So hard to meditate

could you help me with my meditation? I was told that meditation could help with ease my pain. So I tried to practice before bed every night recently. BUT… it is so hard - when I sit there (diamond or lotus), I just feel my physical discomforts, my legs/feet/back and shoulder, they all in either pain or discomfort. I try not to think about the pain (or let it go), but it never stop bothering me until I get up and give up.
does meditation really help reduce the pain, if so, could you train me to do the right way?
Thank you very much for your input.

personally I like vijrasana on a meditation bench, more of my thoughts about it on this posting http://www.yogaforums.com/forums/f16/your-yoga-practice-2759.html
but this is not about me but you finding what is right for you.

I do a light asana, a breathing practice and a mantra before I try and meditate. The asanas take 20 minutes, The breathing practice is to expell the stored up bad air, the mantra to get me vibrating in a better mental space and then I let go and meditate. This is what is working for me and it may not fit your eye, be confident that you will find your way, you can. it takes time and hurdles may come up, keep it going through the good and bad and you may find peace
Best wishes to you
on the journey
seeker

Looks like you came to meditation with a hope of easing pain.

Might be a good idea to address the issue of pain. Yoga asanas & ayurveda can assist in that ?

To experience meditation sit any where in any position that affords maximum comfort then close your eyes and follow your in breath & out breath for 15mins to 20mins. Breathe through the nose and make your breath nice & steady. Allow the many thoughts & chatter that develops to evaporate or simply leave as through a revolving door. Enjoy the peace that comes from this exercise. Meditation does not need to be any more sophisticated then this. This lovely practice can create much space in your mind & spirit as you start to differentiate between your ego & the higher self. In time you will feel & see the infinite expanse of space beyond the ego the higher self & finally to your divine self?

Best wishes to you.
Love,
Fin

I don’t like meditating in lotus pose personally. I prefer adepts pose or hero’s pose instead. Primarily because with meditation, it’s not ALWAYS about intense stretching (at the heart of yoga is never forcing yourself into a pose or maintaining it if it’s causing you discomfort). The key to Meditating is about being comfortable, clearing the mind, and maintaining good breath.

Namaste. I am new to this yoga forum. All of the advice is great for meditating. I only want to add to try and be patient. Meditating takes practice and improves with time.

When I first started, it was very difficult for me. I have a very busy mind. I too concentrated on my breathing. Also, I found a beautiful picture that I considered to be paradise. I would stare at that picture for about 5 minutes. Then I would close my eyes and draw it in my mind. I’d start with the sky and get down to the beach. It helped me to release the days activities from my mind.

Eventually, I was able to meditate and get fulfillment from it.

Hi,

Can you please expand on the pain you want to ease. Where is this pain, what causes this pain etc.

If for example you aches and pains are physical manifestations of mental or emotional pain, yes medition can help in adjusting the mindset to these pains. However, if your pain is due to some injury etc, perhaps considering medical help will ease your pain more than meditation.

Meditation is a wonderful practice, but to help you we need to know more about these pains your are talking and their origins in your life.

I read somewhere an interesting theory that yoga was actually developed to prepare the body for meditation because yogis knew that without a flexible, supple, pain free body it was difficult to quite the mind. I’m not sure about it’s authenticity but it’s fascinating and a possibility.

This is not a theory. This is the truth. :slight_smile:

[quote=Csilla;9953]could you help me with my meditation? I was told that meditation could help with ease my pain. So I tried to practice before bed every night recently. BUT… it is so hard - when I sit there (diamond or lotus), I just feel my physical discomforts, my legs/feet/back and shoulder, they all in either pain or discomfort. I try not to think about the pain (or let it go), but it never stop bothering me until I get up and give up.
does meditation really help reduce the pain, if so, could you train me to do the right way?
Thank you very much for your input.[/quote]

