This whole week I have meditated 20 mins daily with no trouble
But today idk what happen. Near the end I was getting restless and it felt like torture…finally I couldn’t take it and I got up. My timer had 2 mins left!!
Why did this happen, Is it normal?
I’ll try again tomorrow and see how it goes.
My friend,
you are attempting to swim by using boxing skills. You need to have a completely different mindset for meditation (please double-check this with your teacher if you have any).
Meditation is a state preceded by preparation. That includes asana, pranayama, yama & niyama. These practices build in you a system to keep external triggers away and equip you to deal with those which still sneak in. That takes you to the first achievement of pratyahara, a state where you can shut the external world for a moment, aware only of a world within. Like after days of assisted bike ride you take the first ride all by yourself.
But pratyahara is largely involuntary. Further practice allows you not only be within but stay there for longer and loger duration at will. This willed state is called dharana (inner concentration). However mind continues to stray the attention at the slightest provocation or even without any, as mind is intrinsically flippant. Everytime it strays one has to bring attention back, inside. This is an effort.
Sustaining for longer duration is so tough, if you can hold it for say 10 seconds, it is considered beginning of the next state of dhyana (meditation). The increase in duration results from a discovery - how to do it effortlessly. Like a complete let-go while swimming, where water keeps you afloat.
So, here are some tips:
Hope you are aware that meditation is about mind and not an athletic event. So, suspend all parameters of achievement. Secondly, yoga is no pill. Yogi Arvind says, “Meditation is, when you are not”.
[QUOTE=Suhas Tambe;77376]My friend,
you are attempting to swim by using boxing skills. You need to have a completely different mindset for meditation (please double-check this with your teacher if you have any).
Meditation is a state preceded by preparation. That includes asana, pranayama, yama & niyama. These practices build in you a system to keep external triggers away and equip you to deal with those which still sneak in. That takes you to the first achievement of pratyahara, a state where you can shut the external world for a moment, aware only of a world within. Like after days of assisted bike ride you take the first ride all by yourself.
But pratyahara is largely involuntary. Further practice allows you not only be within but stay there for longer and loger duration at will. This willed state is called dharana (inner concentration). However mind continues to stray the attention at the slightest provocation or even without any, as mind is intrinsically flippant. Everytime it strays one has to bring attention back, inside. This is an effort.
Sustaining for longer duration is so tough, if you can hold it for say 10 seconds, it is considered beginning of the next state of dhyana (meditation). The increase in duration results from a discovery - how to do it effortlessly. Like a complete let-go while swimming, where water keeps you afloat.
So, here are some tips:
Hope you are aware that meditation is about mind and not an athletic event. So, suspend all parameters of achievement. Secondly, yoga is no pill. Yogi Arvind says, “Meditation is, when you are not”.[/QUOTE]
Right on
Today I meditated right after waking up, usually I meditate in the afternoon so I think I was restless because body wanted to move around.
Btw do u think pacing contributes to racing thoughts? I think it does so will work on not pacing as well
Thanks
Zentost, in one of your previous posts you wrote that pacing helps you think better. Could you clarify for us when you feel that your thoughts are “racing” in an uncomfortable way? Is it when you are pacing or when you are meditating? Both? Tell us some more. (I don’t mean to pry, just trying to be helpful.)
Well I said i think it helps me think better, but it just makes me think faster and more about things and I over think about unimportant stuff and have racing thoughts - so now I can see that for me, it’s really bad to pace because as I become restless physically, my mind also becomes restless. But when I am pacing if I just force myself to sit down, I begin to slow down mentally as well.
One aspect of yoga rarely discussed in this forum is - energy management.
It comprises, genration, distribution and use of energy.
Genration: Until we activate the energy generators at Muladhara and Swadhisthan chakras, we have to depend on energy from [U]food[/U]. Its very inefficient system with its volume of input and output. We make it worse by eating wrong food in wrong quantity at wrong times. Majority of this energy goes to physical upkeep. The next is oxygen through breathing [U]air.[/U] Again most of us do not breath with the diaphragm and weaken the energy under stress. This energy is for house-keeping. The third energy unknown to many is the desires hanging out in the environment as [U]thought-seeds[/U]. We use this energy in our thought-churning.
Distribution: Energy channels in our body are subtle and as we loose suppleness there are blockages all over. These are the birth places of many diseases. Asana-pranayama are designed to clear the blockages.
