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LM: #349: What I stumbled across meditating 365 hours
As 2025 began, I made a soft agreement with myself to try to meditate 300 hours in the year. I’d try an hour most days, and figured I’d miss a day here or there.
Now I’ve meditated an hour a day more than 365 days.
In the past, I deliberately avoided holding a streak – I purposefully quit my first hour-long meditation challenge after 89 days, to avoid the psychologically-significant “90.”
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I’ve been holding onto this streak mostly because not meditating now feels like not brushing my teeth, or not sleeping. I get so much out of each session, I don’t want to miss it.
By far the biggest revelation has been my accidental discovery of something I guess they call “somatic release.” I started feeling the urge to lean into tension in my face and body, leading to some strange facial expressions and postures.
It looks and is simple, but I have to warn that the tension patterns it releases have been very deep. I could see how it could really mess someone up mentally and physically. The first weeks after unlocking this I felt very shaky and emotionally fragile. I had severe hip pain – I thought I had uncovered a latent injury. So try at your own risk and maybe there are professionals you could consult?
Now I’m glad to have worked through that initial phase. I feel far more emotionally resilient. I get less angry, feel less insecure, and take things less personally. It shouldn’t be a surprise that also makes me feel a bit less ambitious – at least in my previous understanding of ambition. But in my writing I feel more capable of seeing an idea or feeling from all possible angles to really find the contours of what’s interesting.
The best way I can describe this process is as like sorting through a library of memories of not just the worst things that ever happened to you, but also the thousands of tiny moments of discomfort that pile up and get “stored” in your body. It also feels like sorting through experiences you haven’t personally had, but that are locked into the human nervous system through the experiences of your ancestors. Sometimes it’s accompanied by the actual emotions, but a lot of times it’s like you’re “acting” the emotions – such as by shedding tears but without sadness.
During each session I release a lot of this tension, but the next day there’s always still more to work through. Maybe someday it will all be gone.
If there’s any one revelation this far into this process it’s that all the emotions are okay: rage, humiliation, lust, elation, self-pity, and more. Many are not justified, but they are okay, a product of being in a human body. Few are worth acting on, but all are okay to feel, at least for that hour.
I wish more people had an hour a day to meditate, because you reach a point where it’s like driving with a new windshield.
Book: Slow Productivity (Amazon) is Cal Newport’s manifesto for knowledge work at a sane pace, which Mind Management lovers will enjoy.
Cool: 1 word per day for five years
Best,
David
P.S. I talked more about my experience meditating 365 hours, and with somatic release, in this YouTube video.
