Blog Post 3

 Hey everyone! Welcome back to my blog.

In my last post, I discussed the research I conducted on mental health and well-being and shared with you all the four changes I am going to implement into my daily/weekly routine that will hopefully become habits for me. At the end of last week’s post, I mentioned I was going to be incorporating meditation into my daily routine by using the app Headspace. I used this app for the first time a few years ago, but only managed to keep up with it for about a week. Since downloading it for the purpose of my Genius Hour project, I have used it at least once a day for the past 5 days. Let me share with you some of my thoughts regarding this app…

Headspace

Headspace is a meditation app that provides users with a variety of guided meditations that they can complete at their own pace. Some of these meditations include breathing exercises to help with sleep, guided intention walks, music to help with focus, and relaxing sounds to listen to at night. This app also has a feature that allows users to complete a check-in where they are asked a few questions regarding their stress and well-being. Over the course of the past 5 days, I have completed numerous meditation exercises as I was curious as to what each exercise entailed. 

Basic Meditation: This is something I have completed each day as the length of the meditation is only about 5 minutes long. Doing these meditations made me feel very relaxed, and somewhat tired! The purpose of these meditations is to help you reduce wandering thoughts by actively focusing on breath, the body, and any noises or smells in the environment around you. I thoroughly enjoy doing these meditations as they allow me to forget about any stressors in my life and just focus on my body.

Intention Walk: A very cool thing about this app is the exercise feature it has. Users can choose to do yoga, cardio, dance, and other forms of exercise through following along with an instructor. The exercise I chose to do this week was an intention walk. I completed this walk around my neighbourhood while enjoying the crisp air and fall colours that are starting to show in the trees. Prior to beginning the walk, the instructor prompts you to set an intention to be present and engaged. During the walk, I felt I was much more aware of my body and my surroundings as I was focusing on my breath, the steps I was talking, and the noises I could hear around me. I only engaged in the intention walk once, but this is definitely something I will continue to do, and something I believe I can do without using the app.

One downfall to this app…

I really enjoyed using this app, however there is one downfall. In order to access all of the features of Headspace, you need to pay $18 a month. Although this cost isn’t too high, I am not sure I want to pay for this as I feel like I can find similar meditations for free on YouTube. My free trial for Headspace will end in two days, and after that I am going to cancel the subscription. I will still be engaging in meditation, as I am curious to see how it will affect my well-being over time, however I am going to try to find some meditation platforms that are free.

Painting

Since my meditations did not take up a large portion of my day, I decided to implement another change into my routine that I discussed in my last post. Taking some time out of my week to bring out my watercolour paints has been very enjoyable for me. I forgot how much I loved to paint! I managed to do this twice last week as a little break from school work. I hope to continue doing this at least twice a week as it is very relaxing and allows me to focus on something other than school.

For the next part of my well-being journey, I will continue with my meditation (on a free platform hopefully) and painting, and will also begin implementing yoga into my routine. I will also be completing a TedTalk to discuss my progress thus far. I am excited to continue this journey!!