The results have been profound. My mind is quiet and obedient now. I experience equanimity throughout the day.
I never saw a need to go beyond 30 minutes. In my opinion there is no right way. The breathe is key. Irregular breathing is a problem for many of us if we spend most of our day sitting in front a monitor tightening up.
Just sit.
I would recommend against images. They feel helpful at first but they tend to mislead by infusing the idea that they have something to do into the meditation.
Moreover, as an aside, I didn't see anyone mentioning that you don't force yourself out of thoughts: just let thoughts come and pass without considering them intentionally. (I guess that's what westoncb meant by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11135378)
But what can I say? I felt the way you describe for some time. I can't even say if it resulted of meditation. And it vanished as it came, unexpectedly. I may have considered that I acquired satori and experienced the hard way that satori is not something you possess. But I wouldn't be surprised to hear that my advice is bullshit according to OP.
(To anyone feeling like reading about zen meditation, I would recommend Shunryu Suzuki's book Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen.)
Yes. I'd remember something I had to do or get a great idea and have to pause to write it down. I later realised it was just another trick my mind will use to regain control.
The point of meditation (for me, anyway) is to stop impulsive behaviour. That means everything must wait, even scratching an itch.
Often I feel very stressed and like I'm about to break down due to the boredom. Did you experience this?
Yes. Just yesterday at about the 1 3/4 hour mark I got incredibly stir crazy. I tried breathing myself calm again, but I must have sounded like a marathon runner on the last mile. In the final 10 minutes or so I settled back in.
You just got to ride out those rough patches. The journey is as valuable as the destination.
Escape conceptual thought entirely.
How should I start doing this today (and the next 4 weeks) without doing too much initial research?
Very simple, rewarding stuff. I listen to these from time to time and practice it for a few minutes every day.
http://www.amazon.com/Real-Happiness-Meditation-28-Day-Progr...
Look up Sharon Salzberg. She, along with a few others, helped spread the practice of insight meditation in North America a few decades ago. That book includes a CD containing guided meditations and attempts to provide a framework for practice over 28 days.
He's pretty funny and does a good job of covering the rationale behind Taoist practices, which include meditation and mindfulness.
I recommend you pick a Wisdom tradition with roots in the very ancient past of which there are several, and make a study of it's roots and branches and resist the urge to tightly couple yourself to one teacher until you've read more about the practice and heritage. Buddhism is an example of one such Wisdom tradition.
Since you ask for a jump start here is an introductory book on Zen buddhism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFt1r7eubbc
If you want to do a bit of research there is a YouTube video of a Kabatt-Zinn talk at Google where he leads a short session.
Meditation is substantially observation without identification, nothing more, nothing less.
If you want to start: 1. Sit down with legs crossed (comfortable) 2. Just sit and see thoughts, listen sounds, sense your body 3. Just be. No doing required.
Although a bit drastic, searching for "DBT mindfulness" will provide tonnes of resources that teach mindfulness techniques in a way that's acceptable in a clinical setting. Things such as worksheets, DBT websites, etc.
Headspace is also a fantastic suggestion, as above.
So the first thing you need that's often sadly overlooked is a special place which you make for meditation. This can be as simple as "I am going to set an exercise mat in the middle of the carpet in my living room." Keep the space to be relatively clean. Cleaning is itself a great way to dedicate your mind to wholesomeness and order.
Once you've cleaned a space and imbued it with symbolic power, "here is where I am going to meditate", you sit there. Sit however you like the first several times. There is a special way to sit involving a "Zafu" (a pillow that when compressed is still 4-6 inches wide) that you may want to research, where you sit on the edge of it with much weight resting on your knees, and your feet are in a position that neither restricts blood flow nor pinches nerves. The cushion angles your hips forwards, which keeps your back straight. But if you don't have the disposable income to get the cusion for this, just sit down however feels comfortable. Place your hands wherever feels most natural for you to be able to breathe deeply.
Once you have a comfortable seat in that place, it helps to have a little speech to focus your attention and remind yourself what you are doing and why. One Buddhist pre-meditation speech I heard says (with a bit of misremembering and translation error doubtless thrown in): "I am here to end my confusion and distraction. If ending confusion is more important to me right now than everything else, I will succeed. If it is not more important than something, I won't. I am not here to learn some new ideology, but just to pay attention to my own mind: I want to awaken to the causes of my distraction so that I can learn how they work and restrict their power over me."
Now, have something repetitive that you can come constantly back to. Distraction works like alcohol works: if you ingest a little, it subtly compromises your mind in just the sort of way that makes it more likely to ingest more. So this is why the space is clean and you are sitting with good posture without pain, so that you remove the most common distractions of mess, sleep, discomfort.
