Let’s have a meditation thread.
Two years ago, I started meditating. The following year was the best year of my life and I attribute most of that to meditation.
I started up two months ago but I feel as though I’ve plagued.
Any tips on how to beat the platue?
And how has meditation helped you with your lifting? (Mind/body connection etc)
Explain how it improved your life
What is a pleateau in terms of meditation? Genuinely curious. I meditate myself and I'm not really seeing what that would mean
I made sure to meditate at least seven minutes a day (usually twenty) and would I additionally have long, one hour sessions.
It is useful to note that I participated in a competitive activity where I used mindfulness as a tool (so maybe losing this has made it more difficult).
First, I became much more socially confident. When you meditate, you train yourself to remove mental chatter and focus on the present. Removing mental chatter in social situations means you no longer are thinking five steps ahead and talk yourself out of doing things that other people find charismatic, even if they’re forward or outside of what others are doing.
Second, attention span. I have pretty bad ADHD but I made a major dent in that with meditation.
Third, what I call ‘iceyness’. You can convey any emotion with any set of words and kind of force emotions into other peoples head, because you have control of your emotions, and can depict them much stronger when you’re not stifling your body language. Helps a lot with girls. That shit gets you laid. Confuses them emotionally.
Fourth, overall sense of well-being improved. Lost a ton of anxiety, just had control over my emotions.
Fifth, it makes you very loose socially. I can come up with anything I need to say off the top of my head by remaining present. Moreover, people see that you listen to them fully when you’re present.
You trust yourself that you’ll be able to handle any situation.
It seemed like it unlocked the key to charisma.
Now, I’ve made big social gains since I restarted but I don’t feel like I’m becoming incrementally more present. That’s what I mean by a plateau. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve noticed improvement in one of these areas.
I’m mixxing my routine up to have many shorter (10 minute) meditation sessions throughout the day. Logic being, what is important is being able to snap into a meditative State.
Thanks for your post, user. Been using the 1 giant mind app for a few months now, and i agree with most of what you say. Even use it in the train these days...
Thx
After how much time can i see benefits?
Also, you just sit and focus on your breathing?
Try different things out. If you ever want to change your mental/emotional state, become present. It’s a very malleable state.
Anything that gets you in the ‘flow’ state will help, aswell. That state requires presence. However, I no longer compete in the activity that did that for me. Trying to find another one but there is a large step between amateur, intermediate and the level of competence needed to activate that flow state.
I think another thing that is holding me back is my general willingness to become unmindful. I went through some pretty bad times this summer where I used stimulatory pleasure (nicotine, sex/masturbation, Netflix) to escape it. I think that’s the antithesis of the meditative state and mentally I still allow myself to slip into it too much.
How do I meditate without falling asleep? I need to sleep better for a start but it's getting really annoying now.
Yeah, focus on your breathing. Set a timer. Focus on the air leaving your nose or touching the roof of your mouth. Focus on the pauses between breaths.
Your thoughts will start to dissipate. When I haven’t meditated for a while, it may take twenty minutes for me to have a few seconds of no thoughts. This gets much easier. I was once at a state where I could remove all thoughts from my head just by willing myself to.
Don’t push out thoughts. Observe them. Pushing them out will only make you resentful.
Don’t be afraid to mix it up with YouTube guided meditations or meditation beats or some shit like that. Just don’t let it replace pure, quiet meditation.
And on results -
By my third session, I noticed a change in mood immediately after meditating.
I started seeing results pretty soon (a week or so) but they compound really fast. You will look back on your month and wonder why it went so well, and notice that you’d restarted your meditation habit.
If you are truly present, you won’t fall asleep.
There is a dream-like haze state that sometimes meditation will lead you into. This is not a mindful state, really. Much more of a mindless stimulatory state. It is often very lucid and fun to play with, though.
Meditate sitting in a chair. Do it outside on a bench or in sunlight.
Standing meditation looks interesting. It’s good for posture.
Meditate while staring into your eyes in the mirror or with your eyes open. This helps your social gains (there’s this kind of piercing eye contact you can develop)
Can you elaborate on the third point? I’ve been meditating on and off for about a year and I’ve experienced a lot of what you were talking about. But I’d love to be able to tap into something like that. What kind of techniques helped with “icyness”, and what do you mean by conveying emotion with any set of words?
guys i got my shoe shined by a black guy the other day. i thought he was 60. he was 82
he meditates twice a day
I’m not as great at that any more. Just because my mindfulness ‘muscle’ in my head isn’t as strong. I can’t tap into a meditative state at a seconds notice; it takes a few minutes to clear my head.
Pretty much, I could say some absurd shit/rude shit/flirtatious shit and hold the frame of the conversation. I wouldn’t (body language wise) appear nervous and would maintain the current emotion (of awkwardness, attraction etc). Places the burden of the conversation (and that emotion) on them because they feel as you are comfortable with it (and therefor assume they caused it, not you).
