So I have been meditating for a couple of years now and figured that I should make a straight forward post explaining how to meditate. For those who hate reading I also made a video
Watch ThisMETHOD ONE: Watch The Breath
This first method is the most common way people are taught because it is fairly straight forward. What you are going to do is find somewhere to meditate (preferably not in your bed so that you don’t fall asleep).Find somewhere to sit that's comfortable (no you don't have to be the lotus position this is real life, not a kung-fu movie). Set the timer on your mobile phone for 20 minutes and put the phone out of reach to avoid constantly checking it! During meditation you can leave your eyes open but it might be better if you close them to avoid distractions. What you are going to do is breath normally as you usually would; only difference is that you are going to pay attention to your breath. That’s it! Just pay attention to the sensations of your inhale and exhale. Seems easy right? WRONG! If you have never meditated before you are going to observes an interesting phenomena. Enter ’The Monkey Mind’. You will eventually get distracted and start thinking about a plethora of random shit. These thoughts can range from the calculus equations you learned in high school all the way to internal debates about the authenticity of Donald Trump’s hair. The key here is to notice when you have lost focus, and not beat yourself down for it. Regain your focus and go back to the breath, the more you do this practice the more you will learn about your mind. Over time you will not get distracted as easily.
METHOD TWO: Transcendental Meditation
A bunch of funny folks will try to get you to pay thousands of dollars to learn some ‘Transcendental Meditation Secrets’. Luckily due to the internet there is no need for such daylight robbery. The basic jist of Transcendental meditation is very similar to the breathing method. The only difference is that instead of focusing on your breath you are going to focus on an internal mantra. A mantra is a word that you repeat over and over again in an effort to focus the mind. The mantra you will say in your mind and not out loud. It should be a word that does not have any meaning to you such as: ruh, rum, mar, hmm, mow etc etc. If you want to spice things up a little you can try envision the word as it repeats in your mind. Once again if you get distracted (which you will) regain focus and go back to the mantra. This is the method of meditation I personally use.
METHOD THREE: Body Meditation
In this method you are going to pay attention to the sensations of your body. You can start at the top of your head and pay attention to the sensations at the top of your scalp. You slowly go down to your forehead area and feel that section, then your mouth, neck, traps and so on. Imagine that there is a laser scanning down your body slowly wherever the laser is, pay attention to that region. Do a full scan all the way down to your feet then come back again. If you find yourself thinking about Donald Trump’s hair you know what to do!
METHOD FOUR: FEET MEDITATION? WALKING? I DUNNO
The last method is different from the other three. In this method you will not be sitting down, instead you will be walking. What you are going to do is just pay attention to the sensations in your feet as you walk. Pay attention to the pressure you exert on the ground, every little possible detail. Do this as you walk to the bus stop, or maybe as you walk to the kitchen before grabbing some cake. Do this as often as possible and with time start incorporating other parts of your body. This is called being ’mindful’ you are now bringing more awareness into your life! There is no right way to meditate! Find something to focus on and avoid getting distracted in order to train yourself to control your mind.
I have learned to meditate thanks to the app called Headspace. It basically says the same thing about not punishing yourself for distracting, but continue focusing instead.
However, I still can't meditate regularly. On my path to improve that!
For those who don't want to pay for Headspace, check out Insight Timer for thousands of free guided meditation sessions.
I'm a supremely rational militant atheist and the kind of guy who is skeptical of scientific claims in the media if I can't read the original paper for myself.
I tried the Headspace app and loved it so much that I went ahead and paid for it anyway because of it's simple spirituality-free approach. 100% recommend, for those who are new to meditation.
I finished whole 365 days and I am a different person.
I'm on day 4 of take 15 atm. So glad that I started meditating, it's awesome.
Honest question: what does focusing on your breath and observing your thoughts help you achieve? How is this beneficial?
I figure this is a good place to write this.
I've been meditating for about 3 years now, was someone who was very anxious and always stuck in my head. I am very introverted and also tend to overthink a ton.
