How To Tell if Your Meditation Practice Is Working
Milan Popovic/Unsplash
Ohm The Right Track: We all know why we should meditate. It provides lots of evidence-backed benefits for emotional and physical health, cognition, sleep, and general wellbeing. Still, for those who do meditate, it can be hard to tell if it’s actually working. Meditation doesn’t often have tangible, easy-to-notice results. But that doesn’t mean those results can’t be measured. There are ways for meditators at home to get feedback on how their practice is working.
The Metrics: One of the best metrics is a journal to record self-observations about behaviors and feelings. Are you doomscrolling less? Sleeping better? More focused at work? Another is a daily-life test, where you perform a basic task and note how focused, stressed, or mindful you feel while doing it. Counting your breaths while meditating can indicate how well you’ve calmed your nervous system. Measuring heart rate variability (HRV) and average heart rate can show how you’re responding to stress.
How to Do It: Start a journal or record audio notes to log meditation sessions and everyday experiences and feelings. A wearable can provide data about heart rate, HRV, sleep patterns, and other physiological metrics. Apps can help, too. Many meditation apps have journals, and Equa can track breathing.