I can certainly vouch that meditation can help reduce the experiencing of pain. As mentioned in an earlier post, a painful experience is what brought me to the realization of meditation.
Purely from my limited experience, might I suggest a few things.
Use a position of comfort, whatever that might be. And preferrably one which allows you to remain alert rather than one which dulls you. A position which causes discomfort is a powerful distraction from where you want to go. I often (actually mostly) use savasana and sometimes a seated position. Savasana because when I first ‘found’ meditation it was the position I was actually in and not able to change, so I adapted to that. Others may find savasana to dulling and prone to sleepiness.
If I am seated I use a blanket under the hips because my hip muscles are very tight and will fight that position unless I allow them to remain open and loose. Sitting without a blanket causes the lower back and therefor everything stacked above it to want to lean backward, which I have to counteract - a distraction. One goal of my asana practice is to help my hips to become more supple…
I would suggest not trying to meditate before bedtime. Meditation, for me, works best when I still have some mental alertness available. Certainly after a well experienced meditative session, I come out of it more alert than I went in - not something you want if you want to go directly to bed … to sleep :smiley:
It can often take up to 2 hrs after meditation to become ready for sleep, for me.
Some people like to chant, I find it a further distraction. I prefer to focus on my breath at the start of meditation. No music, as little environmental distractions possible, steady breezes and smells from an outdoor session are fine - music invites to easily to get into it, rather than my mind.
At any point I find I’m loosing control of where I want my mind to go, I drop back into observing my breathing. Its complex enough to focus my attention and internal enough to bring me to my third eye quickly.
Pain - mediation, for me, works well if there are periods when it is sharper than normal. Meditation helps take it to a background experience. And after some experience in subduing it, you can develop triggers which can help you take it to background quicker and more effectively. But its still there.
Its still best to deal with the root of the pain, if thats available to you, and let meditative techniques help with the sharp spikes of what remains.
I had a fairly severe shoulder separation six weeks ago. The 1st three weeks after were difficult, but made easier by short meditative sessions. Even now mediation is helping for what is reduced, but still constant discomfort.
At first, when starting a meditation with pain being experienced, it’ll seem almost as if the pain is heightened. That’s cause your mind has only a few things to focus on. AS you move to another focus, maybe your breath and breathing, the mind will loose interest in the pain and it will drop to the background.
Keep at it, when you are able to control and send the pain to the background, you’ll find the effort was and is worth it.

cyclezen:
I also use pain. Some think this is sick … but when you are sick, and cannot help it … you have to work with what you have.
I came to a feeling that even my unhappiness makes me happy. I mean, in meditation, when you totally surrender to that pain … and there is nothing you can do - and someone inside quietly smiles, and you feel the confidence, peace, and love of that smile.
The ego manifests in the mind, and want to follow things it likes, and avoid things it dislikes. To go beyond, both likes and dislikes must be transcended. And if you think of it … unpleasant things can be easiere transcended, as we tend to attach to the pleasant ones.

I am not trying to preach fatalism, weakness, laziness; naturally we try to avoid suffering, and make our and fellow people’s life a most pleasant experience … but we often do this the wrong way.

thats the truth…bodily pain will more than likely speak louder than the mind so in order to hear the mind you have to be free, comfortable and painless

[quote=Hubert;9984]cyclezen:
I also use pain.

I came to a feeling that even my unhappiness makes me happy. I mean, in meditation, when you totally surrender to that pain … and there is nothing you can do…
…To go beyond, both likes and dislikes must be transcended. And if you think of it … unpleasant things can be easiere transcended, as we tend to attach to the pleasant ones.
…naturally we try to avoid suffering, and make our and fellow people’s life a most pleasant experience … but we often do this the wrong way.[/quote]

I’m not sure I understand “even my unhappiness makes me happy”. Or resigning as in “and there is nothing you can do”. I’m prolly not seeing your thoughts from your angle.
The “transcending” however is exactly what I was referring to. I like to use the image of ‘background’ cause that seems more common for others to understand my intent/idea. ‘Transcend’ seems to have many differing interpretations with others - but the backgrounding vehicle really is to ‘transcend’.

so as not to get too far from the OP, I’ve been asked by acquaintances whether my ‘meditation’ can cure my pain. Seems a common misperception. Mediation is usually not a cure. Meditation does help relieve the ‘symptom’ of pain. Sortta like a natural and stronger Ibuprofen, without any abhorant side effects.
Curing pain means directly addressing the cause.

avoiding suffering and making life a more pleasant experience - it has been my opinion for a long time that in many ways (maybe most) we, each of us, make our own heavens and hells.

Csilla,

I am not sure if you going to answer, but here goes. Meditation has the ability, depending on the user (it is like a PC, the efficiency of a PC is determined by the skill and knowledge of the user) to help you to cope better with pain. But there are different pains.

For physical pain, which keep you body conscious and the opposite of what you want to achieve through meditation you need to look at what cause the physical pain. If the posture you use for meditation is not suitable for your body, perhaps you can change posture. Sometimes we need medical intervention for certain body aches and pains and visiting your homeopath or doctor is not such a bad idea. The Divine has placed them there to help us and we need to honour that as well. We live in the Kali Yug which is a heavy yug therefore we need medical practitioners to help us with some of our illnesses and dis-eases.

For mental and emotional pain mediation is the perfect tool to help you. Meditation can help you to discover for example a past life where something happened which affects your emotional well-being in this life and affords you the opportunity to work on that issue from the past life, and once the issue has been addressed it is my expereince that the emotional pain all of a sudden will subside as well. Meditation can help you to change old mind patterns we have about certain things in our life and aleviate the mental anguish and pain we expereince sometimes through our minds.

