1. Take your phone and set a 1 hour timer.
2. Put your phone in a table drawer or in a box or anywhere not easily accessible is fine.
3. Close your room door.
4. Just wait for the timer to ring. That's it.
5. Don't read books, don't do any art, nothing.
6. Initially you'll be thinking. It's ok.
7. You'll get bored. It's ok.
8. You'll try out various meditation techniques like breath awareness, mantra, noting, etc. it's ok.
9. You'll again go back to thinking non stop. It's ok.
10. You'll be switching between meditative states and non meditative states. It's ok.
11. Just wait and do nothing.
12. Don't try to force yourself to meditate. It'll happen on its own.
13. You'll be sitting on the floor, pacing around in the room, sitting on a chair, leaning on the wall, etc. It's ok.
14. You'll be going through phases of deep insight and concentration. Sometimes you'll go through non stop brain fog. It's ok.
15. Most importantly - DON'T SLEEP. Retain consciousness. Don't let go of your awareness into sleep. Sleep is also relaxation but it's a different phase of mind - not exactly meditation.
16. If you constantly feel sleepy during this time- it's an indication that your sleep quality is not good. You've obtained a good insight on your life. Please work on that too over time.
17. Enjoy your journey. Just waiting is also a state of meditation 🙂
18. Pro tip - when the alarm rings and you get startled, it means you were lost in thought at that particular moment. If you were meditative during that moment, you'd effortlessly notice the sounds around you. So you'll notice the rise of alarm sound too. It's ok 😉

This is basically a mini retreat. You can try for longer times like 2-3 hours too. But for practicality sake I would say 1 hour is good. Any lesser like 30 min is also ok but you might still be in the mind-chatter phase when alarm rings. But it's ok even 1 min is better than 0 min.

Of course people also do longer stuff like 10 days or some like 3 months but I believe it's better to do these outdoors in nature like at a river bank or a forest. Indoor retreats for 10 days sounds like inviting insanity into life haha.

This also helps train your willpower, discipline and 'letting go', along with general awareness of your own mind.

Enjoy your journey. Please do give this a try 🙏

I have been doing zen Buddhist meditation for 5 minutes a day and find I am noticing so much about the people around me that I never noticed before. I have noticed that the people around me all seem very closed, or have a negative perception of me, or seem to be manipulating me in some way. It's confusing as I never noticed this before so I don't know whether I am misinterpreting or just noticing. It's mind-blowing and lonely. I think because of my past behaviours this is how people are with me and it's painful to see. Or maybe I've surrounded myself with a certain type of person idk. Anyone had a similar experience, or has any thoughts or advice? I'm going to continue as I want to be more aware but it's kind of scary, what will I notice next?

Hello fellow meditaters!

I ran into something that piqued my interest:

Using noise canceling headphones to meditate.

A few of the experiences were surprising. Basically the theme was that noise canceling headphones ramp up the awareness... profoundly for some.

And of course it is a crutch to a degree but better to meditate with a crutch than not. "I experienced self-realization but it didn't count because of my headphones".

Yogis meditate in secluded places for a reason.

I (22M) feel like I can’t connect with people or feel emotions toward them. Honestly, it feels like I can’t feel emotions at all.

For example, I recently went out to lunch with friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in months. Normally, someone might feel excited or happy to see them. Me? Nothing. No excitement, no joy, no sadness—just nothing. It’s like I’m a robot. I can’t show appreciation, can’t feel empathy, and I can’t connect with friends.

During the entire lunch, I was dull. Nothing came to my mind. I just sat there, neutral 😐. No matter what anyone said, I felt nothing. Even when I spoke, it felt forced and insincere because there were no emotions behind it.

I feel like I could cut anyone out of my life without feeling a thing—no sadness, no guilt, nothing.

The only time I feel any kind of different emotion is before or after a gym session. I guess it’s because of the endorphins from working out. That’s the only time I feel “good.” Other than that, when I’m around people, it’s like I’m just a spectator in life. Life happens to others, not me.

The only other time I feel alive and present is when I’m high.

