Meditation

SEna

Adept
I find this meditation technique given by Pema Chödrön useful:

"Shamatha-vipashyana meditation In shamatha-vipashyana meditation, we sit upright with legs crossed and eyes open, hands resting on our thighs. Then we simply become aware of our breath as it goes out. It requires precision to be right there with that breath. On the other hand, it’s extremely relaxed and extremely soft. Saying, “Be right there with the breath as it goes out,” is the same thing as saying, “Be fully present.” Be right here with whatever is going on. Being aware of the breath as it goes out, we may also be aware of other things going on – sounds on the street, the light on the walls. These things may capture our attention slightly, but they don’t need to draw us off. We can continue to sit right here, aware of the breath going out. But being with the breath is only part of the technique. These thoughts that run through our minds continually are the other part. We sit here talking to ourselves. The instruction is that when you realize you’ve been thinking you label it “thinking.” When your mind wanders off, you say to yourself, “Thinking.” Whether your thoughts are violent or passionate or full of ignorance and denial; whether your thoughts are worried or fearful, whether your thoughts are spiritual thoughts, pleasing thoughts of how well you’re doing, comforting thoughts, uplifting thoughts, whatever they are, without judgment or harshness simply label it all “thinking,” and do that with honesty and gentleness. The touch on the breath is light: only about 25 percent of the awareness is on the breath. You’re not grasping or fixating on it. You’re opening, letting the breath mix with the space of the room, letting your breath just go out into space. Then there’s something like a pause, a gap until the next breath goes out again. While you’re breathing in, there could be some sense of just opening and waiting. It is like pushing the doorbell and waiting for someone to answer. Then you push the doorbell again and wait for someone to answer. Then probably your mind wanders off and you realize you’re thinking again – at this point, use the labeling technique. It’s important to be faithful to the technique. If you find that your labeling has a harsh, negative tone to it, as if you were saying, “Dammit!,” that you’re giving yourself a hard time, say it again and lighten up. It’s not like trying to down the thoughts as if they were clay pigeons. Instead, be gentle. Use the labeling part of the technique as an opportunity to develop softness and compassion for yourself. Anything that comes up is okay in the arena of meditation. The point is, you can see it honestly and make friends with it." (from "Start Where You Are: How to accept yourself and others" by Pema Chödrön)

From the Kindle edition: Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living (Shambhala Classics)
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Living in meditation or should I say a living meditation awaits those who find their center and don't lose it again...
 

Kchoo

At Peace.
I sat On my yoga mat and closed my eyes. I THOUGHT ABOUT THE HELIXES OF MY CHACKRA, AND TRIED TO RELAX into the flow of the artful image of the two columns, This time I wanted to see the light and these helixes working together in my concious mind... I wanted to control my path... to go beyond the mortal body, but take my mortal body with me into what I already knew... I focused on Shai's garden in the Bio Orb... I wanted to stand there... and to see her flowers and to feel the air there.....

I imagined it, and visualized it, and I opened my eyes, hoping to see it... but found myself staring at the wall of my yoga room...

I left my eyes open and stared at the wall, envisioning what I wanted to see... I let my eyes drift out of focus... and the air in front of me seemed to change... I breathed deeply, exhaled slowly, and focused... the fog seemed to take shape as if a I were beginning to see a garden... Shai's flowers... and then the wall became solid again...

Ok... maybe for a first try that was enough...

I LAYED DOWN AND FOCUSED MY BREATHING... and relaxed into the floor...
"I will get there!"
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Here's a simple and effective meditative energy refinement exercise that is easy to adjust to suit your needs...

Sit in a quiet place, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths concentrating on your breathing on feeding air to the lower section of your lungs, then to the middle section, and then the upper section. Relax and now naturally breathe to all parts of your lungs and clear your mind if not already...

Now visualize or feel your energy centers opening up from the root chakra moving up to the next and the next opening each one until this flow reaches the crown chakra...Now as this opens visualize and reverse the flow, bring that energy back through and bring with it the white universal energy that enters through your head and through the crown chakra...

Let this highly refined energy move down and spread to every energy center within your body and as it passes through your body, its refining the energies from each chakra, rejuvenating your body, expediting any healing your body is currently undergoing and feeding specific parts of your body, nourishing your body with 'food'...

Feel this energy move down and out through your feet, and feel the energy as it flows through into your hands...Feel it flowing out through the palms of your hands and now hold out both your hands with the palms facing each other...

Visualize that the energy flowing between your hands is blending together and moving to and fro focusing your attention on your palms, you will experience some kind of a sensation on your palms but this focus allows the natural resonance to balance itself within you using this highly refined energy...

When you are ready to finish, return your hands to where they once were, focus on your breathing again using the lower, middle, and upper sections of your lungs...Let the energies flow naturally within you and continue to as you open your eyes and go to do other things..
...
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Meditation isn't just about centering oneself and quieting the mind, it can be used in so many useful ways which are as varied as there are people...It can be a launch point, imagine a doorway you can almost see through but not quite, beside the door is a coat and hat rack, very symbolic, as soon as you grab hold of the door knob you find yourself one the other side of that door with a different coat and hat rack...A simple but effective description, but for some there are more than one coat and hat racks near the door, very symbolic as well...

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SOUL-DRIFTER

Life Long Researcher
I stop the meditations the evening I achieved my psi goal.
But the meditations then for me had a direct intent and purpose for which it fulfilled quite well.
Mental discipline and enhancement was the main goal.
What ever the purpose, meditation should be about disassociating ones self with the physical world and conditioning the mind toward total mental control.
The many people over the years I have questioned that claim they have easily done this quickly find they have not.
To simply sit close ones eyes and totally shut yourself off from all thoughts sounds and sensations is very difficult, but with time can be done. That is the first step in meditation...or should be. IMHO
 

nivek

As Above So Below
As I said, meditation can be used in many ways, if people think its only to be quiet and stop thinking then they have not explored themselves intimately yet, and I do not mean intimately in some perverse way lol...

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Wade

Stare..... They are always staring
What is mindfulness and how does mindfulness compare to meditation is it just a different branch?
 

goblin

Noble
What is mindfulness and how does mindfulness compare to meditation is it just a different branch?

Mindfulness is and has been a bit of a fad for awhile in the U.S. It's paying attention on purpose, in a conscious but non judgmental way. It's not always easy. But it is I think trying to get you out of your own head a bit, while also making you familiar with what goes on in your head and body. Thoughts happen, you don't have to react to them or get caught up in them or make a judgment on yourself over them.

I started meditating around 10 years ago. I went to some meetings put on by Buddhists in the town where I lived at the time, and tried meditating with them. Then I took the TM plunge and did that for almost two years. It definitely changed me. But then I read about mindfulness meditation and decided I wanted to pursue that, and enrolled in an 8 week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course. I recommend those, if you feel you are too distracted and stressed.

I meditate daily now. I feel like I am still learning all the time. I like the Insight Timer app as a meditation timer. I was also doing yoga most weeks but had some surgery earlier this year and haven't gotten back into the yoga routine yet, unfortunately. I recommend everyone have a meditation and some type of physical practice, yoga or walking or something.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Living in meditation or should I say a living meditation awaits those who find their center and don't lose it again...

@Thomas R. Morrison you mentioned something along these lines, making a point about meditation in another thread, I was trying to find that post but could not...

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cosmic joke

Honorable
my oponion. :biggrinn8:

'stilling' the mind is not necessary. directing it is a more practical way to go. tai chi daily would be a better choice to balance all centers. a 'living/moving' meditation so to speak. it's not easy to break our positional habits by our selves. however if a person must 'still' their mind due to a desire greater than themself. slightly lift the head up, focus both eyes on the 'third eye' and stick a black cat in that minds eye.

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a word on 'artificial' breathing. aka taking the natural function of breathing into a conscious realm. once done a person must be conscious of every breath they take from then on. that's a big order indeed. otherwise they may lose their breath and find themselves in more than just a bit of trouble. tinkering is not advisable. a 'teacher', one who 'has done that been there', a school, (can't learn nothing without friction), one a 'step above' would be a good move. problem is, to attract the 'right one for you' one has to have magnetism. trepid energy leads one into the world of 'i can do it all by myself'. you know 'self help' books, listening to the empty words of others (much like my wiseacrings here :wink8:) and into the land of nod. that world of complacent accomplishment. truly it's all or nothing. otherwise let's bask in those lukewarm waters and find happiness within.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I used to visit a chiropractor on an all too frequent schedule because I had problems with my neck. Extremely painful.
I eventually realized that I was causing my own problems; stress induced lousy posture, habits, etc. Also realized that simply relaxing deeply for 30-45 minutes on that goofy table was most of the cure. Not knocking chiropractors, this man has been very helpful over the years.

I get comfy in a quiet place, regulate my breathing and start thinking about relaxing my feet. Then work my way slowly up to my head. I am wide awake and aware but deeply relaxed. Even when resting we usually find a way to tie ourselves in some kind of knot without realizing it. This is some form of meditation - very useful to me. Not looking for anything other than to untangle the knots and I find this helps.
 

cosmic joke

Honorable
morning pigfarmer. enjoyed reading that. my wife goes to a chiropractor once a month. she finds benefits from doing so. i am one to 'observe' my breathing. btw i find your user name interesting. i am finnish/hungarian and a canadian citizen of course. my wife is polish/irish born in canada. her father was indeed a pig farmer. kept the operation immaculate. sold the farm when he retired.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
morning pigfarmer. enjoyed reading that. my wife goes to a chiropractor once a month. she finds benefits from doing so. i am one to 'observe' my breathing. btw i find your user name interesting. i am finnish/hungarian and a canadian citizen of course. my wife is polish/irish born in canada. her father was indeed a pig farmer. kept the operation immaculate. sold the farm when he retired.

Thanks CJ. I screwed up my neck as a stupid kid bench pressing waaaaay too much weight at my local YMCA. Just happened a chiropractor was giving free exams in the lobby and his office was just down the street. The man is palpably centered and calm. Difficult to describe - only other person I met like that was a martial arts expert. Somehow planted on the Earth more solidly than the rest of us. Weird - and I tend toward the skeptical side.

He provided immediate relief with pressure points - I don't have to understand it to know it works. Several years later I some truly revolting and bloody surgery complete with drains in my abdomen like two turkey-baster sized bulbs at the end of 12" rubber hoses. The Borg would love it. They gave me an epidural and I am in that very small percentage you just can't do that to. Imagine the worst ice cream headache or brain freeze that never goes away. It had me back in the emergency room after a week. Figuring that the problem started by having a steel needle rammed into my spine I felt that a spine doctor was in order and this chiropractor agreed to help - despite compression garments, drains, and leakage. He has to clean and disinfect his table after I left. Day 1 the headache disappeared and after several more sessions/weeks and some healing I could function again.

These days he has a larger office and has delved into some real New Age stuff - reflexology, shining lasers at your feet, etc. It's a business, I get it, and there are those who dismiss all this as quackery. At the core of it there is real skill and I don't have to fully understand his methods to appreciate the results. This is how I developed my opinions about how we tend to twist ourselves up without realizing it and how to deal with it. Breathing, posture, the way we walk, sit etc. I still go once in a while because he seems to be able to 'get at' some of the problems I can't as a DIYer.

As for the swine - I am also Polish/Irish but sorry to disappoint but it's a Harley Davidson reference. A friend of mine hung that nickname on me many years ago and it struck me as the perfect handle for an online account after Al Gore invented the Internet.

You got hogs you is a pigfarmer .....

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nivek

As Above So Below
A simple energy refinement exercise that is easy to tailor and tweak to suit your uses...
  • Sit in a quiet place, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths concentrating on your breathing on feeding air to the lower section of your lungs, then to the middle section, and then the upper section. Relax and now naturally breathe to all parts of your lungs and clear your mind if not already...Now visualize or feel your energy centers opening up from the root chakra moving up to the next and the next opening each one until this flow reaches the crown chakra...Now as this opens visualize and reverse the flow, bring that energy back through and bring with it the white universal energy that enters through your head and through the crown chakra...Let this highly refined energy move down and spread to every energy center within your body and as it passes through your body, its refining the energies from each chakra, rejuvenating your body, expediting any healing your body is currently undergoing and feeding specific parts of your body, nourishing your body with 'food'...
  • Feel this energy move down and out through your feet, and feel the energy as it flows through into your hands...Feel it flowing out through the palms of your hands and now hold out both your hands with the palms facing each other...Visualize that the energy flowing between your hands is blending together and moving to and fro focusing your attention on your palms, you will experience some kind of a sensation on your palms but this focus allows the natural resonance to balance itself within you using this highly refined energy...
  • When you are ready to finish, return your hands to where they once were, focus on your breathing again using the lower, middle, and upper sections of your lungs...Let the energies flow naturally within you and continue to as you open your eyes and go to do other things..
...
 

nivek

As Above So Below

Meditation Slows Biological Aging And Protects DNA Strands

In the modern world, where there is no money, there is no attention. This is especially true when it comes to the medical industry, which is why the science behind medical interventions that can be very beneficial is not at the forefront of mainstream medicine.

