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It definitely helped my performance, and I want to bring meditation back into my life. Maybe this thread will help :)
I highly suggest the Reddit meditation subreddit — http://reddit.com/r/meditation. Basically the Hacker News of meditation. The archives are a great place to browse to learn more about meditation, like different techniques, advice (like should you scratch an itch or watch it? meditating under the influence? etc.), and everything related.
Edit: if you have an iPhone, the Equanimity app is pretty cool for timing your sits as well as recording thoughts or notes about your sit.
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I have been meditating for a while, always sitting in a chair. What are the advantages of the Lotus?
My cynical suspicion is that the lotus position is traditional, and looks cool, and therefore people have come up with rationalizations for it. Someone has already quoted Wikipedia, so I won't repeat it, but most of those sound like benefits that you can get by lying down, or finding a really comfortable chair, or something similar. And the bit about improving digestion sounds especially dubious, since it doesn't rea…
Sitting meditation keeps you more alert, makes it easier to reach a state of samadhi, or focused, non-discriminating awareness. For a while, due to back pain, I switched to lying meditation. I was not a fan, it was much easier to drift off. Zen meditation typically involves leaving the eyes partly open to avoid daydreaming or entering some sort of trance state. I also found this difficult to maintain while in a prone position.
Sitting in full lotus is difficult for me, and I'm relatively flexible. I generally sit half-lotus or in a chair. Sitting without a chair for long periods causes pain in the legs and back/shoulders. That's part of the practice, learning to maintain focus and equanimity through pain and discomfort.
To the best of my knowledge, the common sitting postures - lotus, half-lotus, burmese, seiza - came about because they were maintainable for long periods. Sitting indian style with legs crossed in front, for example, your stomach muscles will quickly tire and you'll be hunched over.
Here are some books and audio that have been insightful and enjoyable to read about mindfulness and related topics. Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life - Thich Nhat Hanh Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness - Jon Kabat-Zinn Still the Mind: An Introduction to Meditation - Alan Watts Also, these two audio CD collections are helpful:…
Really enjoy Jon Jabat-Zinn's material. He's got a couple videos on google tech talks and his guided CD's are very good. I came to meditation knowing nothing at all and his clear and simple explanations helped immensely.
I also started with the Google tech talk and went on to his other work.
Several techniques will suggest you keep your mind blank while meditating. This is next to impossible. Instead focus your mind on simple image and try to visualize it (with your eye closed) at the area of your forehead between your eyes.
Sitting on a pillow with your eyes closed with your mind wandering is probably not productive. But honing your mind to focus on just that one image; or on nothing at all.. that is very very powerful.
That said, I do spend a little bit of time - every day if I can - thinking about the many good things in my life and how much worse things would be without them. By doing so I find that I appreciate my situation a lot more, am much less likely to take things for granted, and am a lot more stoic about the not-so-good things that happen to everybody from time to time.
After long periods of meditation, like a weekend retreat or even a day of sitting, I tend to be very focused and relaxed. My normally chaotic emotions are subdued and I have a profound feeling of well-being and peace. This generally lasts for several days to several weeks depending on the lengths of sitting. Sitting daily sometimes has this effect as well, it is more intermittent for me.
On the other hand, I am sometimes consumed by the strongest, most negative emotions I've ever experienced after sitting for extended periods. Since starting meditation, I've had numerous anxiety attacks and periods of rage. For the first time in my life, it became really real to me that I was going to die. A lot of anxiety that I had apparently suppressed over the years came to a head, which was anything but pleasant. I've had numerous health issues which I largely attribute to stress, so it's not like my life has been stress-free from the meditation. I've also been pushed towards examining most of my beliefs, particularly of a religious/spiritual nature, and have had to let go of a lot of things that used to give me comfort.
To paraphrase the buddhist doctrine, life is suffering, and everything is subject to change. Meditation has many benefits but I'm not of the opinion that there is a steady state of happiness/bliss that can be achieved. I think the best that can be done is to deal with difficult situations more gracefully, as they are unceasing, and to show compassion towards our fellow beings, as they are struggling under the same delusions, prejudices, and pains that we are.