I don’t even have negative thoughts anymore (I used to struggle with self-hate and sadness). Now, it’s just pure neutral nothingness.

This lack of emotions is preventing me from connecting with people, and I feel like I can’t even try to start a relationship.

Am I sick? Is this some kind of condition?

Lately, I find myself...

Bearing witness to how meditation is a gateway to reprogram my wiring.

i was wondering what you guys would want in a meditation app and what type of content you prefer (zazen, manifestation)? i found that many apps are overwhelming and have messy UI.

I was joining s group meditation online so I hang a “Do not Disturb” poster on my door. It was already on the middle of the meditation, when my mother still called me for a very trivial matter despite the post on the door. I tried to ignore it at first but the call keeps getting louder and louder. I stopped joining the group meditation since I was disturbed already. Now I’m terribly upset and angry. I already confronted my mother but she got angry at me too saying that I prioritise other people than them. She keeps on saying things that suddenly I’m now the bad person for not responding immediately. I know that I should just let this go but I wanted to share to unburden myself a little and hoping to also get insights from fellow meditators when they encountered something like this.

Hello, first off, I didn't mean to post a novel here, but I feel like all I've written below is very pertinent to the story and you guys should know where I'm coming from and why this is a huge deal to me. To those of you looking for a quick read, sorry.

I have been a long time atheist and skeptic. I used to be judgy and egotistical about it, but these days I think much differently. I'm much more open-minded to other people's beliefs and respect them whether what they believe is a common belief or way "out there". I enjoy listening as long as someone's not actively trying to convert me.

I'm also heavily into meditation, which has saved my life from addiction, depression, and anxiety. The techniques I've learned are mostly Western/ new age , some of which I made up myself or modified to work better for my purposes. but I'm starting to delve into some Buddhist reading. I've barely started and I've already found a lot of things that speak to me. I'm also getting familiar with chakras, which have been very useful even if I don't believe in them in a literal sense.

I consider myself a spiritual person, but I don't really believe in a god, supernatural entities/ghosts, the soul, or anything non-physical or non-scientific. Some of you might be wondering, how can you be a spiritual person and not believe in the spirit? Well, I live my life to the best of my ability according to spiritual principles like honesty, compassion, humility, open-mindedness, etc.

Every once in awhile, things in my life will come together in a certain way, or I'll experience something during meditation that just makes me go, "huh. That was weird."

A few days ago something amazing, and confusing to a person like me, happened during a very deep session. I was using a technique I learned from my close friend and teacher where I ground my root chakra while opening my crown chakra up wide, also concentrating on my heart Chakra in between... sort of making myself a conduit between the Earth and a visualized Sun above my head. Holding my mind open , I feel connected to the universe , the unknown, everything, it's hard to describe. It's extremely difficult for me to achieve this state, especially since I have major problems with concentration and focus.

While I was in this open state the other day, I had a moment of intuition where I suddenly knew the answer to a spiritual problem I'd been having. This felt like my own thought, sort of a message from my subconscious. Amazing to me, but nothing supernatural.

A couple days later, I managed to do this meditation again. As I was sitting there with my mind open, I felt like I should ask a question. To myself, or to who, I don't know. It was a compulsion. Regarding a serious personal matter and the solution I had decided on, I asked if I am on the right path. And then sat still and listened. Before too long an image came into my head. Sort of cartoony, a strange character behind a transparent wall, reaching his hand through. Space/stars behind him. Seems cryptic, but the image came with an instant understanding of exactly what it meant. It didn't exactly answer my question, but it definitely told me something important. Sorry I'm not sharing that exact knowledge here. I also had a feeling of euphoria, and became incredibly emotional and nearly broke down crying. The image went away quickly, but the knowledge didn't. Memory of that image soon became foggy, and I've been working to reconstruct it and get it down on paper. Very difficult.

The first time, it felt like my own intuition, a thought from my own head. This time, however, I had the distinct feeling that this image, and the knowledge that came with it, came from somewhere else.

I have no idea what to think or believe about this. It's blowing my mind even several days later, and I feel like this was a true spiritual experience that I can't deny, and may change my beliefs forever. For now though, I'm still just processing it.

