After a quick poll of the forum the other day, it looks like several of us would like to participate in some short challenges around health and wellbeing. Since the topic of stress has been very prominent here recently, after Kelli's post about her illness and its connection to overwork, I thought a mindfulness/meditation challenge would be an appropriate place to begin.

This challenge will run from Sunday 8 July to Saturday 14 July, and consists of practicing meditation once per day.

I have been doing meditation for about two years. It's something I felt very 'allergic' to at first, as I'm not temperamentally drawn towards anything new-agey or metaphysical. I decided to try it because I realised that my life was being poisoned by stress, and I had had a nervous breakdown that I wanted to put behind me. Now I believe it is effective and enjoy many forms of meditation, but I am certainly not an expert, and I don't practice enough, so will definitely benefit from completing this challenge.

I've chosen this body-scan meditation because it seems relevant to our common interest of fitness, and because it's quite accessible; you're not trying to make your mind go empty or have a transcendent experience. If you can lie down and breathe, you can do this meditation.

I'm going to offer different types of meditation over the course of the week, so look out for subsequent posts. Please comment below with your experiences of doing these meditations; I hope that these threads will provide an opportunity to share what we learn with each challenge, and to reflect for ourselves if it's something valuable we'd like to carry on with beyond the week when it runs.

Here's a link to some tips about meditation:

https://zenhabits.net/meditation-guide/

And here's the audio for a guided body-scan meditation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdeh5WU5ABo

(BTW, feel free to look for another body scan elsewhere if you prefer a different style or length of meditation.)

I wish you all peace for this week!