skill.

In guided meditation, the instructor will lead you to a place that hones in on our thoughts, your wants and your needs.  The instructor will play some soft, quiet music, have you close your eyes and speak to you in a low volume that instructs you how to get to that deep, dark place inside our brain.  He or she will ask you to focus on a question that you’ve been wanting the answer to and then stay quiet for a bit.  This quiet allows your brain to process the thoughts swarming in your head and helps the answer to the question come out.  The instructor will then bring you back to reality in that low volume and you’ll awaken with a sense of calm.  

What meditation app should I use?

While there are many apps out there that focus on meditation, here are two that provide guided meditations. The first is Welzen.

Welzen is a free app for Apple users. It provides mindfulness meditations and has a 5-day intro series to help you learn how to meditate.  It also has a daily meditation that changes and has categorized meditations that focus on a specific area of need.  Things like stress, work, relationships, etc.  The meditations last approximately 5 minutes so they’re quick and easy to do.  You can subscribe to Welzen for a monthly, yearly or indefinite time period, but the free version works well enough.

The second app is Calm.  This is also available for Apple users and is similar in that it brings mindful meditations to the listener, has a variety of categorized meditations to try out and is great for beginners because it has a 7-day series to help you get started.  The guided meditation sessions range in time from 3 minutes to 25 minutes leaving it up to the listener to decide what to choose which meditation works for the time available.  Calm also offers a daily meditation.  The additional benefits of Calm are what makes this app special.  It offers breathing exercise, sleep stories, unguided timed meditations and more than 25 nature sounds to play in the background.  It even tracks your progress to see how often you meditate and how you improve the more you practice.

Mindful Magazine created a go-to list of mindfulness apps and Calm is one of the apps recommended.  To see the full list, click here.

What are the benefits of using a meditation app?

For starters, they can help you

• Sleep better and be a permanent solution to insomnia.
• Manage stress and anxiety.
• Increase focus and productivity.
• Improve relationships.
• Improve creativity.

There are so many benefits to using meditation because it can open up the pathway to the answers you seek and by finding these answers, you open the doorway to a healthier life.  

So let’s answer the question at hand – Do I really need to meditate? The straightforward answer is no, but it is highly recommended. Especially to the person that needs answers in life, that wants to live a healthier life and to the person that wants a more fulfilling life.  

If you’ve already had some experience with meditation, I’d love to hear your thoughts!  Share your comments below and tell me what meditation has done for you!