Meditation and Mindfulness

Recently, someone asked me “How often do you meditate?”, and I had a hard time answering this question. The thing is that I do multiple types of meditation every day; but I don’t count them.

I pause multiple times a day to just slow breathe for a few minutes, and focus on those breaths. These breathing exercises are a coping mechanism, and help with my nerves and moments of anxiety. It is meditation, but I don’t count it as such.

I do grounding meditations before client readings. These help to ground and center me for the reading and put my head and energy into the right space. But, I don’t count them as meditation, even though that’s what they are.

I pause for moments of gratitude. I paused for moments of enjoyment from my senses and/or from my synesthesia. I don’t count these as meditation either, although they are in fact a brief mindfulness meditation.

What I count as a meditation is usually a 10 minute or longer stretch of mindfulness meditation and breathing exercise that’s done strictly for me and only for me. This is why we often see my posts saying that my meditation is skipped, even on days when I’ve actually done multiple meditations during the day.

The other types of meditation, I don’t think really count. Not that they don’t do their job or aren’t a type of meditation. I just don’t consider them to be time that was aside for that purpose and just for me.

So with this in mind, I ask to the question “How often do you meditate?” Do I answer multiple times a day? Or do I answer few times a week? I’m still not sure.

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