Let me say that meditation is being commercialized and whored out like Yoga has been. There is great benefit in developing concentration through awareness of the breath, but "mindfulness" meditation (which is just a meaningless catch all term now) originally was referring more to a traditional practice like vipassana in which you choose an object to focus on primarily and note any distractions that arise.
The gist is that there is a very common and predictable pattern of "insights" that occur to people after practicing this technique long enough and earnestly enough. These insights are not some hippy dippy shit, and can depending on the individual, lead to great joy and then great awareness of suffering. There is a reason that buddhism has a value system to some extent, it is because certain actions after developing awareness almost unanimously lead to suffering of some kind.
What I want to mention is that if you treat meditation as simply a concentration exercise that is fine, but if you actually want utilize the technique properly there must be some understanding that to treat this as just another linear activity with progression and benefits will only hinder you. It is counter intuitive.
That being said, the benefits of meditating is essentially learning to disassociate. In practice, we come to understand that we are NOT our thoughts, and that our thoughts are just that--thoughts. They lack any substance and are not "real". What happens to a person is that thoughts arise, and we have many conditioned responses to thoughts built up from our lifetime. In fact, much of our behavior is a reaction to what we feel and think. The real question is, where do these thoughts and feeling come from? You can get lost in the logic of it and trying to deduce that, but really, they come from nowhere.
If you develop focus and stability enough, you may see that while meditating you can observe precisely WHEN a thought arises. Simple, I know. But typically people do not notice that, by the time many people notice a thought they have already been taken under its spell, its story.
So, if you focus on the breath, on breathing in...and out, and really just observe all the little sensations, you are building focus. Now, a thought comes and distracts you, many times it pulls you, but this time you catch it, you notice it arising from nothing and observe the thought without adding to it...then it just...goes away. You could have latched on to it and dwelled on it distracting you in great amounts, but you didn't.
Meditation is like this, you observe phenomena arising and passing and come to wholly understand that if you can observe these things without being involved in them, then who are you really? We tend to put great stock into our thoughts and beliefs, and so they control us. Every time you find yourself distracted and return to the breath or some other object, you are developing a habit of not immediately grasping at what arises. This grasping in truth is the problem, because when you grasp unconsciously you make foolish mistakes that only hurt you due to ignorance.
If you suddenly feel a welling of anger, and ordinarily you would grasp the anger immediately and act on it. Why? Because you identify with it. You think you are the anger. But you're not, that's just an emotion that arose as a reaction to another thing. If you are practiced you will learn to--as a matter of habit from hours of just observing and letting go, immediately observe the anger and see that it is just a thing passing through. Once you observe anger it has no hold on you, because you do not feel that it relates to you. You are not angry, you feel angry.
So at the very least, meditation is a practice in which you learn to observe all the tiny things going on that you ordinarily do not notice, but have immense impact on your behaviors and actions. When you observe the breath you build focus, and when you notice a distraction butting in you develop awareness to consciously choose to focus on one thing without neglecting that the other occurred. Eventually the technique becomes routine and you can just let go at a point and observe the stream of phenomena while relatively untethered to it.
I'm not trying to summarize your excellent words Sir. I'm reminded of this quote I read, "The only thing you can CONTROL is your REACTIONS". And meditation hones the way you think about a scenario and your reaction to it. Excellent explanation. Loved it.
The easiest answer is; you develop intense awareness.
Your energy just changes when you develop such control over your thoughts. It's almost like a superpower. IMO, being still and calm is essential as a man and meditation WILL make you attain that. Even if your skeptical, this alone warrants a meditation routine.
It helps quell the constant random thoughts that your mind conjures up. It's the art of not thinking.
Many things. Science is just starting to catch onto the benefits of meditation. HeartMath for example have studied it and suggest it helps keep a steadier HRV (heart rate variability), when you do deep belly breathing. Other studies show meditation aids in learning new skills and subjects
Good post video OP! Really helped! You got yourself a subscriber.
I never really could meditate properly cause my mind was always drifting away but I will try your way!
