What I learned after 100 days of meditation
You too? Parents have been hit really hard this year and it just feels like there isn't a break in sight. Home schooling and distance learning is not something to easily manage with a full time job. I know it hasn't been easy for me.
Everyone is dealing with their own version of a lot right now.
If you're in the United States, this starts with not having support built into the fabric of our society. It was already hard to be a parent in the US: no paid parental leave, childcare costs, and balancing it all. And then you add trying to survive a deadly pandemic, increased continued gun and police violence, civil unrest, homeschooling or distance learning with your kiddos, and a consequential election like we've never seen in our lifetime.
And that doesn't even include your job responsibilities or self care or yourself, at all.
It's too much.
At the end of May, when George Floyd was murdered and Minneapolis was burning, I needed to find something to ground me and keep me calm.
During the uprising that followed Floyd's murder, we saw a lot of violent outside agitators come to our city and cause chaos. Our city was burning for several nights in a row, the community was boarding up buildings, the national guard marched in our streets — here to protect buildings, not people — we were under curfew, there was a huge mobilization effort to get food to people where grocery stores were looted and burned, helicopters were persistently buzzing over our house. And our friends and family and community were all out protesting, working, and helping.
We started donating and mobilizing food to areas of the city where grocery stores were burned and looted. We helped people get their prescriptions and urgent basic needs.
Each night in our neighborhood, we took night shifts to watch our block. We had hoses out and prepared to use for our homes and our neighbor's homes. We were on group texts in our section of the city and communicating with others across town to stay in the loop of suspicious activity, like finding jars of kerosene near garages in our alley. We were calling hotels to find out who was unknowingly aiding these outside agitators.
It was difficult to get good sleep and rest, but I knew I needed to take care of myself to be able to keep showing up for my family and my community. This is when I turned to my meditation practice in a deeper way.
And from that, it's become my foundation in 2020. I'm super excited to share that I hit a very special milestone last week on my habit-creating journey: 100 days of meditation.
Meditating every day without missing a single day FOR 100 DAYS!
My daughter and I started meditating every day to keep calm and move through the wave of actions and emotions, and in that process we created a habit that now feels unstoppable.
We started with "oh hey, we're on day 4" and then it was "oh mom, look — today we got a milestone star for 20 days in a row!" Then we actively started setting goals for 50 days in a row. 75 days. 100 days. It's kept us calm and focused on the work to help and show up.
So far we've logged 135 hours over the last 106 days.
What does that have to do with birth? Well, meditation is an incredible tool for labor and birth. When I first got pregnant I thought meditation and affirmations sounded great in theory and seemed like something I could get into. We did some meditation in my prenatal yoga, but I didn't get serious about it until I hit a rough patch.
Mid-pregnancy, I started to get perinatal depression. I didn't feel connected to the baby. I wasn't sure I'd be a good parent. I was full of doubt. (Looking back, I know a lot of this stemmed from my provider, but that's a story for another day.) One day, I was so sad that I remember climbing into a closet in our house and calling my mom and telling her, "I just can't feel connected to this baby."
After my mom talked me through my panic, I decided to buy an infant size baby onesie that was really cute. I started laying it in front of me and meditating and practicing affirmations and using visualization to connect with my unborn child. This was incredibly helpful and healing.
While I was pregnant with my second child, I used mediation way more. I also did some hypnobirthing affirmations, yoga nidra, prenatal yoga, and a pregnancy meditation app called Expectful. And most of this work was focused on the goal of achieving a better birth than my first experience.
10 lessons I've taken from my meditation practice
After achieving 100 days in a row of mediation, I started realizing how many times I cling to this tool when I desperately need it. I'm now committed to a meditation practice in good times and bad.
Here's what I've learned from my meditation practice:
Visualization is powerful. In my second birth, a visualization of a flower opening came to me. As I focused on my breath, I could see a purple flower with each contraction (some people call it a wave or a surge; to think more of opening up, versus contracting closed and tight). It was opening up with each breath and giving me a visual of creating more space for my baby to make it into this world.
Meditation is an awesome reset for kids. My older child, who meditates with me (and on their own!), now has some standby meditations. In times when she is feeling anxious or is acting out of control, I've started saying to her: "Is there a mediation that could help you calm down?" I'm seriously shocked how often this also replaces my own frustration with her behavior in the moment. Recently she said, "Oh mom, there is this one about being brave where you have an egg bubble you can step into."
It can help you cope with anxiety, pain, fear, and panic. This is especially true in birth. Every birthing person in the US is faced with a fear-based view of birth. It's everywhere — television, well-meaning friends and family, providers. If you want to reclaim your power as a person with a uterus, you need to have mental and emotional tools you can draw from. Meditation can keep fear at bay and keep you mentally strong and calm.
Meditate early. If you focus on checking off the 'meditate' box earlier in the day, like when you wake up or in the middle of the day, it does a few things: it makes sure you keep the streak going, and personally, it gives me a taste of calm that makes you think about it during the day and reminds you that it's there when things get hard.
