Meditation is one of those things that people often have preconceived notions about. When I first heard of meditating, I immediately thought of a buddhist monk, sitting on a rock, counting away their life. Although this does dictate a very small portion of society, meditation typically looks far from this. Since most individuals are part of the “general population,” their meditation will look much more mild. For myself personally, I spend about 10-20 minutes a day meditating. Why? My reasons have evolved over the last couple of years.
When I first started meditating, I initailly did so because I had really bad insomnia. It was one of those ways to see if I could help to relax my body before bed. Spoiler alert, it did! I started notice great improvements in my sleep, just from adding a little bit of meditation into my life. Because of this, I dug a little bit deeper on meditation and stress relief and stared to notice I had a lot of internal anxiety built up from numerous different outlets. This is likely where the meditation had it’s roll in helping me get to sleep. I started reading up more on meditation, and how to get the most out of the sessions.
One of the reoccurring themes is to try to set up your environment in a peaceful setting. This can look different for everyone, and for me it’s where my rabbit came into place. I found that in my life personally, I also enjoyed time spent in my room with my rabbit. Being with Leo (my rabbit) immediately calmed me and put me in a better mood. It made sense to me that my main area to meditate should be with him in my room. Any time my mind starts to get off task and wander, I think to my rabbit, and my breathe. These two things help to relieve my thoughts of the outside world tremendously.
I’m not suggesting that you should go buy a rabbit today, to solve all of your anxiety problems, tomorrow. But I would suggest that if you have a pet, try meditating with them in your presence. I bet you will find that having them near you will make you feel so much better! If you have never meditated before, I always recommend to start small. I have a short guided meditaiton video you can try out here.
I wish you the best of luck on your stress relief, and hope you add some pet meditation to your life!
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