Meditation as a tool for transition

Meditation has gained more and more popularity in our modern world due to increasing anxiety, overwhelm and overworked schedules that we all face. There is a lot of research showing the huge benefits meditating brings into our lives but today we're not gonna talk about that.

This post is about the value that meditating can have in transitioning from one task to another or just transitioning from your productive day to your free time.

For us, this is studying. We usually feel either tired or so excited after studying (and want to tell each other all of the fancy knowledge we gained that day) that it just spills into other parts of our life and always requires 20-30 minutes of detaching. This is a normal occurrence, a sort of transition debt that we always pay when swapping to a completely different task.

However, since meditating is actually a way to just focus on the present (our breathing) for us it has proven to be a great tool to use after studying to relax and cut the transition debt to a mere 5 minutes. After mediation our heads are clear and we let go of what we were doing during study time and can start a new project or just relax and get studying completely out of our minds.

We’ve been using the app Calm for guided meditations. The specific one we use when switching between different tasks is a 4 minute guided breathing exercise (the name of the session: “Panic SOS 4 Minutes”)*. The duration is perfect for us, because it’s short enough to not feel like a new overwhelming item on our to do lists, yet long enough to detach us from the task we were just working on. When we open our eyes after the four minutes it’s much easier to continue with our day without being burdened by the things that came before.

*we’re not actually in panic, it’s just a cool short session

You don’t have to be a monk to get some of the benefits of meditation. For us focusing on the breath for a few minutes has become a powerful tool that greatly improves our days. With so many apps it is also easier to try guided meditations than ever before.

We encourage you to give it a try today. Try it after mentally challenging tasks that occupy your mind for a longer period of time, such as studying, writing, working, etc. After the task, sit down, open an app for guided meditation and try their shortest lesson or find a video on Youtube.

After all, it only takes 4 minutes and can change the course of your day tremendously. So why not give it a shot and see if it helps you?