I'm a full-blown a cynic, but after OCD and anxiety got the best of me, my therapist recommended I try meditation to both start and end my day, I've started to notice huge improvements.<p>Can't recommend it enough. It's frustrating at first, the mind will just not stop wandering to worries every 10 seconds, but almost always on cue, the guided meditation would remind me "is you're mind wandering? no big deal, bring your focus back to your breath."<p>Here's where I recommend starting - <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/well/guides/how-to-meditate" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/well/guides/how-to-meditate</a><p>There are a few moments now where my mind will go entirely blank, and it's the most relaxing feeling in the world. I still get too excited when that happens to keep it sustained, but I can sense it starting to work.<p>It's really helpful to check in for a few minutes throughout the day as well. Take something in visually, observe a feeling, listen to what your body is telling you.<p>Sounds hippy-dippy, sure, and I'm not pretending to be a doctor or make medical recommendations, but for me, It Just Works (TM)
For those interested in learning more, The Mind Illuminated is by far the best book I've come across on the topic. It's an extremely systematic college level manual for learning how to meditate. The author has a PhD in physiology, has been meditating for 40 years, taught neuroscience for years, and speaks Pali and Sanskrit, so he's able to read and interpret the original Buddhist texts. These combined allow him to teach with a unique depth and precision.<p>Take a look at the Amazon reviews, and ask yourself if you've ever seen anything so highly rated: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Meditation-Integrating-Mindfulness/dp/1501156985/ref=dp_ob_title_bk" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Meditation-Integrati...</a><p>I hope you find it as valuable as I did :)
The recording seems okay, but I find it really odd that the scripted voice says "feel your chest rise on an in breath, and feel it fall back down on an out breath." Chest-breathing is something to be avoided, especially in mediation, as it creates tension. The proper method of breathing is diaphragm-based breathing, otherwise called belly-breathing.<p>This is not a trivial issue for meditation, really strange that they get it wrong. They should be saying, "feel your belly rise on an in breath . . . " and there should also be some instruction on proper method of breathing, since many people are unaware of the difference.
I hate guided meditation... to me this is complete opposite of what meditation should be.<p>You can do this initial few times, but after that, you don't need any voice but your own in your head. That is if you are really doing meditation, if you want to pretend... then headspace yourself.<p>Again, this is my view as someone who actually meditated for like 20+ yrs.
For those who might be interested in additional resources, a classic treatment of discursive meditation in the Western Christian tradition, a.k.a. <i>"mental prayer,"</i> can be found in the Fifth Treatise (pp. 247–354, original numbering) of Fr. Rodriguez's masterpiece:<p><a href="https://archive.org/stream/PPCV-Manresa#page/n273/mode/2up" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/stream/PPCV-Manresa#page/n273/mode/2up</a><p>And here is a fine essay on Lectio Divina, written sometime in the early 2000s:<p><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QcuUot_6BQ3jgj1wJtsx-C5YrSUCZE2fOdpG4k5k8pg/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QcuUot_6BQ3jgj1wJtsx-C5Y...</a>
"The guided meditations from QuietKit offers three main benefits to anyone who uses them:<p>Decreased stress and anxiety<p>Increased focus<p>Increased mindfulness (the ability to be aware of what's occurring at any given moment, but being able to choose how to act, as opposed to just reacting)"<p>Are those three benefits purely anecdotal?
I'm probably an ideal candidate for meditation because just the thought of it is nearly unbearable. "Wasting a whole ten minutes doing nothing?!"<p>But it's hard for me to get past the feeling that it's a waste of time. As someone who is on public transit for two hours a day, and an owner of a nice pair of noise cancelling headphones - I wonder if I could make use of that time by doing this. Guess I'll give it a try.
A couple of things:
If you want to learn meditation find yourself a teacher who will be able to guide you with your specific and personal needs, advantages and deficiencies in focus, character and views on outside world and on yourself, through this process. We are never taught what meditation is and how to do it right. None of the sources mention such important pre-requsite as understanding of human energy movement in breathing, human energy anatomy and physiology. So if you want to play with meditation is one thing, doing thing right will mean you have to have guidance.<p>Second, As Salvador Dali said: don't be afraid of perfection, you will never reach it. Blank minds is a good but also a very hard and advanced concept beginner meditators will most likely not reach. It is very hard for the uninitiated person (by previous karma or other spiritual training) who is used to focus attention on outward to be able to go inward, let along still the mind. The best way is to distract your mind from 'uncomfortable' nothingness with count while you are doing breathing and visualization.