Many people use the rhythm of deep breaths as the repetitive thing they can come back to. If you are a more visual person, you might want to instead put an object of religious veneration, be it a cross or a Buddha or what-have-you. Someone whose peacefulness you can study is good.
I once helped develop a more "active" picture for a friend who had grown up with either ADD or ADHD, I don't remember which. She said she needed something more like a wholesome movie. We tried to structure it so that it could still be repetitive. Then a week later neither of us could remember what we had done the week before, so we created a new one but as a mnemonic we structured it around 5 elements. It looked something like this:
Dwell on each of these for 10-15 minutes as a way to eliminate
distractions. If you find yourself thinking about something else,
allow yourself to think about it for a little, then return to the
element you're on.
1. (Air) You are walking through a forest, and the wind is blowing
through the trees, blowing through your hair, removing any
impurity or distraction that is an obstacle to your growth. You
settle on a direction where these winds of change are at your
back, letting them push you wherever they need you.
2. (Fire) There is the smell of smoke, then a feeling of heat
behind you, then light, and you find yourself running, running
through this forest which lights up, needing to take swift,
dynamic action to dodge the flames and keep ahead of the blaze,
to get to safety.
3. (Water) The fire opens up into a clearing with a river. There are
some scared animals: a fox, some bunnies, a squirrel. You are
holding them to your chest to reassure them, and then you lay on
your back in the river, rafting them safely downstream. Your
compassion brings a calm, soothing rain which starts to fall,
extinguishing the blaze into steam.
4. (Earth) You get up and set the animals free as the river bends
near a rock face, and walk along the side of the hill. You find a
trail that goes up it. You feel these smooth, ancient, unmoving
stones beside you as you ascend this cliff. You feel calm and
relaxed with these stones that never need to be anything other
than what they are.
5. (Void) The trail opens up to a landing. You sit down on the
landing with this solid rock beneath you and look up at the night
sky. You see the valley in front of you, even more mountain behind
you, and are struck by how big this place is and how small we are.
Just sit and focus on letting your lower jaw hang open for, say 5 minutes ...all the slack you can get...I think you'll find it's very hard to worry, or think about much anything else while consciously doing this...
It's very typical for the average person to go through the day with their jaw at least lightly clenched...more tightly when under stress...
Try it..consider it open source...
To increase the benefit breathe in deeply and force yourself to exhale for twice the amount of time it took you to breathe in...or, do this separately...
Basically my routine is 10 minutes a day (in the mornings) and after one week doing this in a row I've already started to notice how differently my body react to anxiety.
Later on, how I handle stress changed completely, I started to become numb to harsh events.
Basically, it should improve control over the brain, very similar to meditation:
Why is that guy dressed in some comical outfit, I can't take him seriously.
Those are normal clothes for monks. You won't take someone seriously because they wear different clothes than you ?
After doing meditation for a while, I found it was much easier to just breathe and calm myself while going about my daily life.
Once you know how to do it on purpose, it's easy to do it in the moment. I don't feel like I really need to actively meditate -- I habitually focus on my breathing, and re-center myself all day long.
I may not get to Nirvana this way, but it makes my day easier, and that's all that I was looking for.
You are actually able to do proper meditation -- the removal of all focus on thoughts -- for 1.5 hours at a time? Or do you mean several times a day, a few minutes each time?
I was more responding to hellofunk when they said "1.5 hours per day is a very impressive accomplishment. Even some serious gurus don't pull that off on a daily basis." This make me think that meditation is viewed as something you can check a box for, or as a goal to be achieved, which isn't really quite right.
Particularly the use of the word 'accomplishment'... If meditation is something to be accomplished, then if you thought about that noise your transition is making on steep hills for 60 seconds in the middle of a sit, you got distracted, and thus you did not successfully meditate today. I don't view it that way.
At least in my case—and I think this isn't so unusual—there is a steep learning curve: for most people there's just not enough reason to stick with it. That said, at this point I can hardly imagine something more worthwhile. After acquiring some facility with it, my everyday experience with life feels more substantial—more 'real.' There's a kind of energy, curiosity, and enthusiasm that now often presents itself which I hadn't seen in a long time—maybe since I was ~22 or so (I'm 30 now). I also feel way less need to do things like smoke/drink, and have a restored sense of smell and taste. If you've felt like the world's turned grey at some point, give it a try.
This is my favorite source of info on the subject—very substantial content, yet light and even entertaining at times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEw2mHpVv9A