Welcome to the Daily Meditation Podcast. I'm Mary Meckley and here you are. Back to showing up for yourself as you get ready to meditate. As you meditate,

meditate, sometimes you might wonder if you are actually receiving the benefits of meditation.

One way you can tell if your meditation ritual is benefiting

you is to notice if you feel a little more at peace after you meditate or while you're meditating or to notice if you experience a little more clarity or a little more energy.

This means that as you sit down and begin to tap into inner stillness. Simply sitting quietly for even a few

minutes. Your body is responding. I want to mention this because one of your fellow meditators wrote in and this is

rusty from New Hampshire.

He sent me a direct message on Instagram

where you can also reach out to me

to share about your own meditation ritual and he says this sometimes when I meditate I feel like I'm actually even more stressed or anxious.

Sometimes I notice that my thoughts are even more scattered and that throughout the day

I'm actually more stressed.

How can this be if meditation is supposed to benefit me and

help me to experience more peace? This is such an excellent question and you may feel the same way at times.

I know that I did when I first started meditating.

And that was because I was expecting something to happen to me.

When I sat down, I thought that I should suddenly be feeling peaceful,

that somehow peace would descend upon me.

And I became agitated or anxious, like maybe I was failing at meditation when I didn't experience

immediate peace. So when you have these expectations for yourself regarding how you should feel, you're putting

a lot of pressure on yourself to be a certain way.

So honor how you feel each time you sit down to meditate.

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