Think of it like progressing on a lift at the gym. Start very small and work your way up. If all you can do is focus on your breathing for 1 min, then just do it for 1 minute a day for a couple weeks. Then bump that up to 2 min, then 3, 4,5, etc...eventually you'll be up to 20 minutes like OP said. The first step is just making it a habit.
That your mind drifts away is the whole reason for meditation to exist.
The practice of meditation is acquiring the discipline to bring your attention to the present even when things get overwhelming.
Every time you refocus your attention to your breathing and away from your thoughts you strengthen your prefrontal cortex and willpower.
In addition to the last one, mindful meditation, you can do this without only walking. Choose any repetitive task, cleaning, raking, pulling weeds, even eventually lifting, and you can apply it to that. Focus on the doing, not the thinking of doing.
I do recommend moving to mindfulness after you've gotten down meditating. You can use it in pretty much any situation. Been doing it for a long time.
Kai Green meditates between each set.
Swimming is really awesome too because you focus on your breathing anyway!
Look into the Wim Hof method. I feel mildly high after I do it.
I once did Wim Hoff while high on weed and legitimately believed I somehow accidentally took MDMA from how euphoric/calm/at ease and vibrant every sensation felt
All of these methods are cool but the Wim Hof breathing technique was not mentioned. Which involves cold exposure, such as cold showers, to help bring one to a deeper state of meditation. It has helped me to not only regain control of myself at cellular level but i also have some nice DMT/Astral projection experiences. But this only comes after deep discipline within the mind body and soul. When you try to advance you will hit walls and this will allow you to know what really needs to be worked on in your life. I hope everyone takes a change to look into this if not i can make a detailed post. Namaste.
A detailed post would be much appreciated. I have looked into wim hof, but it's not clear to me the process. The only thing that's clear to me is how you breathe, the cold therapy is still a mystery in terms of knowing what to do other than get in cold water.
I do cold baths. It's insane how much easier it is to meditate.
So do you meditate in the bath or do you sit for a while and get out to meditate?
Get this hippy shit outta here
Skeptical here, does anyone have proof of the benefits of meditation? I'm not trying to be confrontational or anything, but in this subreddit we look for the truth so any help would be appreciated
I applaud your skepticism, that is the attitude I try to apply to everything. So I looked into it, and there is indeed quite a large body of research now on the benefits of meditation, as 'New Age'-ey as it seems. A number of links here: http://liveanddare.com/benefits-of-meditation/
Skepticism is good.. but for anything that's cheap and easy to try like this, usually the best answer is to see for yourself. Experiencing something with all of your senses gives you a much more accurate picture of what a thing is like. Every other person in the world could benefit from meditation.. but maybe you won't, at least not at that particular time in your life. Reviews, evidence, etc. can all break down after a certain point of analysis and really you have to drop the effort to prove everything first and adopt the attitude of just try it and see if it works.
If it does nothing for you after a decent effort, move on.
In my case, within 2-3 weeks meditating, I suddenly noticed that I had a new muscle in my brain. Flex it and shit gets quiet.
Very fucking powerful.
yes, look up and see my response to the other skeptic. If you go on pubmed or any scientific journal site, just start searching for meditation
"...In this meditation, we do not attempt to concentrate or control the mind. We let the mind follow its natural instinct towards greater happiness..."
One day, a student approached Maharishi and said "...the whole thing is good. But tell me what you have taught me>"
Maharishi: "nothing"
TM is a perfect example of the Chinese:
道可道，非常道 (dao ke dao, fei chang dao;)
"The way that can be 'wayed' is not the real way"
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi occassionally tried to explain TM, e.g. in this Q&A
Notice that he corrects himself in mid-sentence and still gets it wrong.
If they guy who brought TM out of the monastery and trained thousands of TM teachers to impart the intuitive practice, isn't able to describe TM adequately, why should anyone possibly think that YOU, some random anonymous guy in a reddit forum, can "way" the "unwayable?"
Some things are just too simple to explain.
Good overview. As far as mantras, I actually use a whole phrase, not just a single word. It kinda helps me get into the rhythm of meditating. Whatever works, y'know.
can agree, meditation is just excercise for your brain. If you work out your body, why not work out your mind. no excuses
Thanks for posting this. If you want power, this is where you find it.