Use: Body movements, emotions and thinking consume energy. In all these three departments we are heavy spenders. We use our credit cards relentlessly to spend what we don’t have and invite all kinds of ill-health.
So, we are generally poor in generation, helpless in faulty distribution and bankrupt in energy use. In this context, you can save a lot by not pacing and not doing wasteful thinking. Patanjali recommends only one kind of asana - stable and comfortable. He wasn’t an athletic coach, but was a spiritual one. All that he recommends is for sourcing the most potent energy, prana; cleansing the body of all nagativities and blockages and then, using the energy for the physique and the mind consevatively to allow the major chunk of it for meditation and samadhi.
[QUOTE=zentost;77275]i have started meditating recently, and when i do about 10 minutes in i feel weird sensations in my head as i breathe like if u ever been in an elevator and its going down, u get that feeling in your head? thats what i feel when i meditate, though it seems to come and go…anyone else get this? what is it?[/QUOTE]
Zentost,
I have gone through all of your responses under this head.
Firstly, with reference to your first query, I would like specify that whatever you felt (what you write as ‘weird sensation’) in the head is known as ‘feeling lightheadedness’. It is caused by decreased oxygen in the brain. It is scientific fact that Meditation decreases need for oxygen consumption.
Secondly, physiologically, meditation is process of purification of neuro-endocrine system and psychologically, it is a process of purification of primal forces and uncounscious Self. Even if you are meditating for 3 months to 1 year, the feelings and thinking are never the same in quantity and quality during and after meditation. It happens with beginners even with intermediate level meditators. So, accept it and try to develop an attitude of passiveness towards; and take the experiences as catharsis or release of unconscious Self.
On the day time, wihtout having feeling of nervous, anxious at conscious plane, etc, our body releases stress through uncouscious (either we become aware only after the movement have taken place or totally not aware of the same. Dr. B. P. Gaur, to whom the credit of maximum research work (in India) investigating effect of Transcendental Meditation and Preksha Meditation on psychological variables goes to, said that human body is blessed with three ways of releasing stress/tension i.e. dreams during sleep, uncouscious bodily movement and meditation.
The best timings to meditate are in morning and evening on empty stomach. However, if it difficult to go with best choice, good choices to do the same are (any one or two times that suits you) - half hour before meals or half hour after a liquid (excluding liquor), one and half hour after a breakfast and refreshment or three to five hours after major meal like lunch.
For a person living normal life, not like a typical spiritualist in Ashrams, it is good enough to meditate 20 to 30 minutes once to twice a day.
As an individual keeping in view of the problems you are facing you are recommended to go for a medical check up to investigate possibility of Sinusitis (through X-ray of frontal and maxillary sinus areas), possibility of infection and beyond range levels of blood chemistry (through test of Hemoglobin, T.L.C., D.L.C., E.S.R., SUGAR-PF & PP, Vitamin D and Vitamin V12, etc.)
ThanKs for the responses guys
This spring I had a mental breakdown and had to stop college, been with parents since and I’ll resume this upcoming spring.
Applied to a new college yesterday and all my anxiety is coming back. I think what if this happens, what If that happens? And I try and try to stop thinking but the thoughts keep coming back. Am hoping meditation will aid me in this
What can u advise?
[QUOTE=zentost;77444]ThanKs for the responses guys
This spring I had a mental breakdown and had to stop college, been with parents since and I’ll resume this upcoming spring.
Applied to a new college yesterday and all my anxiety is coming back. I think what if this happens, what If that happens? And I try and try to stop thinking but the thoughts keep coming back. Am hoping meditation will aid me in this
What can u advise?[/QUOTE]
http://www.eocinstitute.org/category_s/594.htm
Its the quickest way and i promise it wil help you.
Been getting kinda burned out on meditation.
I don’t look forward to it at all now and keep putting it off 
Is thee anything simpler that can help me? I used to do Pranayama, but meditation seems to help me more, but dang it today I just do not want to do it 
[QUOTE=zentost;77563]Been getting kinda burned out on meditation.
I don’t look forward to it at all now and keep putting it off
Is thee anything simpler that can help me? I used to do Pranayama, but meditation seems to help me more, but dang it today I just do not want to do it :([/QUOTE]
Its n audio file. 3 audio files in total.
Only thing you need is headphones and laptop.
Hemi-Sync is a trademarked brand name for a patented process[1][2][3] used to create audio patterns containing binaural beats, which are commercialized in the form of audio CDs. Interstate Industries Inc., created by Hemi-Sync founder Robert Monroe, is the owner of the Hemi-Sync technology.
