Thread: Meditation...

When i meditatei lye down and close my eyes then i imagine every muscle im my body relaxing from my toes to my head. use breathingtechnique in through your nose out through your mouth nice and deep breaths. Keep the rythim going with ur breathing and concentrate on it to relax. Once you have evrything relaxed start to imagine the sound of water in a lake. Hear the birds singing? visualise an idilic natural spot where you love to be and notice everything around you.

I also recommend meditation cd's which are rather helpful.

I volunteer some of my time raising awareness towards the indiscriminate persecution of Chinese citizens who practice Falun Dafa (or Falun Gong). In doing so I have tried some of the meditative teachings and found them to be pretty relaxing and enlightning.

You can either Google Falun Dafa or check out some of these sites that I provide support:

http://www.falungong.org.uk/

http://www.fofg.org/act/act_help.php

http://wildmind.org
Check out the realaudio guided meditations, they are really nice. I think this stuff is basically a zen meditation. This also works perfectly for visualization meditations. You can either do the zen thing first, or just do the posture and relaxation stuff that the wildmind meditation does then go straight to the visualization.

Good luck!

Hello all. Let me ask a meditation question. Usually, I will do what benhnat does and relax my body - from toes to head. This will usually completely shut down my internal dialogue and give a nice, restful feeling, free from worry. This is just a state of deep relaxation is it not? I am wondering how to meditate more deeply or what more to expect out of it. I usually fall asleep quickly after getting into this deeply relaxed state and wake up more refreshed than normal, so its not all bad. 8)

I do meditations quite often (with a bunch of crazy Indian people ), and the ones we do are by a man named Master Choa Kok Sui. Google his name. These meditations are specifically designed to expand your consciousness and speed up the evolution process of your soul. Eh, I apologise for treading into dangerous religious grounds here, but no matter what your beliefs are, these meditations have a noticeable, positive impact on everyone who commits to doing them regularly.

If lucid dreaming can have a whole forum, meditation surely can too. It would be similar with "experiences", "control", "tutorials", "beyond meditation", etc. Plus it would have "history", "religion", "philosopy", and "science". Because some meditation techniques are spiritual, some secular, some done with a purpose in mind (healing, spirituality), some done so-called purposelessly (i.e. zen). Some are as serious and dour as prayer. Others are joyful and creative. The different techniques are numberless. Really the definition of meditation is hardly agreed upon.

So how can you choose what's right for you? How do you know what's effective? Experiment and study. But you don't want to do all that, right? You just want to try something, and see what it's all about. Okay, so most philosophies of meditation would agree that the basic idea is to "still the mind".

We spend our whole lives thinking and day dreaming and analyzing things. Even when we are "relaxing" we are really thinking thinking thinking. It would be at least a nice change of pace, if not a profound new way of living, to take some time out of each day to stop thinking our thoughts. To just sit and "be". So just try that for a few seconds right now. Keep your eyes open and just stop thinking altogether...

Ha! You started thinking again. How about trying not to think? Nope. Now you are just thinking, "I must not think." which is no different. Now try to just notice your senses and let the sensations go without internal comment, labeling, or analysis. If thoughts come, treat them as a type of sensation, then let them go. Sensations come and go. You are still. This is zen style meditation. Not easy is it?

And this is why there are so many techniques to make it easier. Most work by giving you something to focus on. Like mantras (repeating a meaningless word over and over), or pronouncing OM (oooohhhhhhmmmmmm), which is basically a type of mantra, or hitting a gong and listening to it. But the easiest to do is watching the breath. This is what the buddha taught.

1. find a nice place where you are alone without distraction and sit in a comforable but non-slouching position (keeps you awake) on the floor or on a chair. note the time on a clock.

2. close your eyes and focus your attention on your breath. don't try to artificially breath deeply. just listen and feel. focus specifically on one point just in front of your nostrils as your breath moves in and out, in and out.

3. thoughts will come along and distract you. don't get upset. it takes practice. when you notice your mind has wondered off, or that you have dozed off, just return to your breath. you may get uncomfortable. don't change positions. don't scratch itches. if your leg falls asleep, you'll get used to it. it'll be fine, really. next time use a chair. you may get bored. if so, pay more attention. you'll learn that there's more to notice about your own breathing that you ever would have imagined.

4. this is the whole point. by stilling your mind, you are increasing awareness of what is *actually happening* *at this very moment*, instead of always only noticing what you are thinking about what has already happened. big difference.

4. check the clock when you think 15 minues have passed. If you're short, keep going and check again later. If you're over, no worries. But stop at 15 minutes - that's plenty for a beginner. Do that every day and that should keep you busy for some time before you get any good at it. But even if you're not good at first, you are doing something good for yourself. It will feel good too.

There's so much more to it than that, but you can try that right now. I recommend reading this introduction to the topic:
http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfu...ain_english.php

If you're really serious, study other types of meditation and find a tutor. Don't listen to anyone who wants your money. Don't listen to anyone who says they have the "only answer".

Originally posted by queensofthestoneage
I've gotten more interested in this since yesterday after looking at specific threads in this forum...And after seeing this documentary about Monks in the himalajas or somewhere around there, India or somewhere can't remember specificly. All the things that i read and saw about. It was very exciting...
If anyone here has good meditation techniques/exercises or something like that Please, I insist you to post.

Thanks in advance.

you could search in google for lots of styles and techniques of meditation