I find it's easier to listen to your breathing if you do it in a bath tub
Where did you learn how to meditate? This is great intro post, but for people who are a bit more advanced, I recommend The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa. It is grear for Western people
Seconded. Also 'Mindfulness in Plain English' by Bhante Gunaratana, and an old book: 'How to Meditate' by Lawrence Le Shan. The latter is particularly good in giving an overview of different approaches to meditation; eg structured and unstructured meditations; meditations of the inner, middle and outer way; or as an alternative way of classifying them, meditations that follow the path of the intellect, the path of the emotions, of the body, or of action.
Thats actually true ,I don't realise when I have lost focus And after 10 min I have done nothing in the name of meditation
My mind is my best friend, and sometimes my worst enemy. I think I will try to meditate.
There are some interesting takes on meditation here, and many may have merit. I'm an analytical person that feels he has benefitted from a daily meditation practice and I wanted to share the line of thinking that convinced me to give it a try.
The idea is that the brain is always working; whether we are actively thinking about something, just watching television, or even when we are sleeping - the mind never stops to take a rest. It is constantly processing information on some level, or trying to solve a problem of some sort.
Meditation is a way to actively rest the brain. Many techniques can achieve this goal. I use a mantra that has no meaning whatsoever. When I start thinking, I acknowledge it and go back to the mantra.
I started with two minutes and built up slowly to two fifteen minute sessions per day. When I miss a day, I notice...when I miss two days, I feel motivated to get back on track. I've noticed that when I get three days straight of two sessions, I feel really good. For something that is free to do, and a relatively low time commitment, I see a lot of value in it. There are probably alot of things that are very valuable but since they cannot be patented and monetized do not get the attention they deserve.
I think this is worthwhile for everyone to try. Another commenter seems opposed to it for religious reasons and I understand that. For anyone who does not have that type of constraint, give it a try for a month, and decide for yourself if it has a place in your life.
comment by trp : ( couldn't post because of low karma)
The Raft A man stands beside a river, alone. Facing away from the water, he observes the dark forest he has just escaped; mists crawl towards him from the trees, whispers from the bush reach his ears. He turns away and gazes upwards. The sky is cold, blue, and cloudless; there is no sun, yet there is daylight. The man stares across to the other bank and sees flat plains extending for miles, and a group of mountains in the distance. The mountains are where his adventure heads. The man constructs a raft, and paddles it successfully to the opposite bank of the river. As he rests on the shore, he realizes he has a decision to make: what should become of the raft? Should he take it with him on his journey to the mountains? Or shall he leave it at the riverbank? Swallowing the redpill can be tough. Reading the chad stories and the awalt stories, and then thinking about the girls in your life, the relationships of your past - that shit can be emotionally draining. It can get to the point where, and I choose this word purposefully, you can end up feeling “triggered” by these ideas. You see redpill theory play out in real life, and you want to shut your eyes. You begin to feel depressed and inadequate. You begin to wonder if you could ever be a true chad, ever deep convert, ever be a girl’s alpha. You sink even deeper into TRP. Chad becomes an unattainable ideal. You wonder whether the foundations for true masculinity could only be built in youth, that you missed the boat on being a true man. You see girls and wonder: “could I ever truly satisfy them?” Stephen Crane wrote about a young, cowardly soldier who flees from the battlefront to a hilltop, and shamefully watches the men fight: “As the youth looked at them the black weight of his woe returned to him. He felt that he was regarding a procession of chosen beings. The separation was as great to him as if they had marched with weapons of flame and banners of sunlight. He could never be like them. He could have wept in his longings.” You stop reading TRP posts to learn philosophy - you already have swallowed the pill, you already understand what’s going on. No, now you read posts masochistically. It doesn’t matter whether or not these stories are real, they FEEL real - the stronger emotions they create the more real they are. Each story, each field report, each bit of theory, they all begin to negatively distort your view of women and add to your insecurities. You cease to yield truth from TRP because you can no longer accept the information in a healthy way. Instead, your mind interprets it all into a twisted, perverted version of TRP philosophy. An inaccurate version that mixes TRP truth with your own emotional bullshit. You know if this describes you. You know if you are at this point in your redpill journey. I am here to tell you: once you understand the truth, there is no need harass yourself with it every day - it will destroy your insides. TRP community is only the raft you must use to cross the river. If you have made it to the other bank, and can now see the landscape clearly, then you are awakened. That is a fantastic accomplishment. But now it is time to start a new adventure, and the first step means leaving the raft behind. Don’t strap the raft to your back and haul it the entire way to the mountains. Don’t do that. There is more to life than TRP - don’t let it consume your time longer than it must. That’s not what the goal of TRP is. TRP is just a tool to get you from a state of misunderstanding to a state of understanding. Now that you can see clearly, now that you can navigate easily, go experience this new landscape, fill in the details for yourself, and stop wasting your time on here. TLDR: a parable repurposed.