Hemi-Sync is short for Hemispheric Synchronization, also known as brainwave synchronization. Monroe indicated that the technique synchronizes the two hemispheres of one’s brain, thereby creating a ‘frequency-following response’ designed to evoke certain effects. Hemi-Sync has been used for many purposes, including relaxation and sleep induction, learning and memory aids, helping those with physical and mental difficulties, and reaching altered states of consciousness through the use of sound.
The technique involves using sound waves to entrain brain waves. Wearing headphones, Monroe claimed that brains respond by producing a third sound (called binaural beats) that encouraged various brainwave activity changes.[4][5] In 2002, a University of Virginia presentation at the Society for Psychophysiologial Research demonstrated that EEG changes did not occur when the standard electromagnetic headphones of Monroe’s setup were replaced by air conduction headphones connected to a remote transducer by rubber tubes, suggesting that the basis for the entrainment effects is electromagnetic rather than acoustical in nature.
Replicated, double-blind, randomized trials on anesthetized patients have found Hemi-Sync effective as a partial replacement for fentanyl during surgery.[6][7] A similar study found it ineffective at replacing propofol however.[8]
Equisync gives however much faster results.
How old are you ?
im 23
and no I’m not getting anything like that lol.
[QUOTE=zentost;77566]im 23
and no I’m not getting anything like that lol.[/QUOTE]
Then you shall suffer… stop playing video games and go back to school !!
[QUOTE=wickeddeath2;77567]Then you shall suffer… stop playing video games and go back to school !![/QUOTE]
Calm down, no need to get upset.
I meditated this evening, and it was nice. Forgot how peaceful it is.
Gurus say to be “alert” yet “free from thoughts” when meditating. How does that work? Sometimes I get sleepy during meditation and I have to keep bringing my mind back to focus on my breathing.
Can anyone explain being “alert” during meditation?
zentost, I find it easier to stay alert if I focus on something. Chanting a mantra - either aloud or quietly - or looking at the flame of a lit candle, usually works quite well. The mantra So Ham is very good with breath awareness - you should say or think “So” when you inhale and “Ham” when you exhale.
[QUOTE=Aurora B;77577]zentost, I find it easier to stay alert if I focus on something. Chanting a mantra - either aloud or quietly - or looking at the flame of a lit candle, usually works quite well. The mantra So Ham is very good with breath awareness - you should say or think “So” when you inhale and “Ham” when you exhale.[/QUOTE]
Yes! This has helped me immensely today. Amazing session. When I started I thought "there’s no way I can sit quietly and keep saying ‘soham’ for 20 mins.
But my mind cleared and it was good.
I think zentost what you also need is to join yoga classes or meditation classes and personally talk to a teacher. Your concerns will be addressed well when you have a relationship with your teacher who will understand where you’re coming from.
There's a saying, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." I've thought a lot about that phrase recently.
In February, I started meditating. It's hard. Mostly it's mind-wandering, and meditation is a skill that teaches you to focus on the present. But the meditation teacher who is teaching me has a saying, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."
This makes sense. If you meditate in order to calm your mind, the teacher will come.
But if you're meditating in order to learn about yourself, the teacher won't come. You can't force a teacher.
In meditation, you learn a lot about yourself. I learned in meditation that I'm bad at focusing. I learned that I can forget about things. I learned that my mind wanders. I learned that I can't force myself to meditate.
Meditation doesn't teach you anything; it teaches you about yourself.
This is your Kundalini.
Get your Self Realization and will open up.
Self Realization - Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Hey, if you're having trouble concentrating while meditating, I can suggest some tips that I have learned and practiced through the years. Here it goes:
Start small. Take baby steps. This is the most important step of starting something new and people often forget that. I have read a book called 'Atomic Habits' (really popular) which says that to start a new habit, you have to improve yourself just 1% everyday. So I suggest, the moment your thoughts start to go bad or you begin feeling weird, you should stop. It's completely alright.
Don't worry about the perfect posture. Meditation is mind game. Yes a good posture definitely helps but if you're just a beginner, you should not worry too much about your posture. Sit however feels comfortable.
Try guided meditation. Listening to a meditation coach will diver your mind and it'll keep your mind occupied. So these weird sensations won't have any place on your mind.
I can go on and on about this. These are some tricks that I have learned in my Yoga University in USA, Vivekananda Yoga University. So these tips are full proof and I've seen it work with many of my students. Let me know if you need more tips like this. All the best.