Over the past few months I've been trying to develop my own personal practice of spirituality through various modalities, one of them being prayer.

I have set up a small altar on my dresser with a rune, a tarot card and some crystals and I light a new candle every night and pray for various people in my life who need healing. I also give thanks for all the things I am grateful for.  I would call them "blessings" but we know how our language has been manipulated, so I guess I'll just say "what I'm grateful for". Its not much, buts its a lot considering where I was at spiritually a few years ago. I used to be an atheist and so prayer just felt unnatural to me.  When I was a Christian when I was a younger I would pray to Jesus every night, even have conversations with Jesus about my day, but now that just feels wrong.  I'm not sure Jesus is real or not, but I do think maybe there is some force out there that cares about us, or at least I hope so. Maybe s/he didn't create this world, or maybe s/he did, but I hope that whatever is out there actually does love us. However, I do not pray to any entities. I just try to send that energy out there to the universe to help others.

Another thing I started doing recently was meditating. Again, its not a lot, but when I am feeling particularly emotional I just begin to repeat the phrase "I am" to clear my mind, like that guy suggested in that video.  It seems to help to envision myself how I want to be while repeating that  mantra.

I've been trying to cath myself when I am in negative thought patterns and instead of dwelling on those bad things that happened to me in the past, I replace them with thoughts of good memories or things I want to happen, instead of things that did happen that are no longer happening.  Maybe my life won't really change in any meaningful way, but at least I won't be torturing myself by subjecting myself to memories of trauma.