If you’ve ever sat down to meditate and thought, are you serious, this is it? I can’t meditate. Same.
Sitting still wasn’t really the problem for me. My mind was just fast, always full of things I wanted to try, stuff I wanted to build, ideas I wanted to chase. So when I’d sit down to meditate, all of that would be right there. Instead of quieting down, it would get louder. I’d get this panicky feeling, not anxious exactly, just the feeling or the thought that I’m going to forget something. Slowing down felt like I was going to miss something. So I’d stop, I’d tell myself I’d try again tomorrow, and then I wouldn’t and eventually I would just write the whole thing off as something that wasn’t for me.
I Also Had No Idea What Meditation Actually Was
For the longest time, I thought the whole point of meditation was to clear your mind. To get to some blank, peaceful place where thoughts just stopped happening. But that never happened. So, when the thoughts didn’t stop, and my brain just kept going and going, I assumed there was something wrong with me. I figured I was failing at it.
That’s not what meditation is.
It’s really about picking something to focus on. A word, a breath, an image, whatever… it doesn’t matter. It’s about noticing when your attention drifts away from it. That is the whole practice. You drift, you notice, and you come back. Over and over. The noticing is the point, not the stillness.
What the Lucia Light Showed Me
After going through a late stage cancer, a therapist suggested I try meditation. I didn’t really know much about it at the time, I just knew I was dealing with a lot. So I tried. And well, you already know how that went.
A friend suggested I try the Lucia light. They said it was like doing mushrooms and I was like —girl, you’ve never done mushrooms, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I kind of dismissed it. But then I did a little research, went down a rabbit hole, and found an article about this light that makes you trip balls. I forwarded that article to my friend and they wrote back: that’s it. That’s the exact light my mom has.
So I tried it.
Here’s what happens in a session: you lay back, close your eyes, and the light enters through your closed eyelids. Your visual system starts producing colours and patterns, your own brain responding to the light. And for a stretch of time you’re just watching it. You’re present, relaxed, not having to do anything.
But then, at some point you realize you’ve drifted. You start thinking about work or your kids or something you forgot to do, and you haven’t noticed the colours or the patterns at all. And that’s the thing, the moment you notice that thought, the colours come back. Just like that. The thought was there, you saw it, and now it’s gone and you’re back.
After just one session I felt what it means to have a thought and let it go. Not as a concept. As a real experience. And once you know what that feels like you know what you’re looking for when you sit down to meditate on your own.
This Isn’t About the Light Being Better Than Meditation
It’s not. The light is a tool. One option among many, and it’s not the right fit for everyone.
What the light gave me was a reference point. After a few sessions, I understood what I was chasing when I tried to meditate on my own. I didn’t feel lost anymore. My baseline stress level came down enough that sitting still with my fast mind felt possible and the practice that had never stuck for me started to actually stick.
That’s the goal. Building your own capacity, not relying on light sessions forever. The light can lower the floor, but whether you continue with that is up to you.
For People Who Think They Can’t Meditate
I’d push back on that a little.
Maybe you just haven’t found the right way in yet. Some people need a class. Others need an app. And if you’re like me, you need to feel the thing before you can do the thing. And for those people, sometimes lying under a light for an hour and watching your own mind, do its thing is the most useful starting point there is.
RE:MIND Meditation offers private Lucia N°03 light sessions in Vancouver, BC. The First-Timer Experience is a good place to start — no experience or expectations required.
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