Reviewing my 2025 mindfulness practice
605 words, 3 minutes.
I started meditating many years ago, initially discounting it as ‘woo-woo’. That I am here now, writing about my ninth year of practice, probably tells you how I’ve found it in reality.
Although I have stuck to the practice since 2017, I have been through phases where I’ve not shown up for weeks. Last year though, I was determined to stick to more regular sessions. This turned out to be three to four times each week.
I don’t use an app any more, there’s no need, but I do log sessions in the Health app on my phone. I use a simple countdown timer, usually for 20 minutes.
Last year then, I logged 3,304 minutes, a little over 55 hours.
And it was enough to experience profound effects on far more frequent occasions than ever before.
I’ve concluded that meditating is a lot like physical exercise — use it or lose it, basically. But once one has built a solid ‘base’, it seems easier to restart training.
In the previous post about when I started meditating, I talked about the strange phenomenon of feeling like I had ’two minds’ — with a secondary mind watching the first, and even passing it knowledge or information. It’s a surreal feeling, almost a high, but chasing it will get you nowhere. Try to find that feeling, and it will never return.
But meditate often enough, and it seems to come back of its own accord more frequently. Last year I found it happening more and more, and sometimes even outside of meditation practice.
It’s quite a hard feeling to explain, but I’ll try.
During meditation, one is trying to let thoughts come and go without them taking over. Without chasing a thought off down a path — which is usually what happens with thinking. In time, with enough meditation, one notices when this is happening, and it becomes easier to notice thoughts running away and to let the process ’end’ by coming back to focussing on breathing.
What I discovered happening more and more last year was a secondary process doing the noticing for me. It was as if my conscious mind didn’t need to notice a thought arising; another part of my mind did it for me, with no conscious thinking. So, a thought might arise, but then vanish almost immediately, like a cloud dissipating away.
This automatic noticing carried on in everyday life too. If something annoyed me, for example, I’d notice the annoyance arising almost immediately, and just through noticing it, it subsided and went away. If I were speaking with somebody, words would appear in my mind as if being fed to me like a script.
When this automatic noticing is happening, it can become quite an intoxicating feeling. A high. It’s almost magical. But notice it, feel elated, and it too will vanish. It’s like a cruel joke. Meditating gives you this extraordinary ability, but if you notice it, recognise it and enjoy it — it instantly goes.
I’ll persist with the 20-minute sessions this year, I think. Three or four times a week feels like the right balance for me. I have other wellness habits to fit in too — cycling, yoga; the occasional run.
Going into my tenth year of meditating, there is one thing I am sure of, though. It’s a very worthy tool to have in one’s possession. It’s not a habit I’ll ever give up.
Addendum
Interestingly, I read an article about Transcendental Meditation in the FT this weekend. There was a link in the article to this scientific research about the effects of meditation on the brain.