500 Days of Meditation

Me in Annapurna (Nepal) on 1 month solo pilgrimage in the Himalaya.

i’m conflicted about sharing this publicly, but over the last few months friends have told me that it’s inspiring…so, today i’m celebrating 500 consecutive days of meditation!

And for 10 months I’ve been doing an hour of meditation almost every morning.

i’m not sure exactly when my journey with meditation began…18 years ago when i started reading about it & tried it a few times “but nothing happened”, or 11 years ago when i did my first 10 day Vipassana retreat?

Thanks to the awesome Insight Timer App, 500 days ago, i got back into it as a regular practice (& am able to “boast on facebook” with a screenshot as proof).


2017 was a difficult year for me. After breaking up with Antoine, I fell into a kind of existential crisis, “who am i & where do i fit into the world?” which i realise is normal after 6 years of identifying as his partner.

i thought back to how happy i was *before* getting together with Antoine - crying most days from the ecstasy of being alive - versus where i was on the other side of graduating from a happy relationship - unclear, sad & lost.

i started searching for the differences between my daily life then, compared to now. i realised that 6 years earlier i’d had a consistent, daily meditation practice.

So i plonked my arse on the floor, crossed my legs & began to watch my breath, as the noisy thoughts erupted all over my stream of consciousness. i was back in meditation land! If it hadn’t worked so well, i’d say it’s embarrassing that i started meditating for gold stars on a phone screen!

The free app Insight Timer, allows you to set a beautiful sounding timer (like a singing bowl or gong) to mark the end of your meditation. i adore this compared to the other option of ending with a standard iPhone alarm or constantly peaking open my eyes to check a clock. For each 10 days of consistent meditation you get a gold star. It also tracks the number of minutes you meditate & you can check your stats.

In the first couple of months of getting back into my regular practice, this stopped me from the temptation to skip days when my mind told me it REALLY didn’t want to meditate & gave me a whole list of other “better” things to do. Massive bow of gratitude to Insight Timer! (They also have good, free guided meditations. But if you’re totally new to meditation, then i recommend starting with Headspace, which is absolutely EPIC for beginners.)

If i could dispel one meditation myth, it would be ’meditation means having no thoughts.’ i thought for years that i was “doing it wrong” & “still such a beginner” because there was still a barrage of thoughts bombing from my brain.

Now i realise it’s more about observing the thoughts, without reacting or getting entangled in them. A real life benefit of having a consistent meditation practice: i’m able to observe what’s unfolding in life (the good, the bad & the ugly) with a greater detachment to the outcome. A couple of months ago, things financially were really precarious. Rather than being lost, spinning out of control in the reaction-based dramas created by the mind (trying to help prepare me for the worst case scenarios)…i found myself *observing* the stress that arose in my body, the fearful emotions & panic-laden thoughts.

i walked through the experience, which lasted for about 6 weeks, with a sense of trust & curiosity.

And i don’t mean only during the hour i was sitting in meditation, but rather throughout the day, saying to the mind

“It’s okay. We’re safe. Let’s find out what happens next”.

I felt peaceful, centred & secure.
Hope this inspires!