At the start of November I saw a friend post on Facebook and Instagram that he’d be doing a walk along the beach at a set time every morning, and anyone was welcome to come along. I saw this an my first reaction was wow that’s bold he’s going to be walking a lot on his own. That was I think my self-conscious, pressured by society self. He was doing it to start conversations about men’s health, and what better way to do it than walking and talking! By the end of the month he had walked with heaps of people, including some musicians. Earlier this month I thought, once I finish placement I’ll meditate every day for an hour. I have tried this before and haven’t stuck with it so I thought I’d take a leaf out of my friends book and put an open invite on social media. The rationale for this was to raise the idea of meditation to people who haven’t thought about it before, normalising it for everyone, how it should be. But also to keep myself accountable, if I’m expecting people to turn up, I’m going to have to go down as well. When planning this I was (and am) very self conscious about putting this up because meditation is still seen as a bit ‘different’ but I thought about it and realised that this is something I’m interested in and shouldn’t care what others think about it, if they judge me they are probably not in my close circle of friends anyway. the reason I’m sharing it to social media is to potentially have people I wouldn’t normally see come down with me, see if anyone shares the same interest as well as promote the topic. I’m going to post this up tomorrow (Sunday) to start on Monday and even if nobody shows up, it’ll hold me accountable, what’s the worst that can happen
Harrison Hansford 