What Meditation Technique Should I Do Today – Some Heuristics For Choosing
Choosing which technique to do is often an important part of navigating a meditation practice. Here are a few things to think about when deciding.
What Meditation Technique Should I Do Today – Parable of a Flooded Room
We can understand something about how to pick our meditation technique on a given day by imagining a parable of a flooded room.
Keeping Our Chin Up As Part of Our Meditation Posture
Keeping our chin up when we meditate is a way to embody, affirm, and cultivate the intention that we will never let our difficult emotions and other challenges overwhelm us, and to plant our flag in the assertion that our spacious mindful awareness is always stronger than whatever may be assailing and trying to compress us.
The Usefulness of “Trigger Practice”
People who have been meditating for a while may find value in “trigger practice”. This is when we voluntarily expose ourselves to a stimulus that usually activates a strong emotional, addictive, or painful response in us so that we can focus and meditate on that reaction.
How Many Minutes Should I Meditate For?
People sometimes ask me, “How long should I meditate for?” Given how much I love meditation practice, I am both joking and enthusiastically sincere when I answer, “As much as you can, of course!” We want, however, to be realistic in the amount of meditation that we intend to do each day. We want to…
Cultivating A Concentrated Mind
Developing concentration and focus is a central goal of many meditation techniques. This post explores some of how we can best accomplish this.
Strange But Harmless Experiences That Can Happen When We Meditate
Meditation often has a reputation for being peaceful bliss, but it can also bring up some unusual experiences as the body and mind are finally able to digest and process things that have been buried. Although they can sometimes be disconcerting, most of the time, such “symptoms” are normal, harmless, and fine.
During What Time of Day is Best to Meditate
A question that some beginner meditators have is, if I have a choice, what time of day should I meditate? The most common choice is first thing in the morning, but there are other options, and various factors to consider.
What If I Don’t Feel Like Meditating
A two minute read on the topic of, what to do if I have meditated and found it valuable, and have some sort of sense that, “I’d like to have it be more a part of my life”, but aren’t doing much of it.
The Most Basic Factors For a Healthy Meditation Posture
In two minutes, here are basic tips for creating a healthy meditation posture.
Meditation Helps Our Happiness Grow Over Time
Meditation may or may not seem to correlate with us being noticeably more happy on a given day, depending on what process our mind is going through. The growth in positive mental states that we get from regularly meditating slowly rises over the years, however.
Sitting Still While Meditating
When we practice meditation, we want to sit as still possible. Generally, the more our body settles down, the more our mind will settle down.
Some Tips for Starting a Personal Home Meditation Practice
You may be someone who feels ready to devote more formal dedicated time to meditation practice and set up a home practice. If so, here are some brief tips for you in doing so.
Meditation Posture When Sitting In A Chair
This post has suggestions for taking a healthy, comfortable posture when meditating in a chair.
Meditating With Eyes Open Or Eyes Closed
A choice that meditators sometimes encounter is whether to practice sitting with our eyes open or closed. I recommend changing it up – sometimes meditating with eyes open and at other times closed – depending on what works best for the situation.
Do You Want To Buy A Meditation Cushion?
For many people establishing a meditation practice, buying a sitting cushion of one’s own is a big moment. Many people find that there is something special about having their own cushion…
The Ceremony Of Meditation
Fifteen years ago, I felt unsettled after reading a transcription of a talk given by one of my Zen teachers, Tenshin Reb Anderson. The piece was entitled “A Ceremony for the Encouragement of Zazen”.
I felt fine about Tenshin Roshi expressing the common Zen teaching that full liberation (and “oneness with the universe”) is not something that we can simply capture or do through our own intentions or efforts, but that we can align with our true place in the cosmos by sitting meditation (called “zazen” in Japanese Zen). What this piece said that I had not heard before, and disliked reading, was the idea that the true meaning of meditation is only realized within the context of a “ceremony”.
What Time Of Day To Meditate, And For How Long
A traditional teaching in the Buddhist lineage is that the best times of day to engage in formal, still meditative practice is first thing in the morning, upon waking up from sleep and before the day gets going, or right before sleeping, as the challenges of another day on Earth wind down and slip away. I personally feel best about the practice of meditating first thing in the morning
Back Support (Or Not) While Meditating
A friend recently emailed me and asked:
I have been running into an insanely simple but complicated problem and wanted to know if you could offer any advice: