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Guided meditation for beginners

quietkit.com

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Re: Guided meditation for beginners

#81

Post by InclinedPlane »

ben174 wrote: post #15

I'm probably an ideal candidate for meditation because just the thought of it is nearly unbearable. "Wasting a whole ten minutes doing nothing?!" 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.

It's not doing nothing though, you're actually training your mind, but because you have to use your mind to train your mind you have to do so indirectly. It's very much like Mr. Miyagi training Daniel karate by getting him to paint fences and wax cars. The skills develop sub-consciously, but with practice, the skills still come.

Learning how to "empty your mind" or more accurately to simply be a thought-spectator while avoiding getting swept away by thoughts as they flow through your mind may seem like "doing nothing". But imagine how useful it is to have those skills when you're trying to concentrate on something else? If you can avoid being swept away by random thoughts when you have nothing else to hold your attention, think you'll be better at concentration when you do have something? And that's just the tiniest benefit.

Re: Guided meditation for beginners

#82

Post by InclinedPlane »

jahbrewski wrote: post #8

Curious to hear from folks who have consistently meditated for a prolonged period of time (6mos+). What effects have you noticed?

I've been doing it off and on to varying degrees for over 10 years, more intensely lately as part of mindfulness based cognitive therapy. I'll throw in some anecdotal stories:

- Feeling anxious, stressed, or grumpy, realizing it, taking a moment to take a breath, let my shoulders relax, and trigger myself to become calmer and more collected. Two years ago I experienced a life-altering situation involving a medical situation with a family member that involved basically non-stop stress for a full week. Every single day when I got in my car to go home I just broke down crying in a way I've never done in my entire life until then, and then every morning it felt like I had to reassemble my component parts to become a functional human again and do what needed to be done. Being able to center myself and keep my anxiety and stress in check when it was at risk of running away was hugely important not only to getting through that experience and having it strengthen me rather than destroying me but also to getting the things done that needed doing (which had a positive life-altering impact on my family member as well).

- Something as small as coming out of a grocery store and being disappointed by the rain then taking a moment to breathe and relax then walking through the rain and just accepting it without feeling annoyed or inconvenienced by it.

- Something as big as feeling a big self-critical thought bubble up in my brain, the sort of thing that could easily cause a plunge into a depressive mood for a while, acknowledging that it's just a thought and that it is neither intrinsically true nor intrinsically something I have to get caught up in, then feeling it dissipate and go away, powerless.

- Being able to recognize when I'm living life too much on autopilot then having the ability to basically reach out and turn up the volume dial on experiencing the world.

If you work on it enough you get to a state where you can reach into your toolkit and pull out various tools to deal with different experiences and situations. Being able to recognize those situations as amenable to tool use and being able to actually use those tools and watch them work can be enormously empowering and satisfying.

Re: Guided meditation for beginners

#83

Post by sdx23 »

vSanjo wrote: post #50

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. 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?

The keyword is "default mode network". You finde quite some publications on the effects of meditation on it:

https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=default+mode+network+med...

Re: Guided meditation for beginners

#84

Post by fredoliveira »

desireco42 wrote: post #42

I hate guided meditation... to me this is complete opposite of what meditation should be. 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. Again, this is my view as someone who actually meditated for like 20+ yrs.

Based on your tone and use of sarcasm, I'd say your 20 year practice needs work.

Re: Guided meditation for beginners

#85

Post by crashdown »

sharkweek wrote: post #23

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. 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 you…

How long have you been meditating and how long do you meditate for in both of your daily sessions?

Re: Guided meditation for beginners

#86

Post by rando444 »

crashdown wrote: post #85
sharkweek wrote: post #23

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. 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 you…

How long have you been meditating and how long do you meditate for in both of your daily sessions?

Not OP, but my advice would be to start small.

10 minutes is more than enough to start with. After doing it for awhile, you'll find yourself wanting to increase that time, but just do it gradually.. maybe work yourself up to 20 minutes, but if you ever feel like you don't have the time, just make sure you're doing at least 10 minutes.

Re: Guided meditation for beginners

#87

Post by rando444 »

hsitz wrote: post #32

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. This is not a trivial issue for meditation, really strange that they…

From my experience, you're not supposed to be controlling your breath at all.

The idea of meditation is to just rest the mind on the breath. To let the body do what it does normally and focus on the inhaling and exhaling as a way to clear your mind of other thoughts.

Re: Guided meditation for beginners

#89

Post by Willyfrog »

paradisebunny wrote: post #76
Willyfrog wrote: post #75

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.

I can recommend the App Insight Timer. It is free and distributes user-uploaded guided meditations. Lots of languages and content to choose from! Highly recommended! edit: here is a link to their spanish content https://insighttimer.com/meditation-playlists/spanish-medita...

thanks! I'll check it

Re: Guided meditation for beginners

#90

Post by gerbilly »

tombh wrote: post #70
Cozumel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you've been doing it for a while your mind will be blank all the time, which sounds kind of bad but it's actually great, but the interesting thing is once you can control your own thoughts you'll start to realise that not all of them are yours. People are like radios and broadcast their thoughts, and you'll be picking them up without knowing it. You'll also be able to project them i.e influence people. Those pow…

> When you've been doing it for a while your mind will be blank all the time As others have suggested, this is hyperbole, verging on proselytising. Whilst there is rigorous scientific evidence for the therapeutic benefits of mindfulness, "blank minds" and other exotic states are anecdotes from those heavily invested in particular religious systems. I have no reason to disbelieve the less fantastical claims such as a…

I think it would be better restated as 'when you've been doing it for a while you can make your mind blank all the time.'[0]

But it turns out that even though this can be really peaceful, it is not as useful as keeping your mind just at the threshold of the blankness, with just enough thoughts and sensations left.[1]

Why? Because you can use this state to investigate the workings of the mind, and to start to see how sensations cause thoughts, which can cause further thoughts and on and on etc. [2]

Meditation in many Buddhist traditions is to be used as a tool of investigation. It makes the mind just calm enough to enable you to study it. It is a form of introspective psychology.

An analogy from fluid dynamics: It can be almost impossible to predict the behaviour of a turbulent fluid, in fact this is one of the few remaining unsolved problems of classical mechanics. But we do have laws for laminar flows.

In the same way, calming the mind just enough, can be a great way to learn more about its workings. And having experiential insight into how your mind works, not book knowledge, literally can change your life. I know it has changed mine.

[0] The four 'Jhanas' (http://www.imsb.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FourJhanas.pd...)

[1] Access concentration.

[2] Dependent co-arising. (Great analogy on that here: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/resona...)

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