90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

[Mags]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Just a quick comment. I learned and practiced daily meditation when I had no money at all and was constantly dodging bill collectors and was living in cheap dumps with rats. It helped me tremendously through those years. I worked very hard and eventually made a career for myself and I still meditate. It really doesn't matter where you do it.

[Lila]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Thank you, Mags. I hate what I am doing right now, always reading the news and getting more and more scared about my future, as if my life is to be found that way....

[A Work in Progress]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Good question, Lila.... I think maybe you are asking whether meditation has any kind of role when we are facing some difficult life situations? Well... for some people, at least, a meditation practice is very helpful. First, we have to get used to the idea that meditation is NOT about sitting around, going into some sort of la-la land trance state, and feeling wonderful. (If it were really like that, a lot more people would be doing it, a lot more often!)

Meditation is a way of training the mind. And it is within our own minds that we relate to, and respond to, our own life situations. Sometimes (well, often, for some of us) we make our own life situations even worse than they are... by giving in to the habit of counterproductive, excessive worry; or the habit of self-criticism; or the habit of re-hashing the past, over and over again; or the habit of wishing things were different; or the habit of blaming others, and being bitter.

Meditation teaches us to learn how to de-tach, compassionately, from our own mental habits, and to re-orient ourselves to the "now," which is the place within which all decisions are made, and all life is truly experienced. It teaches us not to just go with the flow of our habitual modes of thinking.

I have found it very helpful with impulses or urges to drink... I have some capacity to step back from them instead of becoming overly involved in them, which just makes them worse.

[A Work in Progress]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

p.s., exactly right, Kate, Mags. As Jon Kabat-Zinn says: "Wherever we go... there we are." We take our inner worlds with us everywhere... with or without money, jobs, or whatever. And if the floor is dirty... first step... sweep the floor.

[Lila]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Yes, thanks wip. Also, just the general comment that one might need it the most when they are the least able to do it. If you give in to fear, it makes -well, me- jumpy and a bit crazed, and certainly not focused. I will re read this thread again, maybe it is time!

[Mags]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

My shrink has worked with me on my one minute meditation which I use all the time. I can use it anywhere at any time of the day. I do it all the time. It keeps me very focused throughout stressful times.

[A Work in Progress]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Lila;541723 wrote: one might need it the most when they are the least able to do it.

Yes, Lila, isn't so much of life like that?!!!

Mags... would you tell us more about the "one minute" meditation? I have a version that I use, not sure if it is the same as yours...

[Mags]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Mine is really a body scan - starting at the head and going to the toes. A total emptying and relaxation - getting rid of the shit in there. An opening up - for me to open to the Tao.

[Lila]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

I love it! I laughed when I read that and some of my imaginary, as yet unfounded worries went away. Yes, we take our inner worlds anywhere we go, okay, today I am going to let some light in.

[A Work in Progress]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Cool, Lila!

Yes, Mags, I do that, too. A quick change of pace: I disconnect myself from whatever has been going on, slow myself down, and do a quick body scan. Very helpful.

[Captnjack]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Fountain Head any relation to Zippy pin head

[Lila]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Make a list of everything you are grateful for, Captn. Compared to the rest of the world, I am sure you are very wealthy.
In fact, I am going to do that right now.

[A Work in Progress]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

OK, back on track, here's a piece about meditation that I wrote a while back for another website:


WHY MEDITATE?


Why meditate? Why go on long meditation retreats? Someone once said to me, about a meditation retreat that I was planning: ?What?s the point? All it will do is make you a better meditator.?

Not a bad question! Any effective meditation teacher should be able to answer this question, because there are plenty of people who are attracted to the concepts of meditation and mindfulness, but who (and really this is most people) are disappointed when they begin the practice of meditation, and find that it is not an instantly pleasurable experience. In fact, for most people, meditation is difficult; it requires patience and persistence. It is a new skill; a new mental skill, and it requires practice.

I often compare meditation practice to the process of learning a new sports skill, such as learning how to serve a tennis ball. The tennis serve is not a natural move for most people; it is complex, and it requires a lot of different body parts to move in different but coordinated ways, in the correct sequence. It feels very awkward, at first. In order to learn how to do it even reasonably well, you have to practice it, over, and over, and over again. Over time, in many different practice sessions, it will take thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of practice serves to get reasonably competent. You cannot learn a tennis serve any other way. You cannot learn to serve a tennis ball by reading about the mechanics of the tennis serve, or by watching other people serve the ball, or by reminding yourself throughout the day to remember, and mentally rehearse, how your arms and legs are supposed to move when you serve. Now, all of those things can be helpful in the process of learning the serve; but, without the actual practice of the serve, without the drudgery and discipline of forcing yourself to stand behind the baseline, tossing up hundreds of balls and hitting them, observing the results? then all the watching and reading and thinking and visualization in the world will not help you.