I wanted to share this with all of you, and I'm hoping that somebody had a similar experience that I can relate to. Thanks for reading through, I hope it was worth it.

Sometimes I think I get defensive against being present in the moment because I think that my thought is important. What’s the difference between meaningfully thinking something through and having a thought? I get ideas all the time and a lot of the time they feel important.

The parts of the minds that love to measure the world out by the inch, sort it into little labelled boxes, and constantly chart our perceived progress through it so that it may compare itself to all others, those parts seem to absolutely love numbers. I have no issue with the wonderful and vast field known as mathematics, but the relationship the modern meditator has with numbers and quantity is a difficult one. I'm sure we have all jostled with this urge to quantify. Meditation apps, habit apps, they are all about numbers and streaks. Well done, you have meditated for 432 days in a row, for an average of 8 minutes a day. Your sleep quality was 76%. You walked 2742 steps today. Your IQ is 98. You are 32 years old. Fine when one is counting beans, but difficult when one is measuring a vast experience like sleep, like intelligence, like meditation, it is like measuring the quality of a book by the number of words that are inside it. These things are helpful for the sake of comparison, but not for true description.

Yet when it comes to minds, I do not feel these fall under the comparable category. After all, the only mind we can claim to know is our own, and even then, it is bold to claim to know one's own mind in totality. So this is the paradox of modern meditation. We can't help but measure our sittings in time. Yet it demands us to enter states of mind more concerned with analysis and measurement than thoughtless attention. Social life is ordered in time routines so we must shape our sessions into available slots.

A meditation teacher once asked me: in an hour's sitting, how many times does your attention wander from your breath awareness? To answer I had to make up an approximate number, as of course I had not been counting, and it would feel wrong to count, to sit with your mind split in two, one half absorbed in the breath, the other half tracking great spreadsheets of information for some future report.

Comparing our modern age with 3000 years ago, the time of Guatama Buddha, it was a of course a different time. And one key great difference in that time would be their relationship to time, and how they measured a sitting session. There are stories of using incense sticks: when the stick burnt out, the sitting was over. Also stories of using sun angles to chart a passage of time, using animals. The relationship humanity would have had with Time would have been equal partners, rather than today's relationship, in which we have attempted to capture, enslave, and totally subjugate Time. These older practices feel like far gentler shackles to place upon a formless experience than setting a timer for 40 minutes, which can at times, feel in everyway a prison. We chain time to us and are chained by it in return.

When I have the (time), I love to use ancient methods like this. To sit until a candle burns out. Until the sun goes down. Until the birds begin to sing. I find my mind is less divided between the Witness and the Auditor.

I have no clear point, point of advice, or item to sell you on this, but it is a challenge I feel best is acknowledged and confronted as a key feature of this modern age. What are your thoughts?

Hey everyone,

I've been meditating more consistently lately, aiming for twice a day without a fixed duration for it as I feel that might defeat the purpose of the practice. During my sessions, I often reach a state of both nothingness and everything, but sometimes it can be challenging to come out of it (it takes a bit of time and often when I try to come out of it I end up staying in that state for longer because I am able to go deeper).

Recently, I've had a couple of unique experiences during meditation that I’m curious about:

1. I felt a significant amount of energy in my hands.
2. During another session, it felt like my entire world had tilted to the right, even though I was sitting centered with my spine straight.

I've been working on proper sitting posture to avoid leaking energy through my hands and feet. When I mentioned these experiences to my teacher, he responded positively, saying such things are common in meditation and can inspire deeper practice.

While I understand the importance of letting go, I’d love to hear your insights or similar experiences. What do you think these sensations mean? Any advice on how to navigate these moments would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

I've been meditating for 2 years now but i haven't been taking it as siriously as the last 5 months that i have been doing it every day for 30 to 40 min a day , sometimes i do it twice, it's helping me with my tbi(tramatic brain injury that i had 3 years ago), and with my spitual growth and journey.

