{"id":32328,"date":"2017-10-17T09:52:51","date_gmt":"2017-10-17T13:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=32328"},"modified":"2017-10-16T08:55:43","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T12:55:43","slug":"how-i-changed-my-life-in-60-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2017\/10\/17\/how-i-changed-my-life-in-60-minutes\/","title":{"rendered":"How I changed my life in 60 minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"\"illustration<\/a>\r\n

Mindful Meditation<\/strong><\/p>\r\nI\u2019m all for trying new things and stepping out of our self-designed bubbles, but that\u2019s the thing with \u2018self-design\u2019, even when we try new things it is within a certain category. It will usually be things that we\u2019ve wanted to try out for a while - stuff we\u2019re somewhat okay with - or it might be something we\u2019ve been peer-pressured into doing. Last week was a little different for me. With an open mind, I stepped out even further, and tried out\u2026meditation. Just like some of you, when I hear the word \u2018meditation\u2019 I think hippy, I think yoga poses and serene landscapes. I think of something I don\u2019t fully understand. Or didn\u2019t. What I\u2019m trying to say is that when I walked into that one hour workshop, I wasn\u2019t expecting to come out feeling like a different person.\r\n\r\nSo just to give you a little background, there are these Mindful Meditation<\/a> workshops offered at U of T to help us better our mental health. It\u2019s like going to the gym for our brains. They do things like yoga and tai chi along with meditation. When I first stumbled upon their website, I wasn\u2019t too sure about it \u2013 seeing words like \u201ccalm, confident, and collected\u201d seemed too vague. I thought, Using meditation to deal with anxiety and stress? Nahh that\u2019s what ice cream is for. <\/em>I guess I was doubtful and biased because of the socially-constructed impression given off in the media.\r\n\r\n\"large<\/a>\r\n\r\nThe drop in session I went to was held in Wilson Hall. As I walked into the building and towards the room, I was actually sort of nervous and fidgety. I can\u2019t give you the full details of what exactly we did because I think it\u2019s something you just need to experience rather than be told about. All I know is I walked out feeling completely different. More collected. More confident. More appreciative. More robust to stressful moments. I could even feel my body language change as I made my way to class. It wasn\u2019t just a mental state of calmness. It was much more. Mindful Meditation is defined as a way to be fully aware of the present, of your thoughts, your being \u2013 without being judgmental. It\u2019s not just about completely zoning out into another world, it\u2019s actually the opposite. It\u2019s focusing on yourself while remaining neutral about everything else surrounding you, internally or externally. All the noises and thoughts that creep up and surround you just seem static \u2013 I should mention that there was construction work going on right outside the window and it didn\u2019t even matter. The worries of\u00a0your\u00a0past, your future, about that exam, that friend, whatever it was, didn\u2019t seem to bother\u00a0you in this state and all it took was a little breathing. I didn\u2019t even know I was meditating until it was over. It was amazing.\r\n\r\nThe majority of the successful people I\u2019ve come across all have said that they have some form of meditative practices, whether through traditional means, prayers, mantras, or something else. So, what I learned was this doesn\u2019t need to be these guided meditation routines with exact steps you need to follow in order for it to work. We each have our own set of ways to not just practice mindful meditation, but be<\/em> mindful in our daily life. It is not about trying to create a set of beliefs, rather it is about connectedness, and how that is achieved differs from person to person.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\nMindful Meditation I\u2019m all for trying new things and stepping out of our self-designed bubbles, but that\u2019s the thing with \u2018self-design\u2019, even when we try new things it is within a certain category. It will usually be things that we\u2019ve…\n<\/div>
Continue reading “How I changed my life in 60 minutes”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>
Continue reading “How I changed my life in 60 minutes”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":330,"featured_media":32331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1758,7204,70,58,67],"tags":[86,78,1882,1439,15886,15673,286,85,25506,696],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32328"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/330"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32328"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32344,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32328\/revisions\/32344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}