Once you have become competent at your tennis serve, your brain will have physically changed. Learning a new skill (any new skill) is accompanied by a process of ?re-wiring? and shifting of resources in the brain, to meet the new demands being made upon it. The oft-used phrase in neuroscience is: ?Where neurons fire together, they wire together.? Once the re-wiring has become established, the new skill no longer feels new, because the brain is no longer struggling to meet the (formerly new) demands being made upon it. What we need to remember is that repetition is the key for new pathways to be established in the brain (and in life, for that matter). And this repetition is likely to feel awkward (at least), at first.

In some ways, meditation practice is like learning to serve a tennis ball. When we begin to practice meditation, we are undertaking the task of paying attention to the present moment, and doing so non-judgmentally. And, we quickly notice, this is not particularly easy for most of us, most of the time. When we are not actually engaged in an absorbing task, we usually let our minds wander all over the place. Instead of actively engaging our attention, we usually let it drift to whatever sensation or train of thought may arrive, without even noticing what it is that we have focused, or re-focused on. We go onto autopilot. We may find ourselves engaged in the mental re-hashing of various distressing life events; we may fantasize (happily or fearfully) about various possible future events. We may mentally criticize ourselves for doing certain things or feeling certain ways.

The point is not that any of those mental topics is necessarily bad; the point is that we are, very often, being mentally passive, and not active; we are being absent, and not present, in our own mental lives. Instead of paying attention to what is going on, in our heads and around us, we are passively responding to the whole show. And, very often, we are mostly un-aware of nearly all of what is actually happening in our lives.

Meditation is a process of learning to be more mentally active. Over and over again, we ask ourselves to notice what is going on. We may choose a focus point, such as the sensations of breathing, to pay attention to. Then, when we settle in to do this task, we quickly find that we lose focus, and our minds drift away to something else; it may take some time even to notice that we have lost focus on our chosen object (such as sensations of breathing). The task then is simply to notice that this has happened; to re-focus on the chosen object; and to notice any judgments that accompany this process (I may notice that I am irritated or discouraged, because I so quickly lost focus). And (this is the key) this process is repeated many, many times; just as we repeat the movements of the tennis serve, so in meditation we repeat the process of gently bringing attention, or mental focus, onto a chosen object.

This repetition is what changes our brain; this is what makes us more capable of being mentally engaged in our lives (as well as less reactive, and more compassionate). A recent study authored by Lidia Zylowska and her colleagues at UCLA indicates that meditation training is an effective intervention for people with attention deficit disorder; when we think about it, of course, it hardly seems surprising. Meditation is (partly) about learning to pay attention, by repeatedly practicing ?paying attention?! And the practice of meditation has been linked (in some cases, very consistently) with: reductions in blood pressure; improvements in mood; reductions in compulsive or addictive behaviors; improvements in capacity to pay attention; and many other positive results.

[KateH1]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

When you think of it......Meditation is 180 degrees from drinking. In meditation we are in our own heads, letting our thoughts drift in and out.....we are with our thoughts, completely at the will of our own breath. Through meditation we reach a place of contentment and relaxation.

When drinking, we are trying everything to get out of our heads, out of our thoughts and oblivious to even our own breathing. We continue to drink reaching a point of complete agitation......hmmmmm.....her I go......just thinking again!

[A Work in Progress]

90-Day Meditation Practice Challenge!

Good points, Kate... I think you're absolutely right. Paying attention to, and staying with, whatever is happening right now is the exact opposite of drinking, which is a frantic escape from reality, into... something different.

I realized that you said something earlier about incense, and about music. I do often use incense when I sit meditation... something that is always used in the Zen tradition I was first trained in. I find it pleasant, and it's sort of a part of setting the scene, like sitting up straight, a reminder of what I am about. I don't usually play music when I am sitting, however... to me, having music playing is too great a temptation to spend 20 minutes "listening to music" instead of paying attention to my breathing, my thoughts, etc. But others see that whole issue differently... I am coming around, a bit, too. Have experimented a bit with having some sound... ocean wave recordings, or Native American flute... playing while I sit. Mostly, though, I just sit in silence, or whatever silence my surroundings permit me!