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The Impact of Meditating Every Day

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Re: The Impact of Meditating Every Day

#41

Post by phil_folrida »

aNoob7000 wrote: post #11
cube2222 wrote: post #6

I had always had some kind of anxiety or ocd for as long as I can remember. I'd searched for various ways to deal with it but only discovering meditation really worked for me. After meditating for 6 months every day (starting with 5 minutes daily, ending with 20-30) I've completely got rid of it. A nice side effect was that I got to be a happier person overall (though that wasn't ever a problem for me), and learned t…

Would you recommend an app like Calm or Headspace to get started with meditation?

since 2014 I am using Muse https://choosemuse.com/

It helped me.

Re: The Impact of Meditating Every Day

#42

Post by nabla9 »

ptah wrote: post #38
nabla9 wrote: post #18

I have been meditating 20 years now (zazen). I do 2-4 hours a day. Several 7 day retreats per year. My starting motivation was philosophical and academic interest. I was curious how it affects the mind. Then I did it because it seemed so hard to do, mind seemed like a buggy device I had no control over. I also had self improvement goals at some point. And feeling balanced is a good feeling. But there is no way I can…

how did you start? did you take a course?

I did first six months Vipassana. Mindfulness in Plain English by Ven. Henepola Gunaratana is absolute classic. https://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_en...

Then I traveled around a little bit and visited zen monastery and started to train there with a teacher.

Re: The Impact of Meditating Every Day

#43

Post by theonemind »

onefuncman wrote: post #23
spodek wrote: post #7

> I try to meditate every morning for about 15 minutes and been doing that for quite some time now. I find that doing any Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity will improve your life tremendously, meditation being just one type of SIDCHA. While the benefits differ slightly, the magnitude of benefit from other SIDCHAs -- like exercising, drawing a picture, writing a blog post, writing three business ideas, c…

I love the approach of digging into the underlying pattern rather than fixating on the details of the routine. I used to struggle with Agile and daily standups at $JOB until I started keeping a private journal daily. Now I have several years of daily notes across several jobs that I can refer back to and use for reflection, avoiding common pitfalls, revisiting particularly difficult challenges with a different perspe…

It sounds like you do something more comprehensive, but I thought I'd share my experience with journaling at work.

I pretty much try to write (with pen and paper) for 10 minutes a day to sort my thoughts out and figure out what do focus on, perhaps think about what has affected my performance lately (good and bad, to do more of the good and get less of the bad). Occasionally, I'll stop doing it for periods of time, until I notice that my recent work has started to seem less effective.

The 10 minutes of writing increases the chance that I'll feel like I've accomplished something by the end of the day by like 200%. So you'd think I'd never skip it, but of course, when actually doing it, it feels like wasting 10 minutes at any given time, so sometimes, I just don't.

Re: The Impact of Meditating Every Day

#44

Post by vmurthy »

namanyayg wrote: post #39
aNoob7000 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you recommend an app like Calm or Headspace to get started with meditation?

For beginners, I would recommend two things: ambient noise (with headphones/noise-cancelling works best for me), and a soft alarm for the timer. I used to DIY it, but I find the InsightTimer app is a free & customizable solution filling both these needs.

I use the Chimes tone on my iPhone at a low enough volume. Quite gentle to wake up to after a session of meditation.

Re: The Impact of Meditating Every Day

#45

Post by adolph »

c1sc0 wrote: post #21
aNoob7000 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you recommend an app like Calm or Headspace to get started with meditation?

To get started. Absolutely. Headspace has been instrumental in dealing with a very hard time in my life. For a secular, scientific look at mindfulness meditation read the book “Why Buddhism is true.”

Here is a podcast with the author:

https://samharris.org/podcasts/is-buddhism-true/

Re: The Impact of Meditating Every Day

#47

Post by forgottenpass »

raidicy wrote: post #12
cube2222 wrote: post #6

I had always had some kind of anxiety or ocd for as long as I can remember. I'd searched for various ways to deal with it but only discovering meditation really worked for me. After meditating for 6 months every day (starting with 5 minutes daily, ending with 20-30) I've completely got rid of it. A nice side effect was that I got to be a happier person overall (though that wasn't ever a problem for me), and learned t…

I've been interested in learning more about meditating and Raja yoga meditation specifically. I hesitate to read the book in parent as it seems that Buddhist meditation is focused on love, compassion, empathy or some kind of goal. I don't think the positive emphasis of Buddhism is bad. Rather I've been more interested in "abstraction of the mind" and the general non-religious approach of raja yoga. (I am sorry if the…

>it seems that Buddhist meditation is focused on love, compassion, empathy or some kind of goal.

You may like Mastering the Core Teachings of The Buddha, it ditches all the woo-woo fluff that many people in the US want more than the actual meditation. The book certainly believes enlightenment through meditation is possible (otherwise it'd just be a meditation book with no Buddhist connection). But the author doesn't pull any punches when he shoots down at all the ways people over complicate and brand buddhist meditation as something it's not.

Slate Star Codex review of the book: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-...

the book: http://integrateddaniel.info/book

Re: The Impact of Meditating Every Day

#48

Post by vcoelho »

nabla9 wrote: post #18

I have been meditating 20 years now (zazen). I do 2-4 hours a day. Several 7 day retreats per year. My starting motivation was philosophical and academic interest. I was curious how it affects the mind. Then I did it because it seemed so hard to do, mind seemed like a buggy device I had no control over. I also had self improvement goals at some point. And feeling balanced is a good feeling. But there is no way I can…

> I do 2-4 hours a day.

Just reading this gave me anxiety.

Re: The Impact of Meditating Every Day

#49

Post by l_t »

raidicy wrote: post #12
cube2222 wrote: post #6

I had always had some kind of anxiety or ocd for as long as I can remember. I'd searched for various ways to deal with it but only discovering meditation really worked for me. After meditating for 6 months every day (starting with 5 minutes daily, ending with 20-30) I've completely got rid of it. A nice side effect was that I got to be a happier person overall (though that wasn't ever a problem for me), and learned t…

I've been interested in learning more about meditating and Raja yoga meditation specifically. I hesitate to read the book in parent as it seems that Buddhist meditation is focused on love, compassion, empathy or some kind of goal. I don't think the positive emphasis of Buddhism is bad. Rather I've been more interested in "abstraction of the mind" and the general non-religious approach of raja yoga. (I am sorry if the…

For non-religious, more "empty mind" meditation, you can also look at Zen Buddhism if you haven't already. Zen meditation techniques usually involve focusing on breath or using simple visualizations.

I recommend the book, "Zen mind, beginner's mind" for an introduction to non-religious meditation, written for a western audience.

FWIW, my personal opinion is that meditation is a type of mental training. The specific techniques you should use depends on what you want to train. "Empty mind" meditation is good for training "mental silence", impulse control, and focus. Love meditation trains love, including loving humanity and loving yourself, and shouldn't be underrated. If you have specific goals for self-change, IMO you should use that to create your own "training program" by altering the visualizations used when meditating.

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