Meditation during exams

December 23, 2019

• A Levels
• / Effective Revision
• / University and Higher Education

Our intern Katie Farquhar looks into the benefits of meditation during exams.

The exam period is one that brings with it lots of stress, anxiety and exhaustion for students at this time of year. The chances are, if you have exams coming up you will be not only dreading them, but also pushing yourself to the extreme with revision cramming sessions and frantic completion of past papers. The result of this is an inevitable mixture of sleep deprivation, work anxiety and the dreaded ‘burning out’. All of this only proves detrimental to your own wellbeing and mental health and will only perpetuate a vicious cycle of stress leading up to your exams. Luckily there are a few ways in which you can try to get past this and to achieve a calmer state of mind.

Meditation has been used for centuries to improve motivation, creativity and focus, and effective meditation techniques have been proved to help reduce stress and anxiety amongst students. These don’t come in just one form and there are a number of different meditation techniques that you can try out to see what suits you.

Walking meditation is simple, you first find somewhere peaceful without potential distractions and as you walk along you try to focus on regulating your breathing and your awareness of how the ground feels beneath you. The aim is to feel more at one with nature and to calm your mind from the nervous energy of revision.

Concentration meditation involves concentrating on one single thing – this could be the sound of nature outside but it may be easier to focus on regulating your own breath or meditation sounds that you can find in any number on online meditation videos. The act of concentrating on this one thing may seen difficult at first as your mind is so used to bustling activity, but even just trying to do so will help you to relieve the anxiety built up during the day.

A simple and easy option is that of guided meditation. As the name suggests, these involve a voice guiding you through the entire meditation process and so makes it easier for you to keep your mind free from other distractions. These can be found for free with online videos or you could also download meditation apps such as Calm or Headspace to find more specific guides.

Whichever technique you go for, try to take time out to consider your mental health and wellbeing during the stressful exam period and remember that meditation has the power to increase your mood and better prepare your mind mentally for the day ahead.