The SOVA Project is happy to feature this blog post written by one in our team of fantastic SOVA Ambassadors—these are young people who help create meaningful blog posts from adolescents’ perspectives.
If you are anything like me, you feel a hint of jealousy whenever you see or hear someone sharing how sitting meditation has changed their life. As someone with anxiety, it seems nearly impossible to achieve the level of calmness associated with traditional sitting meditation. The few times I have seriously tried out traditional meditation, I found myself more anxious and unable to deal with the silence.
It took me a couple of years to realize that meditation is not a single concept; there are many ways to meditate, and you can alter it to however it fits you best. Through exploration, I found a few ways to meditate that genuinely help me calm down.
Maybe you are interested in meditation, but the idea of sitting on a cushion in a room with a bunch of strangers in silence and focusing on your breathing just heightens your anxiety? Well, don’t worry. Try some meditation videos on YouTube. I began with listening to meditation streams or videos that were a couple of hours of meditation sounds and music. I started doing this when studying and doing homework and eventually incorporated it into the background of more daily activities.
My daily meditation includes these meditation videos with gentle music and noises, but I also use guided meditation to help me sleep. I have bouts of insomnia with my anxiety and will lose many hours of sleep because of it. I have found guided meditations to listen to on YouTube that are specific to people with anxiety and depression and it has really helped me out.
Here are a few of my favorites. This video is by a channel called Yellow Brick Cinema, which I highly recommend. They provide many different meditation videos and streams.
And here are two guided meditations to help you sleep if you are struggling with anxiety and/or depression:
Have you ever used meditation music/sounds or guided meditation to help you calm down from anxiety? Please share below!