The 7 surprising things that happened when I started meditating for two hours every day
Welcome back to AMPstigator. You probably think it’s absolutely wild that I meditate as much as this every day. I’m just gonna tell you – this wasn’t always the case, it really just started happening since March and I’m already seeing a difference in my life because of it. So, in this solo-episode I want to detail for you exactly what’s changed in my life since I started meditating up to 2 hours every day.
First we’ll talk through my touch-and-go history as a non-meditator and what makes this particular challenge so different for me…
Then I’ll share why I decided I needed to commit to doing this in the first place and what someone said to me that lit the fire.
We’ll talk through the phenomenal benefits of meditation…
and then we’ll get into the full list of “the surprising things that happened FOR ME when I started meditating consistently for up to 2 hours every day.
Okay.. so.. First, some background.
The first time I ever meditated was 2017. I had just had a panic attack - nervous breakdown at work. That is not hyperbole. It actually happened in mid-september 2017. It was all due to a stressful job search and a toxic work situation and I failed miserably at compartmentalizing it. So, I started listening to guided meditations as I’d make the 18-minute drive into work each morning. I would cry every day (because I didn’t want to go) and attempt to breathe through all of it. It helped me a ton to just regulate my breathing. It kept me from ever having another panic attack, which was IDEAL.
I definitely did not keep up the practice. So, I found myself in the same situation again in early 2019, only this time it was because I had a 3 year old and a newborn and I was in a new job in new city. My hormones were out-of-whack and I definitely had post-partum depression that I didn’t get help for. The stress was overwhelming, so I would get home from work at 10:30p at night and just lay on the floor and listen to these guided meditations. I wish I could say they calmed me down. They didn’t. It wasn’t the meditations fault. It was my fault. I really struggled to find stillness. The meditations just highlighted for me what a nightmare it was inside my head.
I’d continue to do the off-and-on, casual meditation all the way up until August of 2022 when I was sick and hospitalized for the better part of a month. I’ve talked about it extensively on this podcast so if you’re looking for some background on that, I’ve linked it in the show notes. But the third extended hospital stay during that month was the chance to finally get it right. I meditated for hours - and I do mean HOURS - every single day from a hospital bed. It was the ultimate training ground because I had legit PTSD from that experience that’s required dozens of therapy sessions and hundreds of hours in meditation.
That experience in the hospital was the first time I’d ever actually achieved a silent mind. No banging drums. No fleeting thoughts. No to-do list stacking up. NOTHING. Everything was still, calm and quiet. It was transformational. I walked out of the hospital the final time like Moses coming down off the mountain. I was DIFFERENT. I looked different. I carried myself differently. My husband - who’s been with me for 17 years - was even like “whoa… this is a different person.”
So, the hospitalizations taught me how important it was for me to meditate to keep a consistently sound mind. From that point on, I would probably spend 10-to-15 minutes finding stillness But I would only do it 3 or 4 times a week – which, was a huge improvement for me. But even still, the stress and strain of everything got the best of me and I started to get overwhelmed again with life. Nothing out of control. It was more like “HEY life is wild, but we don’t get worked up anymore because we have the tools and the meditation. Go find stillness.”
So… let’s get up to present day.
On March 21st, a psychic said to me “you’ve been called into rest and surrender... And you’re failing.” She was actually the 4th psychic or intuitive who had said that to me in the last year. I was like “i know, i know, you’re totally right.”
But the longer I talked to her the more I realized - okay, there’s some major stuff percolating right now for me and if I don’t actually RESPECT how divine ALL OF IT IS, I’m going to miss the opportunities I’ve prayed for. So -for me- I had to figure out what rest and surrender even LOOK LIKE because rest is not native to me! All my life I’ve been a hustler, a doer, a packer of too many things in my schedule.
So, how did I start resting and surrendering a month ago? Well.. it started with stillness. Creating space for NOT DOING ANYTHING. That is haarrrdd for me.
I opted for taking salt baths each night as a place to pop-in my airpods and just listen to guided meditations. It was a dual skin-detox and mind-detox. I would opt for guided meditations that were 20-or-so minutes and when they were done, I would do one or two more. I would stay in there until the water was cold - about an hour or so - which was the exact amount of time it would take for me to clear my mind.
