It’s hard to find people who do. There isn’t a meditation community here so I made one ( !meditation@leminal.space )
Meditation is pretty great.
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When you lift weights do you prefer to lift heavy bundles of bibles?
I kid :)
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I relate. I used to do it so much that I got a bit crazy. But it was a good crazy.
Out of genuine curiosity, how do you meditate properly and what are the benefits?
I learned with calm.com
They have a course of mediation for beginners or something like that and they “teach” different methods so you can choose whichever suits you the most
There used to be a 3-month trial which is enough to go through the course (I didn’t keep my subscription), I’m not sure if they still offer trials like that
There’s a lot of different ways to meditate, and things to meditate on. The most common is mindfulness and essentially boils down to observing and paying attention to everything your consiousness has available. Sounds, smells, sensations, etc. After a while your mind internally kinda shuts up, you get relaxed, stress levels drop, you notice things you hadn’t before. Long term your telomeres get longer (bits of sacrifical DNA that protect your actual DNA). Anxiety drops, inflammation drops, depression drops, you end up more in control of your emations, more rational, better attention span, more self aware, less lonely somehow, improves sleep. And that’s just what science has found so far
You can also meditate on other things, like some forms are based on focussing on love and positive feelings, manifesting them at will, feeling them strongly, essentially feeling your love for everyone.
You can also do things like explore your consciousness, like observing where thoughts come from, how they are formed, what the inside of your mind “looks like”
The benefit, for me, is that it’s like stuffing a piggy bank full of calmness. Later, when I need some calmness, I can reach in and grab it via the meditative practice.
That is a large question.
Meditation is the art and practice of controlling your awareness. And by awareness I mean what you direct when you pay attention, what you concentrate when you concentrate and what gets jerked around when you are distracted.
We basically have 2 techniques. Briefly.
The first technique is “concentration” (it goes by different names). Hold your awareness upon a thing as perfectly as you can for a while. One good thing for this is the feeling of breath in the tip of your nose.
The second technique is “vipassana” (it also goes by different names). Watch all these experiences that you are having right now. All the sights, sounds, thoughts, etc. Watch all that and also watch your awareness. When you feel like you are about to react to all that by directing your awareness at this or that, to concentrate, to think, to enter a daydream, don’t do it. Just refrain from doing anything like that. Just keep watching and keep your cool.
The first technique is dead easy, just takes perseverance. Pays off fast. Shows you what we’re dealing with, with this “awareness” thing. It’s educational that way. We generally get good at the first technique then try the second technique. The first technique can also be used as prep for the second technique. It works very well for that. Makes it stronger.
Meditation makes you smarter, it gives you energy, it opens doors and windows that you didn’t even know were there. And there’s a lot there. It gets you high too.
(More specifically : Concentration improves your ability to concentrate. Improves your memory. Makes it easier to get things done. Makes your thinking sharper. Makes your willpower more powerful. And vipassana. It makes you happier. You start lucid dreaming. You become better with people. You becomes more aware.)
Basically just focus on staying present and not letting yourself get carried away by your internal monologue. It’s infinitely harder than it sounds. You can close your eyes, focus on a specific spot in a room, focus on your breathing, anything to keep yourself present and focused. Keep your mind empty as best you can.
The best advice I ever got was, when you have an intrusive thought during meditation, to acknowledge it, and let it fade away. Don’t focus on it or criticize yourself for it, as that will usually only make it harder to refocus yourself.
Meditation is super helpful for a lot of reasons, but for me personally it helped a lot with negative thinking and mental traps (like catastrophizing and stuff). It helps you to be more aware of when you’re getting carried away by thoughts, and how to push them aside and be present.
Look into mindfulness if you’re interested, it’s helped me a lot.
A good saying I’ve ran into before, “If your monkey-mind gets distracted 1 million times, you just need to refocus 1million +1 times”. Meaning no matter how many times you get distracted you just gotta refocus 1 more time so you’ll always eventually win if you keep at it.
thanks
Just crossposted this for your community’s first post.
I did, back when I was a more disciplined and overall kind of better person–not to mention not riddled with chronic disease yet. That is probably a factor.
This is the biggest cognitive dissonance sort of thing that exists in my life. I know from scientific studies and personal experience that meditating just makes life better. But it’s also so hard to get started.
And it’s easy to lose the routine and gets even harder to start again.
Yeah but I’m not into the void. I just meditate on images that are far away from people.
They come to me naturally and develop into their own trains of thought which I abandon one after another.
I need to watch it again but i recently watched a sourced video (im french unfortunately so I won’t link it) with studies that showed that meditation has limited benefit and can sometimes be dangerous to some people in the long term.
Yeah, every morning for the past 2 years. It’s part of my morning routine and I wouldn’t skip it for anything. It’s only 10min and it’s been really transformative.
I’m surprised you haven’t found many people who meditate. There are a lot of people who follow abrabamic traditions on meditation (though they use a different word for it), and they can be found pretty much worldwide except for a few scattered spots.
I should caution you, though, the terminology used by these groups may seem quite foreign, but you’ll have to trust me – they meditate even if some of them don’t call it that.
I find that most of the people in the scene are more interested in the literature and philosophy than the practice. You ask them about what they see and they tell you about what they read.
I fish for artists, weirdos and outcasts :)
Yes, at least 30 minutes a day
I meditate as part of a dedicated yoga practice. When I am doing a group practice, i arrive early and perform a physical warm up and then spend ten minutes in a seated meditation before the class begins. It makes a huge difference in the quality of my workout to get my mind firmly rooted in the immediate experience.
Time to time. I lack the focus to slow myself down and do it daily.
What a nice though, is because I learned 30 years ago and have done it regularly at various points, I can get my head into a meditative state in moments when needed.
I’ve tried, and weirdly it made me feel rage. I was really surprised but most times I’ve tried meditation it ends in rage or a weird feeling of grief. I don’t know what that’s about but no thanks!
Yeah, I prefer guided meditations.
Nope, too hard. My mind is all over the place as long as I’m awake. Work, video games, book storylines, politics, a constant background soundtrack of music, from TV commercial jingles to the chorus of whatever song I heard last, plus my own inner monologue are all constantly going on in my head. It’s generally not a distraction except when I’m trying to fall asleep at night, but if it was, I’d assume that’s what having ADHD is like? But trying to “Silence” my mind is impossible, it just never shuts up, even in sleep I have ridiculously vivid dreams that feel real until I wake up.
