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Meditating isn't magic, and it's not hard. It's just practicing exercises that can have an effect on your mental state, when you do them often enough you can en

Meditating isn't magic, and it's not hard. It's just practicing exercises that can have an effect on your mental state, when you do them often enough you can end up training yourself to have more control over your mental state. You don't have to "get meditation right" to be able to be doing it. When you meditate your mind will wander, that's normal, when you meditate you may not become relaxed, that's normal, when you meditate you may not be able to let go of anxious or panic inducing thoughts, that's normal. The trick to meditation is doing it anyway and not having expectations about it, which, ironically, is how you get better at it and you get better at letting go of unwanted thoughts and at settling your mind into calmness, etc. This article is nothing but a description of one way to meditate. If you are turned off of the idea of meditation because of some preconceived notion of what it is or how it works I would highly suggest you re-evaluate and look into it again, it's one of the most helpful life tools that anyone can have, and absolutely anyone can do it.

sonnhy 8y ago
Do you have any suggestions of where to start off?
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  Headspace is a nice app that does some timed guided meditation - you can start by aiming to do five minutes each night. It's free for some level of use, I don't remember the restrictions but the free version is definitely enough to begin a decent meditation habit.
- mushka 8y ago
  I'm not sure what I'm going to say will be helpful, but this is my experience: knowing myself, there is absolutely no way I could've done it alone. I went to some sort of camp for couple of days, where there is nothing to do but meditate. At the beginning not only I thought that it's too hard for me to do, but that it's simply impossible. After the first 2 days it went better. It's not magic, but it does have a very positive effect on my life. The way I see it it's like any other sport: it's very hard to get yourself to start, but it's amazing how fast you're getting better
- thorin 8y ago
  Insight timer is a good free app. I had some free time recently and need to get away so I did a 1 week mindfulness retreat which I found very helpful. I was finding it hard to stick with it since returning but the app gives me a little structure to work with and I'm enjoying it so far.
- Deinos 8y ago
  I found this blog post (http://drewscanlon.com/meditation-for-beginners/ http://drewscanlon.com/meditation-for-beginners/) from Drew Scanlon to be helpful. He used to be a member of the Giantbomb team and discussed his experience with meditation on their podcast. He wrote the post after they received an influx of email about the aforementioned discussion. It was nice to see meditation described by an amateur practitioner; I found the advice useful, and it spurred additional interest.
- avtar 8y ago
  A pragmatic guide, that's been mentioned on HN a few times, is 'The Mind Illuminated' [0]. The subreddit [1] is a great resource as well. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Complete-Meditation-Integrating/dp/0990847705 https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Complete-Meditation-... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/
- oski 8y ago
  “The Mindful Geek” by Michael Taft is great for someone with a programming background. I think you can download it for free from his website.
thisisit 8y ago
I have been meditating for 6 months now and the actual breakthrough came with the realization that meditation was not about "doing" rather "letting it be". So, no more struggling with trying to calm my mind and rather letting things be as they are. Now while I have gotten better, there are days when I struggle but now there is no more frustration about things not working. Some of my friends and colleagues ask me what is meditation and how to start? And I always say it is about focus and being present. A good example is listening to music - when you are listening and focusing on the beats and thinking about nothing else, you are in a meditative state. Or even eating food. A good one is Raisin meditation - https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/raisin_meditation https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/raisin_meditation And then people can build from there to a no-external help meditation and focus on breathing etc.
pbhjpbhj 8y ago
I suspect a problem lies in the terminology, people often think meditation means solely "transcendental meditation" wherein the object is to completely empty the mind. But meditation covers several distinct mental disciplines. When the Bible says "meditate on the Law" it's definitely not intending one to empty or still one's mind: there are 2 types of meditation in the OT at least 1) involving repetition to oneself, or muttering; 2) involving prayerful consideration. Two different OT Hebrew words, at least, being translated as "meditate". NB I've not studied these in depth. So even in this very limited field one sees this term is, perhaps unhelpfully, overloaded.

sonnhy 8y ago

Do you have any suggestions of where to start off?

lazyasciiart 8y ago
Headspace is a nice app that does some timed guided meditation - you can start by aiming to do five minutes each night. It's free for some level of use, I don't remember the restrictions but the free version is definitely enough to begin a decent meditation habit.
mushka 8y ago
I'm not sure what I'm going to say will be helpful, but this is my experience: knowing myself, there is absolutely no way I could've done it alone. I went to some sort of camp for couple of days, where there is nothing to do but meditate. At the beginning not only I thought that it's too hard for me to do, but that it's simply impossible. After the first 2 days it went better. It's not magic, but it does have a very positive effect on my life. The way I see it it's like any other sport: it's very hard to get yourself to start, but it's amazing how fast you're getting better
thorin 8y ago
Insight timer is a good free app. I had some free time recently and need to get away so I did a 1 week mindfulness retreat which I found very helpful. I was finding it hard to stick with it since returning but the app gives me a little structure to work with and I'm enjoying it so far.
Deinos 8y ago
I found this blog post (http://drewscanlon.com/meditation-for-beginners/ http://drewscanlon.com/meditation-for-beginners/) from Drew Scanlon to be helpful. He used to be a member of the Giantbomb team and discussed his experience with meditation on their podcast. He wrote the post after they received an influx of email about the aforementioned discussion. It was nice to see meditation described by an amateur practitioner; I found the advice useful, and it spurred additional interest.
avtar 8y ago
A pragmatic guide, that's been mentioned on HN a few times, is 'The Mind Illuminated' [0]. The subreddit [1] is a great resource as well. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Complete-Meditation-Integrating/dp/0990847705 https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Illuminated-Complete-Meditation-... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMindIlluminated/
oski 8y ago
“The Mindful Geek” by Michael Taft is great for someone with a programming background. I think you can download it for free from his website.

thisisit 8y ago

I have been meditating for 6 months now and the actual breakthrough came with the realization that meditation was not about "doing" rather "letting it be". So, no more struggling with trying to calm my mind and rather letting things be as they are. Now while I have gotten better, there are days when I struggle but now there is no more frustration about things not working. Some of my friends and colleagues ask me what is meditation and how to start? And I always say it is about focus and being present. A good example is listening to music - when you are listening and focusing on the beats and thinking about nothing else, you are in a meditative state. Or even eating food. A good one is Raisin meditation - https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/raisin_meditation https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/raisin_meditation And then people can build from there to a no-external help meditation and focus on breathing etc.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago

I suspect a problem lies in the terminology, people often think meditation means solely "transcendental meditation" wherein the object is to completely empty the mind. But meditation covers several distinct mental disciplines. When the Bible says "meditate on the Law" it's definitely not intending one to empty or still one's mind: there are 2 types of meditation in the OT at least 1) involving repetition to oneself, or muttering; 2) involving prayerful consideration. Two different OT Hebrew words, at least, being translated as "meditate". NB I've not studied these in depth. So even in this very limited field one sees this term is, perhaps unhelpfully, overloaded.