I do deep breathing to relax, followed with a body scan to bring my self present, and then i do breath concentration or mantra meditation. it's been going good for the first months i feel calmer and relxed, i feel the silence and i get some valuable insights occasionally, in general i feel diffrent positively after.

This last month or two i feel like i am stuck, i don't feel as much diffrence, my mind is even more active without a reason, and i only feel the effects for 5 minutes after the meditation and then my mind just goes back to normal state, i try to keep the mindfulness and the state as much as i can but it just doesn't work anymore.

Is this normal? It's seems like i am not doing any progress anymore, should i increase the duration? Because i know for a fact that my technique is fine. Please help if you can, and share your experiences in the comments bellow and let's discuss.

I used to struggle to meditate longer than five minutes. Then I attended this free retreat.

Check out my video about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRARYXThx7k

Hello EveRyone. Any chance of some advice please:)

Meditation or mindfulness has been suggested to me to help with intrusive thoughts on more than one occasion.

Bit, I struggle with it. I can’t seem to establish a practice of doing it each day - I just don’t think about it and only later during the day I recognise that I’be missed doing it. And there is when I actually do it - I struggle to not run away in thoughts and when the timer goes off, I think that all that I’ve done is to think about things during that time.

Part of me really wants to do it and sees the benefits of it. I’d love to be able to just sit and be and feel the love of it.

Has anyone got any tips or any advice please.

I've been on this meditation journey, albeit sporadically, for the better part of a year.

My life experience hasn't been a generally positive one and I struggle a lot of times to look on the brighter side. Meditation has been fantastic at showing me some very positive things but connecting to it daily has been a great challenge.

My focus at work is fairly poor, and I find myself more often than not being self deprecating because of this fact. It's not intentional, but it's definitely present. This adds to an already stacked deck of things to be negative and pessimistic over.

During one of these scenarios I made the conscious effort to connect with the positive sensations of the body; the kinda effervescent mist I feel throughout my body. I immediately felt a change in mental state and my focus became effortless; what a fantastic turn of events!

But I wonder, as practitioners shouldn't we allow both positive and negative equally? Have I, through mountain of evidence I've compiled of my incompetence, withheld myself from feeling positive emotions suggesting the contrary? Any similar experiences out there? Comments? Suggestions?

Thanks, and much love

Was wondering the likelihood of achieving a lucid dream when sleeping during a meditation session. Thanks!

Meditation this evening during a Chill December rainstorm in the cold Midwest United States. As I closed my eyes I had multiple of colors started to spin these colors turned in a geometric pattern as looking into a kaleidoscope but the rotation is as fast it will go. As it spinning little chubby tentacles replace the geometric spinning origami best way to visualize. All stayed spinning as the tentacles appeared it like a starfish mouth appeared \ ◇ / sharp with north to south diamond 》○《all the rest of it was octopus tentacles /◇\ spinning in a clock spiral direction from the center every single part of this Oz creature pink tentacles with spikes then as it appears it spinning in this vortex of thought.
This was terrified. I been doing some hours on my meditation belt. When this says hi. I didn't not close my eyes again I was terrified. Once I got home and did some research found out about The OZ octopus . This is scary and awesome at the same time. Crazy and cool at the same time. Consciousness is wild

Boredom is the biggest hurdle. Mind wants content to chew. Make boredom a content amd the content. Let's see how

A content

Impersonally feel it's scratches, feel it's anatomy, feel the bubble, once if u feel it's bubbleness, look for effort. ..

The content

Mind loves effort. Trap the effort. When I say ' look for effort' it is a paradox I want u to oscillate. Boredom doesn't need effort it comes to u effortlessly . Trust me whenever u ask ur mind to take some effort to dwell on the effortless it sucks it up darn well. Js keep oscillating from the effort to effortless (called as The flow of optimal experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi )

20 years meditating and MA in Divinity from Naropa U . . . AMA

Hi all..

Recently I saw a post on Instagram about Vipassana. I am a novice meditator. I wanted to know more about this and if I was eligible to undergo the course. If yes, where do I apply. Can females do it too? Can anyone tell me how vipassana works and who can participate in it?

Thanks in advance