The Experience Of Meditation

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Firegrace

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Hey everyone,

has anyone had any experience with meditation? If so, how did you do it? Have you kept it up? Were there any benefits? If you haven't done it would you like to try it? Do you think it will give you super powers? haha

I have started to do some deep breathing exercises that I'll call meditation. 20 - 40 minutes a day on average and on days when I have some time to myself I'll push myself and see my limits.

Essentially what I've done is focus on my breath, breathing in as much as I can and out as much as I can. I question the whole "quiet your mind" thing, but it turns out that chatter of the mind is easily blocked out when your focus isn't on it.

There will be thoughts - tentatively I've come to accept that fact, but the thoughts are in the background and are of no distraction. The quiet of the mind does indeed come but not with forcing the thoughts out but letting them go and accepting them.

It is actually quite stress relieving in and of itself. Spiritual means or finding wisdom, whatever, the stress relief is real and I'll bet real money it could be proven in a scientific test that measured stress hormones! :P

So anyway, what do you think about meditation?
 
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Firegrace said:
has anyone had any experience with meditation? If so, how did you do it? Have you kept it up? Were there any benefits? If you haven't done it would you like to try it? Do you think it will give you super powers? haha
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I have a lot of respect for meditation and those who practice it. One of the many great disappointments I have in myself is my seeming inability to stick to a regimen of meditation. I think it's a great thing, I really want to do it, but my brain will not cooperate. At all. Sometimes a mere five minutes in my brain has already gone full-kilter on a subject. When I realize that, I try to bring it back to focus, but I can never hold it long. My brain is chattering away all the time.

Firegrace said:
I have started to do some deep breathing exercises that I'll call meditation. 20 - 40 minutes a day on average and on days when I have some time to myself I'll push myself and see my limits.

Essentially what I've done is focus on my breath, breathing in as much as I can and out as much as I can. I question the whole "quiet your mind" thing, but it turns out that chatter of the mind is easily blocked out when your focus isn't on it.

There will be thoughts - tentatively I've come to accept that fact, but the thoughts are in the background and are of no distraction. The quiet of the mind does indeed come but not with forcing the thoughts out but letting them go and accepting them.

It is actually quite stress relieving in and of itself. Spiritual means or finding wisdom, whatever, the stress relief is real and I'll bet real money it could be proven in a scientific test that measured stress hormones! :P

So anyway, what do you think about meditation? (Funny story before I submit this thread - when I was in high school, a high school teacher, a very professed Christian thought that meditation left you open to attacks from satan. Tee hee)
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Hmm... Well, I'm interested so I will try it again. I think it is definitely a good thing to do, but I get so frustrated in my inability to do it very well. I guess that's one of the other great disappointments: my self-perfectionist lunacy. Sigh. I will try to accept that I won't be able to do this well until I have practiced it for a while and give it another try.

Great post! Also, great article that you linked to, [MENTION=5511]o_q[/MENTION]. I liked the TEDx video on the article too.
 
Yeah, I've been meditating since I was 13. I took a class on it too from someone who was extremely experienced in it, have done it in groups a few times, etc.

I usually just practice mindfulness meditation, a lazy version of zazen basically. I always hear from people how they cannot get their minds to be quiet. The point of meditation, from my perspective, is not to quiet the mind. The point is to be mindful, to try and just sit back and watch what is going on. People think of meditation as something where you are supposed to try to force the mind to shut up, but the point of being mindful, as I understand it, is to try to not force anything. To neither struggle nor strive. If you are having so much trouble with it that you can't even remember that you are meditating, that is probably normal considering how fast paced and stressful our society and way of life is. All you can do is try to just focus on breathing. It can sometimes take a long time just to remember you're meditating when you're sitting there if you're out of practice, and even after that, the mind will probably just chit-chat the whole time once you reach that point where you are an observer.

If you really can't get it to help you at all, you might want to try some easy yoga instead. Because it is more physical but still basically meditation, it can do a better job of helping you be in the moment.
 
Trying and failing on a daily bases is a practice, have faith and keep trying.
 
Dave Fallon said:
I have a lot of respect for meditation and those who practice it. One of the many great disappointments I have in myself is my seeming inability to stick to a regimen of meditation. I think it's a great thing, I really want to do it, but my brain will not cooperate. At all. Sometimes a mere five minutes in my brain has already gone full-kilter on a subject. When I realize that, I try to bring it back to focus, but I can never hold it long. My brain is chattering away all the time.

Hmm... Well, I'm interested so I will try it again. I think it is definitely a good thing to do, but I get so frustrated in my inability to do it very well. I guess that's one of the other great disappointments: my self-perfectionist lunacy. Sigh. I will try to accept that I won't be able to do this well until I have practiced it for a while and give it another try.

Great post! Also, great article that you linked to, [MENTION=5511]o_q[/MENTION]. I liked the TEDx video on the article too.
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Hey Dave,

Be encouraged! The thoughts may always be there - it's where your attention is that's the important part. I play a game in my mind - I breathe in all the way until I can't any more and then I breathe out all the way until I can't anymore and then again and again until the timer goes off on my phone. :P

For me, it helps to visualize my breath in and out. Again, the focus is the important part. Thoughts come in - the mind is a very powerful and useful thing - and when they do, just continue to focus on the breath and don't indulge in them.

In your endeavors, if you decide upon 10 minutes of meditation, then set your timer, close your eyes, and breathe deeply in and out until the 10 minutes is up. It doesn't matter if you solve world poverty and have the entire peanut gallery in your mind and totally "fail" at it. You've succeeded in one aspect and you'll gain more control over your thoughts in the process and more self esteem.
Dragon said:
Yeah, I've been meditating since I was 13. I took a class on it too from someone who was extremely experienced in it, have done it in groups a few times, etc.

I usually just practice mindfulness meditation, a lazy version of zazen basically. I always hear from people how they cannot get their minds to be quiet. The point of meditation, from my perspective, is not to quiet the mind. The point is to be mindful, to try and just sit back and watch what is going on. People think of meditation as something where you are supposed to try to force the mind to shut up, but the point of being mindful, as I understand it, is to try to not force anything. To neither struggle nor strive. If you are having so much trouble with it that you can't even remember that you are meditating, that is probably normal considering how fast paced and stressful our society and way of life is. All you can do is try to just focus on breathing. It can sometimes take a long time just to remember you're meditating when you're sitting there if you're out of practice, and even after that, the mind will probably just chit-chat the whole time once you reach that point where you are an observer.

If you really can't get it to help you at all, you might want to try some easy yoga instead. Because it is more physical but still basically meditation, it can do a better job of helping you be in the moment.
Click to expand...

Dragon has some great points! "To neither struggle nor strive" is a good way to put it. Your duty, as I understand it, is to focus on the breath and if the mind has something to say, acknowledge it and continue on your way.

[MENTION=1939]Stu[/MENTION] offers some great insight as well! Failure is nothing but step toward success. You must not accept failure but try, try again until you have succeeded. Bend the rules if you have to! :P It is your world.
 
Just an example, might not work for you. While my eyes are closed, I picture myself breathing in white air and exhaling black air. Eventually the air I expel turns grey and then to white. (By this time my mind is "resting".) I will continue to breath in and expel white air for as long as I need, until all I see is white (and I have faded into it.) To give you an idea of what a "resting mind" feels like ... think of the times when you "zone out" or "stare off into space." It's a similar sensation.

The above can be used for healing prayers as well, except that you visualize the person you are praying for breathing in white air, exhaling black ... etc etc.
 
Just wanted to share what has really worked for me (learned from an Ayurvedic doctor):

Do just a little bit of stretching or light yoga first. Then sit against a wall or do a lotus pose to do some alternate breathing (http://www.artofliving.org/yoga/breathing-techniques/alternate-nostril-breathing-nadi-shodhan).

After about 20 breaths of alternate breathing, do something called Bee's breath, 3-5 times (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onQiVRq8WLA). Once you finish doing bee's breath, you are pretty much in a state of relaxation anyway. With your eyes closed, do a slow body scan - without your hands, feel what your forehead feels like, feel your ears, feel your nose, mouth, neck, all the way down your body, very slowly. If you have a headache or any other pain, just take in the sensation without trying to change it - just feel it for a little while and move onto the next area of your body. It should take about 15 minutes to do this. Imagine that your daily thoughts are the waves on top of the ocean, but your true being is at the bottom of this deep ocean, unmoving. When you bring yourself down to this unmoving ocean floor, you really feel your body just let go in a way.

Anyway, it's worked really well for me - I actually started dreaming very vividly again for the first time in many years after doing this.
 
In my short meditations my goal is to reach a state of mental quiet, even if only for a few seconds, where my inner thought stream ceases its chatter. It's a sense of relief when I find that place. When the thoughts do intrude (as they always do) I try to detach and let them drift off instead of letting them take over and get me going down another path of incessant mental chatter. I am a rank beginner at all of this but I've found that even those short periods of silence can grant peace. There's no doubt it's been a help with stress relief and relaxation.

I usually come back to a very specific visualization that helps me get to this place: an old fishing boat with decks full of junk and debris, and I go around very methodically sweeping off the decks and freeing up the space on deck. It's a picture of getting rid of my "mental clutter" until I am left with an old fishing boat, still very seaworthy, floating in the middle of a calm ocean, a placid and serene refuge.
 
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Yeah, I learned it from Cheech and Chong. You just sit down, cross your legs, hold out your fingers and go oooooooooooooooooommmmmm.
 
OP sums up my view fairly well. I started to regularly meditate by using a mantra to guide me.

It's cool that whenever I don't have anything to do and want to do something productive there's a) meditation and b) visualisation.

By doing these things I know I am spending my time well.
 
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