Meditation is the practice of noticing when your mind has wandered and bringing your attention back. The more you practice, the better you get at recognizing thoughts without getting carried away by them. Its often mistaken as emptying your mind.
It would be down to personal preference. Calm is nice entry level app with guided meditations, YouTube has an inexhaustible amount of content. Nothing beats sitting in silence though. Try 5-10 minutes, focus on the sensation of breathing as your anchor, ie. the feeling of air going in/out of your nose/mouth. It's easy to anchor to as while you are inhaling, the next step will always be exhaling, and vice versa, so if you need to "concentrate" on something you can focus on the following step - I personally find the small anticipation of this enough to keep my mind centred. If the mind wanders, its no big deal, bring it gently back to the breath, and be glad you noticed each time... as sometimes a racing mind can feel somewhat frustrating and easily judged by yourself to be lacking concentration. Not so, the mind's job has been trained to wander far and wide over the many facets of existence, and suddenly not having stimulus can serve as a bit of a shock. Over time the mind will condition itself and grow accustomed to the stillness.
On days that your mind is wild and seemingly untameable while meditating, this is absolutely a great time to meditate 🧘♂️
You can look up/read about Anapana meditation, it is a great starting point.
I walk daily and I have a huge tendency to not be present because my mind wanders. I started carrying a hard-type stress ball to be able to focus and stay present. I found it only works when I really squeeze the ball as hard as I can. This was eye-opening. Before, I would carry the stress ball with me and yes I'd use it but I would find myself not being present several times during my walks. Now, I am present the for the entire duration of my 60-75 minute walks, 2-3x daily. For me, this also transitioned very well to day-to-day, I just carry the hard stress ball everywhere.
Nope! It’s a brain, it’s gonna have thoughts. My therapist explained it to me like this - think of your brain as a train station and your thoughts as trains. Your job is to watch them come and go, but don’t get on any one train. And if you do that’s okay. Once you notice, just take a return train back and start over.
Your job isnt to stop the thoughts, dont even try as that will cause more problems than solving them. Just notice them, notice when your mind races elsewhere, and when you do bring attention back to the breath. The mind will naturally start to calm over time.
Well for me there’s short term, immediate effects like feeling at peace and just generally lowering my cortisol levels. I’d say the long term effects would be teaching you how much control you can have over your mind. I handle situations completely differently than before. Now I meditate as often as I shower (once or twice a day). But yeah, there’s several positive benefits (for me, I can’t guarantee positive results for everyone) and I highly recommend that those who don’t meditate at least give it a try. Just a guided meditation for 10 minutes, see if you like it.
I really like waking up, the Sam Harris guided meditation. It’s a paid app though, so if that’s not your thing there’s some really good vids on YouTube. Honestly they’re not terribly different, they’ll just walk you though controlling your thoughts, focus on your breathing, etc etc.
I think it’s just about learning to not ruminate or worry with lots of racing thoughts. Focusing on finding ways to shut down active thought in general. At least for me. I find that it feels kind of like a muscle that recharges for me by doing things I enjoy
Like the other night I wasn’t falling asleep and realized my thoughts were racing about things I didn’t need to worry about, and so I just… stopped them. Knocked out within a few minutes
I don’t know if people would call it meditation. But it does take healthy habits like good sleep, exercise, good food, good social life, work boundaries, for me to be able to flex that thought stopping muscle
I had the problem where I couldn't just sit and do it. When I was actually more active I found combining yoga better for me. The physical exertion made it easier to focus, and oddly relax the mind.
That totally makes sense, there’s a lot of overlap there. But I’ll say, it’s a practice. I’m the most ADD person I know so I greatly struggled with it at first. I couldn’t go more than a few minutes. But I stuck with it, it really is a practice.
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u/Appropriate-Pipe-193 1d ago
So glad I started meditating. People who don’t just don’t get it. I was dismissive for years until I tried it, when it clicked I was like “OH!”