My First Week Meditating: Zelda Solomon
On the surface, university culture does not seem well suited to meditation. It's full of all-nighters, parties, fleeting relationships, emotions, and high-stress work routines. It also doesn't seem like a place where you'd find young people who are willing to sit down, be quiet, and watch their minds for twenty minutes.
But Zelda Solomon, a junior at the University of Toronto, is definitely meditating. She says that starting a meditation practice is the best thing she’s ever done, and she’s been at it for almost three years now. We sat down with her to learn how she started, what her experience has been like, and what advice she’d give someone thinking about giving it a try.
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What made you want to start meditating in the first place?
I started meditating because I was going through a difficult time in my life. I was in a relationship that I didn't know how to navigate, I had some mental health challenges and I didn’t know how to handle them. I felt that I needed to deal with my anxiety, but I also felt that I wasn't ready to go to therapy.
So I started reading a few books about meditation, and that led me to the Higher Self Yoga website. I really liked the holistic approach that the website promoted, so I took the free meditation class, Connect With Your Higher Self, and absolutely loved it.
What happened during your first week of meditating?
At first, it was very hard for me to meditate. I was having a really difficult time focusing and staying with the breath. I was easily distracted by my thoughts. My mind was wandering a lot and all my thoughts were very negative. I tried to fight them.
After the first day, my thoughts began to slow down slightly. During the second day, I still had trouble focusing. By the third day, I could feel myself starting to settle in. I noticed a positive change in my mood during meditation: I was less sad, less anxious. Then by the fourth and fifth days, something had started to shift. I felt more peaceful. And by the sixth and seventh days, I was starting to feel a sense of calm during meditation.
Did it start to get easier?
Yes. The act of meditating, the sitting down, the breathing, became easier. But, at the same time, new challenges arose. I started to experience things like feeling sad during meditation. And I started to have intrusive thoughts and I had to practice not going down the rabbit hole.
But it got to the point where I started to see the benefits in my everyday life. Two or three weeks in, I noticed that when I was in a difficult situation, I could take a pause and calm myself down, instead of reacting. I noticed that my thoughts were less negative. I noticed that I was more patient in general. I was less quick to anger. I felt like I had much more clarity about my life and what I wanted for my future. And I started to sleep better. Much better.
Did you experience any challenges that made you consider stopping?
There were moments when I felt like I wasn’t meditating right because my mind wandered. There was a moment when I got really upset during meditation and I wanted to stop meditating altogether. But I pushed through that. I have always believed in following through when I take on a new challenge. And I’m so glad I did, because meditation has been a constant companion since then.
How has meditation changed your life?
I feel like it is the best thing that I've ever done. It has given me so much more clarity in all areas of my life. And I still notice that when I miss a few days of meditation, my life doesn’t feel as rooted. I feel less grounded. I can also tell when other people in my life are not meditating because I notice changes in their behavior.
I’ve also started to incorporate meditative practices into my everyday life, like mindful walking and mindful eating, because I know that how I think and how I pay attention is really important.
What advice would you give someone who wants to start meditating?
Start off with just ten or fifteen minutes of meditation a day. More importantly, be patient with yourself. Because it can take time to have moments of peace. It might feel difficult at first to calm the mind down and I think the best way to overcome those early difficulties is to try and let go of the desire to have a perfect meditation. Just sit with whatever you’re experiencing and that’s it. That’s the practice.
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