I was able to achieve this by remaining present while I said whatever I said, and maintaining that presence afterwards. I could do this because that ‘muscle’ of mindfulness allowed me to flex right into presence.
Give me a quick rundown on how to get started pls.
1. Set a timer for 5 minutes.
2. Focus on your breath. The feeling of your breath on the roof of your mouth. The pauses between breath.
3. Maintain a distance from your thoughts. Your mind has a few loops of thoughts that repeat themselves. Without giving these any attention, they dissipate.
4. Do this every day. Bump the time up to 7 minutes, then 10, as long as you can handle.
Tbh I have a Snapchat streak with someone who meditated every day. I snap them when I meditate, they snap me when they meditate. Gives me a sense of accountability.
It is as simple as finding a comfortable position and focusing on your breathing?
I've been interested in this, but there's so many sources talking about a million different ways to meditate it gets confusing.
Keep it simple. Anything that is mysterious/psychology-y attracts people who want to obfuscate and mend their personality with their material to become some kinda cultist guru.
Think of it like weight training.
Your brain is scattered and unfocused.
You fix this by focusing your brain more and more.
It is that simple.
Thanks brah that's really helpful. I've had a lot of thoughts that I'd thought I'd buried come flooding back to me in the last couple of days and I really want to get the hang of this meditation stuff.
Didn't know it could be that simple. Anyone interested in being Snapchat meditation acountabilibuddies? I like that idea
I've been meditating for a few months and I find that I only progress when I meditate for a full pre-timed session without exiting early. On the days I complete a full hour I feel great for the whole day and the next day's meditation session is improved. If I exit early, even for 5 minutes, I tell myself that's okay but my subconscious knows I've failed myself and I regress.
Also as you said, being mindful throughout the day helps too. Even if you don't have a specific activity that you need to use mindfulness as a tool, being mindful during mundane activities like eating, walking or driving helps a lot, simply by being attentive to the task at hand while maintaining peripheral awareness (surroundings) and introspective awareness (inner thoughts)
convince me to start meditating
personally, i think its gay
@lg4co
I need to get a hold on my ADHD, but also my motivation. Would this help? What specifically would help most in those departments?
>After how much time can i see benefits?
Just keeping doing it till you get better and see the benefits. Do not try to rush the benefits, they will come on their own time, as long as you continue to meditate everyday.
>That’s what I mean by a plateau. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve noticed improvement in one of these areas.
You're seeking to improve something that doesn't need improvement. If you're fully present, whereelse do you need to be?
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Not him, but also someone with some cognitive attention issues.
Take an honest look at yourself and evaluate whether 20 minutes a day doing something like meditating would ultimately hurt you. At worst, if after a month you don't really see any benefits then whatever. Got way more to lose NOT actively trying to address whatever issues you might have.
You're probably not satisfied with whatever you're currently doing for ADHD. Try something else. Gettem
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Presence is so much of a means to an end for me. That outlook may hold me back greatly, however.
hey it's the kc autist
Bros I can't get my brain to shaddup
Even when word thoughts dissipate, music remains
I cannot into peace, my mind is at war
This is how I started out. It just means you really need it. Give it time.
Your thoughts are not original. It is merely noise. 95% of your thoughts are the same four or five loops that you experience every day.
If you let these loops play out, by meditation, they will eventually dissipate.
That’s fine. Meditation isn’t about cancelling or shutting out all thoughts, but letting them flow, come and go, as long as your attention to the breath remains constant.
A little cheesy metaphor for you here, but it’s your mind is like a river, the flow of the river is your breath. Watch and feel it, see it effortlessly ebb and flow around rocks and other obstacles in its path. Thoughts are like leaves that have fallen into the river. It’s natural, and impossible to stop them all, but as long as they don’t stop the flow of the river, everything remains at peace. Don’t entertain your thoughts, don’t play with the leaves, and stop their flow. Let them pass. With time, you will become better at cleaning up the leaves and your river will clean. But for right now, the most important thing is that the river flows, you keep your attention on your breath.
It doesn’t even have to be your breath either, it could be a chant, or something else. You can look up and find all the different things you can give your attention to.
Is guided meditation bullshit?
I've been running for a while now but recently I've really taken to running at night. The empty roads and the cold air in my lungs just does something wonderful to me.
Is it possible to meditate while running? I really like the idea but I don't know whether it's possible in practice.
Eh, I like them. But only if I don’t have the willpower to meditate without any stimulus. It’s still a form of stimulus. Yeah, it gets you present. But doesn’t train you as hard as just focusing on breathing.
Guided meditation is like a bicep curl compared to a deadlift.
They're more of a crutch really. A good guided meditation works and is useful but it's best not to grow too reliant on them
@clinteatswoods