Seriously between the red pill and the law of attraction my life has been so entertaining lately. Meditation only contributes to this stuff
Don't meditate people you could actually fuck yourself up this is bad advice.
How can this happen? Do you have any proofs?
The whole reason you get stuck in your head it is because there's actually another voice in your head and if you meditate it becomes stronger, that voice is your personal Devil...
I'll bite... explain further.
Every single person born is born with a double that you can't see but it's a Devil. It will always tell you to do bad , feel bad , treat people bad , hate people. When you meditate it's a way of worshipping it...the way the Hindus do but they think it's their god. After you meditate a lot eventually you'll realize something is there , it might give you its abilities in order to get you to continue worshipping it. There's only a few mental illnesses that actually exist like autism and mental retardation...clinical depression, anxiety, insomnia , schizophrenia , Bipolar disorder the list goes on but there's a reason why all of these are incurable because they aren't actually coming from you. It's difficult to explain it all just like that.
this guy only believes this because he's a muslim. it is true however that meditation can and does sometimes bring thoughts buried in your subconscious to the front of your mind, so if you are mentally unstable it might not be good for you yet https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/meditation-is-touted-as-a-cure-for-mental-instability-but-can-it-actually-be-bad-for-you-10268291.html
Hmmm.. nah, I don't think I'm going to read this post.
If that's all it takes to turn you off from something then I'm assuming you need some remedial help. I' being serious. Start with reading books, then work your way back to more "out there" topics.
Nah I'm straight on the whole new ager pretentious bullshit. But if pontificating about things nobody cares about like heart chakras and wearing stones makes you feel better about having low self-esteem then do what you gotta do.
I'll stay meditating, just fuck off with calling people brother like you're some Black Foot tribesman or like anyone believes in that oneness bullshit.
You come off like you're compensating for a small dick. That's less of an insult and more of just a general observation. It's like the point of the thread is going one way, and you're going another, and you think that everyone else is stupid. You can respond to this, but I won't respond to you.
What an insurance policy. Did you switch to Geico?
Meditation makes you introvert. It makes you used to the idea of shutting up and shutting down. Not smart, unless that's what you're looking for.
What experience is this based on?
First, most of the people I know could use a little of shutting the fuck up. Second, it's not shutting down it's being able to go inside yourself for a clearer thought or answer. I've known some of these people who can't be alone and who don't shut the fuck up. They are afraid to be alone with their own thoughts and they talk A LOT to drown out the scary voice in their head.
Meditation allows you to slowly gain control over your ego. Too many people are run by their ego and don't even realize it.
I agree that we need to free ourselves from our ego, but the best way to do that is through mastery of communication.
Too many men have problems with women because they aren't communicating enough - they take a backseat role instead of leading from the front. They need more aggression, not less.
If you have a problem where you are too overactive or too hyper, than meditation might be good for you. That is not the problem with 90 percent of men though.
There is no way you can tell me that meditation increases aggression. It does not. It pacifies you.
And this is from experience. I went through a meditation phase when I was younger - It had negative results. There is a reason meditation and yoga and all that is a primarily feminine activity. It's inherently submissive.