Within a few days.. It didn’t take an hour anymore. It would take instead 45 minutes to calm my mind. Then it became 30 minutes… and it just kept getting lower and lower. And now I can literally DROP IN.
All throughout the early days of that practice, I would pick up my phone to make notes for myself about emails to send.. Some message I forgot to share.. A permission slip I didn’t sign for one of my kids. All the things that would come up to be seen because my mind was like “OH THANK GOD YOU’VE ALLOWED SPACE FOR THIS VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO COME THROUGH.”
But within about a week of that, my mind started getting really good at relaxing and releasing.
Two weeks ago, I upped the ante by taking a solo retreat about an hour outside of town. It’s something I’ve never done. My husband wanted to take the kids to see his parents out of state and said “hey - you’ve been going non-stop, why don’t you stay back and find somewhere to go.” I was like “you’re right. If I stay at home I’ll never relax.” So I got outta dodge and laid around a woodland cottage for 48 hours. I didn’t get out of bed until 10am. I would just lay there and meditate, journal… and then I’d go outside on this totally rural place and just lay in the grass for hours listening to the wind and staring at the birds.
Before you judge me and say “lauren, I don’t have that kind of luxury,” let me be clear… NEITHER DO I. But I still made it happen. And while I was laying there in the grass, I realized, I hadn’t been this STILL since my HOSPITALIZATIONS.
Think about that.
It took a hospital bed and being hooked up to wires EVERYWHERE to get me to slow the heck down. I’ve decided that’s not a viable option for me anymore, so unless I create stillness, I’ll be right back in that kind of situation.
So, here was the real key from that experience…
I resolved to make my vacation-buzz linger into my real life. I committed to keep meditating every day for 1-to-2 hours and just see what happens. See what falls away. See what doesn’t get done. See what never mattered to begin with. Just notice. And what I’ve seen has blown me away.
So let’s talk about why research backs me up on what I’m doing…
The oldest existing text that mentions meditation is from India and it’s 3,700 years old. I’ve told you before on this podcast: I have a fascination with “things we once knew but we’ve somehow forgotten” – and to me, meditation and other stilling practices fit into that. Ancient civilizations knew that prayer and meditation were essential for a healthy mind.. But for some reason in our modern-day world, we think we can buck thousands of years of human evolution and cram ourselves with sensory overload - and still be okay.
We can’t!
So, I’m obsessed with all the research that shows us “hey, those ancient people knew what’s up and now we have data to back it up.”
Research shows meditation reduces stress. It helps us train our minds to stay present, which keeps us calm and relaxed.
Regular meditation also increases your attention, memory, and mental clarity, as well as making you more creative and way better at problem-solving.
Another -kind of- surprising benefit of meditation is that it makes you more compassionate and empathetic. When we meditate, we learn to be more present and attuned to our own emotions and the emotions of people around us.
And then -OF COURSE- it really helps with your self-awareness and introspection. When we meditate, we become more attuned to patterns that may be holding us back or hurting us.
So, if you’re still with me, I want to be clear on what I’ve noticed FOR MYSELF in this month
1. I started giving less of a shit
I’m not at full-on “zero effs given” but I’m pretty close. I’ve started lowering my stress baseline, significantly. I don’t get worked up about literally anything. And when something comes up that would’ve usually set me back or set me off – like a recent unfortunate meeting at work – I was like “yeah, got it, cool” and almost completely unfazed. You can’t imagine what a gift that is to feel so balanced and so clear-headed that nothing can blow me off course. That DEFINITELY did not USE TO BE THE CASE. I had a similar event happen to me at work 2 years ago and it took me 3 months to stop feeling angry. This time it took me 24 hours… all because I’ve done so much work in therapy and also spend so much time finding stillness.
2. I finally detached my nervous system from my work
I have never been able to SAY THAT. EVER. SO, this is freaking monumental.
