【Watch Kill Bill: Vol. 1 Online】

March Mindfulness is Watch Kill Bill: Vol. 1 OnlineMashable's series that examines the intersection of meditation practice and technology. Because even in the time of coronavirus, March doesn't have to be madness.

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So how's your week so far? If it's been anything like mine, your emotional state can be summed up in those time-honored words: Holy fucking shit I am so stressed out right now.

You've got every right to be! You're probably in a bewilderingly unfamiliar place at the moment. At home during the workday can be the good kind of unfamiliar, though that depends greatly on who else is there and how you cope with them; missing co-workers, and friends at night, is definitely the bad kind. Worse, you can't work from home because you have a retail or restaurant job and your employer won't offer paid sick leave, you're an office worker and your company is ignoring government recommendations, or you're a medical professional. On top of all that, you're picking up on everyone else's anxiety too. You're doing all you can, as you can: socially distancing, washing your hands, trying not to touch your face, but scary words like globalpandemicand quarantinestill march back and forth across your mind.

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And increasingly, marching alongside, the questions. Questions that multiply exponentially, like a mind-virus. Do I have enough food? Is it worth making another supermarket run? What if I catch it from the keypad at the checkout? How can I get my family to self-isolate without having to fly to them? How long is this going to last? How long canI last without going stir crazy? Why did I never notice my partner has that annoying habit? When will those kids just shut the hell up?

I'm not here to tell you that meditation can help you answer all of those chattering questions. Or that you should ignore them and toss aside your work laptop, assume the lotus position, empty your mind and drift off into some higher realm of serene bliss where questions don't matter. Because that's not what meditation is.

The goal of meditation and the goal of everyone in quarantine right now is exactly aligned: to stop acting, or reacting, or overreacting, without some consideration. You want to allow those questions to appear, at whatever pace they want to pop into your head, without freaking the fuck out.

You think you don't have time to meditate at a time like this? It is preciselyin fucked-up times that we can most benefit from something clinically proven to reduce anxiety and lower blood pressure, and to literally grow the good parts of our brains over the long haul.

Sure, you can (and, I'd argue, should) also reduce stress by watching movies or looking at cute animals online, but these are short-term fixes. They are escapes from the present moment. Meditation is about embracing it, in all its fucked-upness and still-goodness.

The essential caveat is that it doesn't always work for everyone; particularly if you have PTSD, meditation can dig up a lot of past trauma. Holding up your mind's darkest thoughts, and telling yourself they're just thoughts, is constant work.

But it's work you can do from home.

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Overall, in general, to weather the coming weeks and months in the best possible mental health, try taking a few minutes every day to just sit with the hard shit.

Don't bother with breathing

This shouldn't be the emoji we think of when we think of meditation. Credit: Mashable composite; Evgeny Atamanenko / SHUTTERSTOCK / EMOJIPEDIA

The story I was expecting to write to kick off this, our third annual March Mindfulness series, was about taking meditation apps to task for talking so goddamn much about focusing on your breath as if that wasn't just one of dozens of approaches to meditation.

For the moment, that seems a relatively minor concern; if focusing on your breath works for your newfound quarantine routine, great. But the fact remains that too many potential meditators are put off by the notion that meditation is aboutthe breathing.

Newbies are led to believe that meditation means learning to inhale or exhale in a certain way, as if you're doing breathwork (there's a lot of overlap between the two disciplines, but it's not the same thing). That misguided notion isn't being helped by a lot of copycat guided meditation subscription apps offering the same old breathing meditations.

How else can you meditate? Let us count the ways. You could repeat a secret mantra in your head; that's all Transcendental Meditation is, doing that shit for 20 minutes twice a day, and it works for millions of people. You don't even have to sit; you could do walking meditation, with its slow and deliberate steps.

You can do a famous and surprisingly effective 8-part meditation on a raisin. (This might have the added benefit of helping you be more mindful about food, and not panic-buy as much the next grocery trip).

Thought-fishing

But here is my favorite meditation challenge for a time when anxiety runs rampant. For which I must credit the excellent paid (but not subscription-based) app, Buddhify. It's called "Thought fishing."

Thought fishing is simple. Imagine yourself as the angler on the surface of a placid lake at the top of your head. You are literally waiting to catch thoughts that happen, unbidden, inside the deep watery depths of your own noggin.

Go ahead, try catching a thought at the moment you're having it. But don't hold on to it. Categorize it — okay, that's a thought about the asshole who stockpiled the hand sanitizer— then throw it back in. Let it swim away.

Thought fishing was a game-changer for my own practice. Suddenly, here was a way to not chastise myself for thinking during meditation. Thought fishing embraces it: You're human, for fuck's sake, you're designed to have thoughts. But damned if the thoughts didn't get very quiet when I started actively hunting for them. Damned if it didn't become fun, a kind of sport, the sort of thing you never imagine meditation to be.

And damned if I didn't start to better identify rash thoughts in my head in everyday life, the kind that might otherwise lead me down a reactive path. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate...we all know the rest of that chain reaction of emotions. Yoda had it exactly right.

SEE ALSO: Should we stop dating amid the coronavirus? Experts weigh in.

Speaking of making meditation a sport, coronavirus concern has forced us to cancel our in-person competitive meditation contest, also called March Mindfulness. But like everything else in the age of social distancing, the contest will reemerge soon in online video chat form. Watch this space.

In the meantime, may we all temper our "holy fucking shit" quarantine moments and combat those endless questions in the best way possible. With a brand new, 100-percent keep-it-real meditation practice that embraces the shit of life, the fucking, and the holy.

Read more from March Mindfulness:

• Snack meditation: How to practice mindfulness while eating a fry

• Masturbation meditation works. Here's the proof.

• Music or silence? Which is better when meditating.

Topics Health Social Good COVID-19