The study, published in 2019, is one of many that has proven how much interference with consciousness can affect human biology. It’s called “Love-Kindness Meditation Delays Biological Aging in Newbies: Evidence from a 12-Week Randomized Controlled Study” and was published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Research shows that love-kindness meditation has noticeable positive effects at the cellular level. The study examined how different types of meditation affect telomere length, which is an indicator of physiological aging.

Telomeres are protective caps at the ends of DNA strands called chromosomes. They get shorter over time. For the most part, the more we age, the shorter they get. Other environmental toxins, such as smoking and bad habits, also contribute to the shortening of our telomeres.

There are also a number of habits and substances that have been shown to slow this process down and even lengthen our telomeres, such as fasting, which essentially means reversing the aging process.

“Chronological age and biological age are not identical. The former is measured in years, while the latter is often indexed by telomere length,” the authors explain. “Telomeres are gradually shortened during cell division (i.e., with aging) in general, but can also be replenished or lengthened by the enzyme telomerase.”

The study lasted 12 weeks and included 176 participants between the ages of 35 and 64. All participants had little or no meditation experience and were assigned to a 6-week love-kindness meditation workshop, a 6-week mindfulness meditation workshop, or a control waiting group.

The scientists took blood samples at the beginning and end of the study to measure telomere length before and after the meditation intervention.

The meditation workshop helped the participants focus on the present moment and develop a non-judgmental attitude. It was simply used to help them become aware of the present moment, while the love-kindness meditation workshop was aimed at helping participants develop warm and friendly feelings towards other people.

The researchers found that telomeres shortened in everyone, which is normal, but the daily practice of love-kindness meditation created a buffer against this contraction. The researchers explained that in the group practicing love-kindness meditation, “there was no significant shortening of telomeres over time.”

These results correlate with other studies that have examined meditation and telomere length. A 2014 study published in the journal Cancer found telomeres retain their length in breast cancer survivors who practice mindfulness meditation.

In addition, a 2018 study published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity found that telomere length increased in meditation retreat participants after three weeks.

Feelings of gratitude, which can be part of love-kindness meditation, also alter the molecular structure of the brain. Neuroimaging studies have shown that this is indeed the case.

The attitude of gratitude changes the molecular structure of the brain, supports the functioning of the gray matter, makes us healthier and happier. When you feel happy, it affects the central nervous system. You become calmer, less reactive, and less resilient. This is a really cool way to take care of your wellbeing.

Other interesting research in this area has been carried out by scientists from the HeartMath Institute. Their research has also shown the importance of emotions, not only to our own biology, but to other people as well.

Research has shown that when we practice heart coherence and radiate love and compassion, our heart generates a coherent electromagnetic wave in a local field environment that promotes social coherence, whether at home, in the workplace, in the classroom, or sitting at a desk.

As more and more people emit heart coherence, it creates an energy field that makes it easier for other people to connect to their heart. Thus, it is theoretically possible that a sufficient number of people creating individual and social coherence can contribute to the formation of global coherence.

Peace, compassion, service to others, and positive emotions are often overlooked when it comes to changing the world and changing our human experience. While so often overlooked, they can be the dominant and most important factors that humanity must cultivate if we are to progress, move forward and flourish as a human collective.


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Milarepa

Adept
I meditate daily now. I feel like I am still learning all the time. I like the Insight Timer app as a meditation timer. I was also doing yoga most weeks but had some surgery earlier this year and haven't gotten back into the yoga routine yet, unfortunately. I recommend everyone have a meditation and some type of physical practice, yoga or walking or something.
Insight can be had without the benefit of meditation yet in this case it's usually fleeting or often passed over as of no significance or even rejected all together. A calming type of meditation typically stabilizes the insight so that it's more fully grasped.
 
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