Up until this last month, I haven’t been able to sleep with a to-do list. I had this OCD around getting every box checked and every duty done or else I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been that way for as long as I can remember. It’s probably what’s made me successful. But that stress load is untenable, so I’ve started forcing myself to go to bed with things undone as a practice. I spend so much time each night meditating that there’s no room for other things. So, things aren’t getting done and instead of blowing up, they’re actually just falling away. And it’s glorious.
3. I’m yelling way less at my kids
This is a big one I think about a lot. I miss a lot of time with my kids. I send them off to school at 8, and then I don’t get home from work until 7 o’clock. I get very little time with them each day and it kills me. So before this meditation stretch, I was getting home from work totally exhausted and trying to speed up my kids to go faster. It meant there was a lot of exasperated parenting and it wasn’t good.
So, I’ve found that being more present and having a quiet mind has helped me really feel what they’re feeling and have ZERO RUSH around doing anything but relaxing.
4. I’m still getting everything done
This really shocks me. How the heck could I spend up to 2 hours a day meditating and still complete things? And here’s what I realized… it’s Because I’m not spending HOURS a day worrying or thinking about something. By actively clearing my mind, I create a totally blank slate, so that when I do work on something, my mind has room to run. There’s so much space in there that I can think and act way more quickly.
I’m literally taking the task in front of me and acting on it in the exact moment with zero drama or distractions.. And then I’m done. It’s the simplest, calmest, most amazing feeling knowing that I take a task that usually takes 12 hours and drop it down to 5. Think about that!!! That’s happened for me in these last few weeks. Projects go FASTER. I work more efficiently. EVERYTHING IS BALANCED because I have a balanced mind. And I have no anxiety around it. No theatrics around it. Things just happen.
5. I’m getting way more discerning
This has been interesting and pretty surprising. I’ve found that not only can I feel things intuitively about people and situations… I can actually define what it is that’s not quite right. Before, my intuition would really just work like a light switch - on or off. On would be “yeah this is good, go for it.” Off would be like “somethin’ aint right. Proceed with caution.” Since I started spending more time in silence and stillness, I can now define exactly what it is that makes my intuitive lightswitch turn on or turn off. That’s been really cool.
6. I’m actually resting
Like.. swinging in a hammock. Laying on a picnic blanket and watching the clouds. Things I’ve literally never done. I watched A MOVE for the first time in GOD-knows-how-long because I wasn’t consumed with the mountain of work. It’s been so beautiful.
7. I’ve started seeing signs of confirmation everywhere
The most physical and ABUNDANT of all the signs I’ve been seeing are hawks. Literally every day at least one, sometimes as many as 4 hawks, fly over me all the damn time. It happens while I’m driving, it happens at home, it happens when I’m getting out of the car at work. Most often they’re no more than 20-30 feet above me and It’s really really wild.
It all started while I was on my solo retreat two weeks ago in the woods. I was laying in the grass listening to a guided meditation and I opened my eyes to see 15 hawks flying over me. I was SHOCKED and overcome and closed my eyes again. When I opened them a minute later 13 were still over me. Just floating above me.
Ever since then, I see hawks literally everywhere.
So there you go!
Those are the 7 surprising things that started happening just in the last month since I started meditating 1 to 2 hours every single day.
When I started 2023, my prayer was “to say things people aren’t saying; to do things people aren’t doing; and start a movement.” I had no idea how that would begin. I know now that it starts with stillness. Quiet. Thats what makes EVERYTHING more clear.
So if you’re in a space where you’re like “wow, I need that kind of stillness,” it’s so simple. My favorite app is insight timer. It has thousands and thousands of free meditations. You just pop on.. Search for something you need.. “Like, peace or release anxiety” or literally anything and I guaratee there’s a meditation for you. Then you just listen! You make a habit of CHOOSING YOU. Maybe you make a commitment like I did to start doing it for a considerable amount of time each day. If I can do it with 3 kids, working full time and running an AMAZING PODCAST, then I know you can do it, too.
Stillness speaks, y’all. What will it say to you?
As you go through this week I encourage you to shine your light. Lead with your heart and live life purposefully. I’m lauren lowrey and this is ampstigator.