In all, meditation can do a lot for you, yes it can help with the pain issues, but do you have the experience and skill to know how to use it? If not seek a person close to you who have the skill to guide you. Or learn how to use meditation to help you with your pains. :wink:

There are wonderful replies here with a lot of good advise, use it they will help you.

I like to say theory because yoga is such an old practice that it’s almost impossible to understand why (a 100%) it was developed. I’m sure theres other reasons why people think it was developed.

From experience, you do not need to assume a yoga posture to meditate.

Meditation is not a remedy. For pains, you will have to address the cause directly.

The aim of meditation is to let go of your ego. To clarify, it is to let go of the past, and not care for the future.

The past ( be it 5 minutes ago, yesterday, or a year ago) is done with. You can no longer impact the past.

As to the future, no one can say what it will bring.
The present is the only thing you can focus on.

The tricky thing about the present, is that when you have a sense of self, you take a form that confronts the world. That form confronts the world with cleverness, sheer dominance of will, or some abstract method in order to “win”. A form( or person) can win over another form or many forms, but few stand much chance to win against the world.

When you lose your sense of self, there is no form to confront the world. The self becomes in harmony as one with the world.

Postures can be a good way to achieve that kind of mental focus necessary on the present. For example, you can maintain a crow pose for a long duration, and then eventually try to extend the same mental focus to everyday activities.

It is easier said than done.

Most to the point and useful guide to meditation I have ever read.

dear brother/sister…
this is a common misconception i’m always finding among yogis…that sitting in lotus=meditation. No! Lotus is a rather advanced posture, particularly for those of us in the west who grew up sitting in chairs. Meditation is meditation. Lotus is a tremendous posture for meditation, but came about in the much later stages of individual aspirant’s journeys, as they discovered, intuitively, it’s superior positioning for advanced inner-alchemy (pardon, the nonsense, but dig into it, and you’ll see what i’m saying). The lotus posture, hooray!, but meditation is nothing to do with flexibility of the knees, etc. This all helps, but will come later. It’s like if you’ve been eating junk food for ages and you want to start getting healthy, you don’t need to go out and buy purified water, buy only organic produce, and only eat raw foods. That’s insane. You need to eat less junk, stop drinking soda, and start eating veggies and rice more often. The metaphor comes in when I say that eventually, after you’ve begun your intention to “get healthy” (or in your case, meditate), you will gradually start to prefer organic foods, and purified water. But just copying someone who’s been there a long time, it’s not going to help you.
SO, meditation.
JUST START!
This is the best way to start:
get very very comfortable, and enjoy yourself. Use your imagination, let the lights float around on the inside of your eyelids, feel immersed in a cocoon (this might be done laying in bed with covers on), wish blessings upon your loved ones, whatever! THIS IS MEDITATION!, or rather, the beginning of a meditation practice.
I have found, after years, that the best way for me to meditate is laying down (you can be fancy and call it corpse pose if you like). I used to feel guilty, and make myself sit up, until i realized how insane it was, as my results were progressively getting deeper.
To each his own.
I think the Quakers had it right: their instructions are simply to “go inside and greet the light”. You will find, after being in one position for a while, focused on something non-material (i.e. light between the eyebrows, or breath, though this is harder for me), that your breath becomes deeper, and you sink trough progressive layers of conscious relaxation. I have attained the highest states of meditation that I have come across when I was exhausted, and just layed down, and didn’t want to move, didn’t want to be “proper”, didn’t even want to practice “form” in my mind. Just laying down, and enjoying myself, feeling like a baby in a crib with mommy’s favorite blanket over me has proved to induce the most intimate experiences I have yet had with something divine, aside from perhaps active rational cognitization, which is certainly a form of meditation as well (any variation on the “Who am I?” Or “What am I doing?” or “Why should I be doing that?” is very good).
Do what you feel.
Meditation is a giant word for getting below the cognitive process (ideally, you will understand how this doesn’t contradict my last statement…the cognitive process can serve as a tool for dismantling itself, and this is a very valid approach…koans and Ramana Maharshi’s self-inquiry function on this premise).
So counting breath is great,
but so is counting sheep.
Lotus is great,
but so is child’s pose (and I mean this not just in terms of the literal Balasana “Child’s Pose”, but in terms of “becoming child-like”, as the great yogi Jesus Christ instructs us to do).
SO ENJOY!
Meditation is great, it’s working on life itself, it’s resolving long-standing frictions in your consciousness. DON’T MAKE IT ANOTHER FRICTION-CAUSER! oh, how easy we are led into that old one…
good luck,
god bless you.
Aaron

Well said Peter. :wink: We, people tend to complicate a very simple practice with too much attachments, instead of just be and enjoy the moment, greet the Light - I love this idea!

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