There’s also a well-known affect on blood-pressure (lowering) that comes from the breath control that’s at the core of most meditation practice.<p><a href="http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/stress-raising-your-blood-pressure-take-a-deep-breath-201602159168" rel="nofollow">http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/stress-raising-your-blood...</a><p>I don’t think that the cause of this is completely understood, but CO2 is a potent vasodilator. I’ve seen hatha yoga (physical yoga) practioners ditch hatha for prana-yoga (breath yoga) because they said it's a more powerful way to get to wherever yoga takes you.
<a href="http://www.10percenthappier.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.10percenthappier.com</a> is my meditation for skeptics site. Worth checking out as well. They have a lot of good videos and a podcast.
I started getting into meditation a few years ago after realizing the reason the world felt less 'real' than it used to was because I could never 'get out of my head' and have more direct interactions with external things. (For example, I finally went to Tokyo and moved to San Francisco and the difference each made was pretty minor—like looking at high res photos on the internet; it was a stark contrast to when I visited NYC seven years prior and was blown away just walking around. ) It soon became my number one priority after also realizing that all the times I remembered <i>really</i> enjoying myself, I was in that 'out of my head' state (you have a much better sense of presence, the 3Dness of things is much more apparent, smells, tastes, interpersonal interactions are all way richer).<p>Anyway, I decided to make a wide survey of meditation resources from old religious texts to modern neuroscience inspired teaching, to a number of things in between.<p>The first source that really made things click for me was watching some of the youtube videos from Ajahn Brahm. He's English, but trained as a monk in Thailand for many years, and has a background in physics. I think it's a combination that makes him pretty well-suited to explaining these concepts to techy Westerners. He's also got a light, humorous style to his lecturing, so it's easy to watch (if a bit cringeworthy [due to corniness] at times. And you'll get an occasionally bit of religiosity [he is a monk after all], but he mostly keeps it out.) I'd recommend this one for starters: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEw2mHpVv9A" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEw2mHpVv9A</a><p>I also found bits of Jon Kabat-Zinn's "Full Catastrophe Living" to be very helpful in the early stages (it focuses on another form of meditation called 'body scan' which has some unique benefits, and can be easier for beginners. It's often the choice of style when teaching for therapeutic purposes).<p>Edit: I'll also add the way I see meditation instruction fitting into the practice: there aren't that many concepts, but each has extraordinary depth, so you just have to keep revisiting regularly; you'll often find that if you've improved in your practice, you can go back and see the same old lecture and interpret it totally differently, even though it made a kind of sense the first time. You'd think you wouldn't need to be told, e.g., "just allow your thoughts to arise and disappear on their own" like a hundred times, in different ways—but you probably do :)
A question, and one that probably shuns any kind of methodical thinking and science, but there's always talk about 'rewriting' or 'rewiring' the brain. Plasticity and all that stuff.<p>Are there thoughts I -should- be thinking, patterns I -should- be training or ideas I -should- be following to maximise the positive changes meditation has the potential to bring?
is better practice meditation not alone, but with a master or an experienced practicer of many years.
Meditation can bring to light unconscious content.
In ashtanga yoga of Patanjali (yoga sutra) the meditation (dhyana) is considered an high state of practice.
For general relax and for stress, is better learning yoga(for example yoga nidra and some light pranayamas), some forms or chi kung and/or taichi
It would be funny the narrator... "Now I'm slowly reaching into your pocket... to steal some of your money..."<p>I'm usually freaking out all the time in my mind... "Oh god oh god oh god... this and that..." I find showering is where I collect my thoughts. Think about some problem I'm trying to solve. I don't know.
I use the app "Headspace" as a meditation beginner. The monthly price after the first 10 sessions is a little steep (can't remember the exact price) but there's a lot of extremely high-quality content covering mindfulness in almost every aspect of life. I think it's worth the price.
I'm a little late on commenting, but I'm gifted with Aphantasia. I've found it naturally contributes to meditation as I experience no visuals in my mind's eye. No visuals means no-thinking if you can wrangle the internal dialog under control.
Are there any similar resources in spanish? I'm interested in passing this info to my wife, but unfortunately her english is not so good, so it would be a problem for her to follow the guides in the comments.
Cool! Love to see anything that promotes mindfulness and makes it more accessible to folks. Interesting that the sessions are so short -- I'm not sure I've seen anything shorter than 10 minutes before.
<a href="https://smilingmind.com.au/" rel="nofollow">https://smilingmind.com.au/</a> is a great resource to get started as well.