Meditation as a form of self therapy
The first time I ever came across the word “Mediation” was in 2019 while I was working at Andela. At the time Andela cared about the wellness of the staff so much, we had free therapy every month.
At my onboarding, we were told about how we could book a free therapy session on our work calendars ahead of the session (which happened once every month). Curious Yinka was like rah, okay let me book a session I was excited to see what therapy really is. to be fair I was even going through things the lol…
The day of the session came and and Faisai from the Peoples team came to give me a reminder that yo your session is happening in a few hours, the therapist would be at the top floor…. Boom Yinka became super nervous, I was like — oh shit. This is really happening? I was so confused lol. I finally put together some courage and just went for the session, luckily for me another staff had filled in my spot cus apparently I came in late. I felt a great sense of relief after this and that was the last time I ever booked a therapy session 😂 (disclaimer: therapy is good guys but that cash is a luxury expense for me rn lol, but if you can afford it pls do) ❤️
A few weeks later, I was chatting to my manager, Dave about my whole experience with booking a therapy session and then ghosting on the therapist. He didn’t even laugh much surprisingly, he was more encouraging and understanding, then we went into a whole conversation about self therapy and that somehow lead to meditation.
Dave explained so much to me about mediation and I was intrigued at the whole practice, we had looked up videos about monks, watched and read so many articles on meditation. The conversation all ended with him telling about this app — Headspace. Dave had paid and started some courses on the app.
Young and broke Yinka couldn’t really afford 4,300NGN monthly for mediation/self care so I just close off the thought of it. Fast forward to years later when I could sort of afford that extra cash monthly.
I did pay for it at the beginning of this year (2021). I took a course called (NBA x Balance) it was so cool, the relive after each exercise was so good. But trust me not to follow through, after running a 6 day streak I just deleted the app (not out of anger or anything but my 16gb iPhone at the time needed some space lol).
Months later, I recently finished my first course and it was called (Patience) I enjoyed it alot and saw it translate to my daily engagements and activities. I recently started a new course titled — Prioritization, I am really loving it.
I am gonna write more about it when I’m 3/4 course deep ✌🏽