Mantras as a way to reframe. There are so many ways to combat the fear-based birth system in the US. Hypnobirthing is one of my favorites:
I move gently forward through my pregnancy and labour with confidence and trust.
I am confident that my baby’s birth will be calm, easy and comfortable.
I visualize my baby emerging safely and easily from my body.
I love my pregnant body.
I make good and responsible decisions about how my baby will be born.
My body is designed to give birth efficiently and easily.Chanting and meditation evokes a mind-over-body power. Ok, this one is my favorite. Talk meditation is great, and I love sound baths, but chanting with music is a way to find repetitions and incorporate one mantra over and over. It evokes healing in a way I can't quite describe.
Using a specific meditation activates the habit. In our meditation app we have favorites and playlists. Starting with the same one day after day reminds me of when you have a run playlist and you hear the song, you're instantly feeling the urge to do the thing: meditate, run, etc. It's along the same lines as smoking when you drink or checking your phone each morning before you get out of bed. Bad habits can be broken and good habits can be created. I learned this reading Atomic Habits.
Meditation practice is a gift to others. I can't even tell you how many times friends have called me in distress or crying, "I just can't anymore, this is just too much." Because, remember what I said earlier, the current state of...everything is just too much. Every time I've told a friend about a specific meditation for themselves or their kiddos, they've told me how much it's helped. Meditation is a mental and emotion reset. A grounding. A powerful tool. And we need a lot of tools right now. My friend was over for a distance backyard glass of wine a few weeks ago, and, like a total weirdo I suggested we do a short meditation. I put on a two-minute meditation and we closed our eyes and sunk into it. When it was over, my friend looked up and was like, "Whoa. That was two minutes?"
You can find out what you really need or want. Seriously. Sometimes we think we know what we want — and sometimes we don't — but our subconscious and our deeper self has information for us to tap into. There is an entire category of meditation where you can ask yourself what you want and seek out information from yourself.
Working, keeping busy, and mindless chatter is a coping mechanism. It's a distraction technique from feeling your truest feelings. But have you ever felt like life kept bringing you the same lesson time and time again. Avoidance is definitely something I've gone through — and still do. Meditation is designed to slow your mind, feel your feelings, clear the cache, and sort shit out.
This is hard
Sometimes you do need coping tools. One meditation my friend, who is a yoga instructor, taught in prenatal yoga was: how to relax in a contraction. We each had a bowl of ice in front of us and we started the practice by focusing on our breath. Then after a few moments we were instructed to pick up a piece of ice and close our palm around it. Then we held the ice cube in our closed fist for 60 seconds.
I kept my eyes closed and focused on my breathing. She talked us through it and said, "You can do anything for one minute. You just need to get through this minute." As I sat there, my hand went from ice-cold to burning hot. I breathed. I focused. Relaxed into it.
Then she told us a minute was up and we set the ice back into the bowl. We rubbed our hands and breathed and said "wow" a bunch. Then after a minute, we picked up the ice and closed our eyes to move through this next imaginary contraction. We did this several times to imagine what it might be like to cope with labor.
Once in labor, I did remember this relaxation technique and tried to focus on the affirmations and the practice of getting through — that I can get through this minute. The contraction passed, I caught my breath. Then another contraction and I thought of the ice. I closed my eyes and heard my friend's voice from that yoga class.
There is a narrative in birth: I'll try for an unmedicated birth and see how it goes; I'll see how long I can go in labor without an epidural; I need to be in the hospital, you know, just in case. If you want to try for an un-medicated birth, definitely find tools to help you achieve that goal. Meditation and visualization are both incredibly powerful.
But, you can do it
For me, meditation always came when I needed it most — more of an urgent necessity. But I'm here to tell you (and remind myself) that we can create a habit-based meditation practice. And having this tool can help in these most urgent, not-one-more-thing era of 2020. The world is asking a lot of you, and you need to take care of yourself to keep showing up.
This is hard. But, you've done hard things. We often we don't get this perspective of strength and accomplishment until we're "through it" and can see the whole picture. This is similar with birth and parenting.
We don't often we see our strength and accomplishment until we're "through it" and can see the whole picture.
You can do it.
Meditation App Recommendations
Insight Timer — I use this one religiously. There is a free version and a paid version — both are great. 🔮
Expectful — excellent for pregnancy, specifically. This one you pay for in the App Store. Don't be like me and forget to cancel it when you stop using it. It was $9.99/month and I paid for about 7 months after I stopped using it. 🥴
Meditation Studio — I love, love, love this app. So many incredible meditations organized by collection, teacher, length of time, and more. They also have a schedule if that's helpful for your type of habit creation. 📆
Balance — this one has audio meditation and physical activities in-app that you use an hour before bed. Great selection of meditations, organized by helpful categories. ⚖️
Miracle Routine — wow, this app. Seriously. This is designed to take you through the same set of activities each morning: Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, and Writing. They have a regular and a quick version. But I need to leave a warning ⚠️ this system works better before kids or if you're able to get up before everyone else in your house. I used to do this before my kids, but it's too overwhelming for my family routine now. And, to have a successful meditation practice, best not set yourself up for failure. Stack the cards in your favor! 😘
