layman's intro to meditation
first of all I am not an enlightened master, or a sage or a guru, I am just someone who has practiced meditation for a few years, struggled to find down to earth practical information about it but still gained a lot of benefits from the practice - so now I want to share what worked for me and what did not
to start meditating we need only one thing - we need an experience and with that I don't mean knowledge or anything mystical, I am referring to everything you see, hear (even thoughts) and feel right now in this moment.
now I expect everyone reading this has that so we can continue to choose what we want to watch
we can watch everything or just one thing, or few things, the only important part here is that we know that we are watching that thing (we don't have to talk about it to know it but we can)
to explain further what I wanted to say with "know that you are watching the thing" an example of the opposite could be useful - when you are playing a video game, or watching a show how you feel time simply passes away and you almost don't remember anything you did those last few hours just like you were asleep
I recommend choosing physical sensations related to breath as a starting point only because that's what people have been doing for ages so we have some information on what we could expect if we do that and those sensations pretty much never go away till you die
maybe it would be good to clarify that a sensation is one thing you experience it can be a moment long or for years, like when you touch your head you feel a slight pressure where your hand is and that pressure would be a sensation
okey so now you are breathing and you know you are breathing - what happens next is that you forget that you were supposed to know that you are breathing and you get lost in thoughts and fantasies and that's when you win the little game of meditation - because when you say I forgot or I got lost in thought what actually happens is "I realized I got lost in thought, I forgot" and then you should reward yourself with a slight smile continue doing the same loop over and over because that's how we train the mind in the beginning to even remember to stay in the here and now
then you get good at that, it stops being challenging and you become bored in that situation you have three option
either you
a) sit with the boredom - just do the same thing for the experience of boredom
b) you try to simple activities like washing the dishes, walking or stretching while focusing on the breath and then upgrade in complexity (do full workout, have a conversation, work...) as it gets easier
c) or you investigate the breath to develop deeper concentration - definitely the option I would recommend simply because it's the most fun for me personally
to develop deeper concentration I usually use two things together - "how do I know I am breathing" and games (everyone loves games ei)
let's say you have done the basic method for a few minutes and you got bored, now you start doing the "how do I even know I am breathing method" in which you focus on the parts of your experience that let you know you are breathing (the sound, sensations of air flowing in the nostrils and thru the body, chest/stomach raising and falling...) and then you pick one - for example nostrils and you try to decipher all the little sensations that build that one sensation of breathing in or breathing out. now the sensations of the breath have probably became a bit subtler as your concentration deepens but if it still isn't fun enough we start using some games like counting breaths
you count breath by breathing in and when you breath out you count that as 1 and you go till 8 and you and then you go back to zero, the goal of the game is to catch yourself forgetting the breath or if we can go a bit deeper right now - even your attention sliding from the breath
then after a few of those (or just when it gets boring) you go back to "how do I know I am breathing" to try and notice the difference in breath sensations before and after playing the little game (that also deepens concentration and trains discernment)
then you can cycle between "how do I know..." and a few other games (about which I will write in another post) until you start experiencing pleasant sensations like (joy, weird happiness or something like that) and that is when the real fun begins - but again I will have to fit that to into another post
thank you for reading