It’s important to find peace within yourself when you’re stressed. Sometimes you feel like you can’t breath and feel like the world is crashing down on you. You start to lose yourself in all the chaos with nowhere to turn. It’s possible to relieve some of this stress through meditation. At first I didn’t believe in meditation, I thought it was silly to sit for a long period of time and breath. I couldn’t accept the fact that breathing was going to relieve the amount of stress a person was going through. After meditating for twenty minutes in class during finals week I felt beyond amazing. I felt like I was able to go about my day with a better outlook on my week. Learning how to meditate and take the important aspects stopping and calming and looking deeply is definitely important to me and I know I’ll be able to use it from this day forward.

         It’s one thing to meditate but it’s another to actually understand it. When learning about meditation, it’s important to learn about the two aspects. One of the two aspects are stopping and calming. Stopping  requires us to stop our thinking and our emotions. Clamming is the art of breathing in and out, stopping our activities, and calming our emotions. The Buddha explains that “when an emotion rushes through us like a storm, we have no peace.” (PDF) I believe while meditating, it’s important to let go of all your emotions and be willing to relax your mind. The second aspect of meditation is looking deeply. Looking deeply is when we are calm enough, we can look deeply to understand what has brought this anger to be, what is causing discomfort. The Buddha also explains that “Stopping, calming and looking deeply are preconditions for healing. If we cannot stop, the course of our destruction will just continue. The world needs healing.”(PDF) Sometimes we cannot control our emotions and block out the world in order to relax. However, once you learn how to take deep breaths, let go of your thoughts and be able to become one with yourself it becomes almost natural to make meditation a daily rutine.

    

   I love my family to death but we tend to have conflicts a majority of the time. In the past we’ve hurt each other with words and it’s caused more harm between all of us. It’s hard to have issues especially with your family. My mouth gets me into a lot of trouble and sometimes I don’t catch myself before I say something. I’ve taught myself to walk away instead of fueling the fire but it can only work for so long. I believe I get my aggression from my father, we both can be very dominant in a fight. Just recently we started talking again and I mention what I learned about meditation. In twenty years we have never had an in depth conversation. He was really open to learning about meditation and how it’s healthy for you. After he had his brain tumor removed he tried his best to be more relaxed and not lash out so easily. I want him to be healthy and if meditation instead of medication can make him healthier, I’m willing to work on it with him. To me it’s important to have a good relationship with him and find a way for us to bond because we’ve never had something to bond over. I see this as a new start for the both of us.

     It’s fair to say that everyone has had a moment where they have become stressed to the point where they need a break from the world and need to find peace within themself. It can be necessary because of a stressful day, a lot of pressure from other people or something that’s been haunting you every day. There are some people who block every day issues and stress by resulting to self harm. Self harm is damaging to the soul and doesn’t help a person find peace, it just blocks your current pain with the pain you’re inflicting upon yourself. Either way, meditation can be helpful to relieve those problems. You aren’t harming yourself even more, you’re helping yourself. Now that I’m comfortable with meditation, I’ve definitely been using it to my advantage. Before I was introduced to meditation I used to handle stress by writing down my feelings or shutting myself out from the world. Now that I’m familiar with meditation I find a private spot to sit down and block out everything around me. I take my time and wait until I feel like I’m floating and all the weight that I felt on me before has been lifted off my shoulders. I believe that there is room to learn new ways to handle some situations in life and I would recommend meditation to anyone.