In this episode, we share our very mundane, everyday, personal histories and experiences with meditation: learning about it, practicing it, not practicing it; using it, abusing it, misunderstanding it, and eventually getting to a place of actually understanding it. 😮

We discuss the meditation apps we’ve tried over the years, the things we’ve liked or not liked about various ones, the minimum effective dose of meditation, and of course, what we think is the wrong way to meditate.

Meditation apps

There are so many meditation apps. Here are just the ones we mentioned in this episode.

• Headspace

• Calm

• 10% Happier – this is the one Siena currently uses most often

• Waking Up – this is the one Toast currently uses most often

• BONUS – Mindfulness Coach – this is an app we didn’t mention in this episode, but wanted to include it here. It flies way under the radar in the mainstream marketplace. It was created by the United States Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

Minimum Effective Dose for Meditation

As far as we can tell, science seems to say that the minimum effective dose for meditation appears to be 12 min./day for 4-5 days/wk. See the article “Find Your Focus: Own Your Attention in 12 Minutes a Day” by Amishi Jha (10/25/21)

Our Basic Opinions of The Right Ways vs. The Wrong Way to Meditate

• A right way: sit and know you’re sitting.

• Another right way: know you’re inhaling and exhaling and when you’re doing each.

• Another right way: know you’re thinking or have been thinking, that is, whenever you’re not knowing you’re inhaling or exhaling.

• Another right way: simply observing what is. (eg: you may observe your own personal judgements of yourself, a desire for this meditation session to be over already, a questioning of whether you’re doing this right, etc.)

• The Wrong Way: trying to engineer an ‘improvement’ of how you feel (eg: trying to “feel grateful,” trying to “white light” bad feelings away, trying to “feel spiritual,” or trying “to forget yourself,” trying to “drop your ego”).

What “Trust The Process” Means

After doing meditation consistently for several weeks, and eventually months and years, we can we say we eventually noticed a more pleasant emotional life in our general everyday experience.

We stopped getting so wound around the axle with stress, or similar hair-pulling feelings. There was more equanimity for sure.

But those pro-pleasant changes also seemed to be just by-products that came about of their own accord, from their own side of the fabric of reality and existence.

In other words, our experience is that the felt benefits of meditation don’t show up because you pursue them, or achieve them, or accomplish them.

Have you ever baked bread from scratch and had to let the dough rise?

It seems to be like that.

You don’t achieve the dough rising.

It rises on its own as a by-product of doing other things (mixing the yeast in, letting the dough be in a warm-but-not-too-warm place, and just letting it stay there without interfering) because That’s How Life and Nature Works.

We think this whole idea is what is meant by ‘trust the process.’