Which Meditation Technique Do You Currently Practice?

[Naviy]

Which meditation technique do you currently practice? Are you satisfied with it? For how long do you do one session?

Meditation techniques' names are mostly listed based on Leo's videos.

I currently use Do Nothing meditation for 41 minutes 1 sit every day.

I also think it is useful to switch techniques. I believe, that one of the most effective switches is between Do Nothing and Mindfulness meditations.

But Do Nothing is so simple, it's hard for me currently to change it )

I think, what Do Nothing teaches the best, is to tolerate any kind of your mind activity. After several months of this practice, you are ok with any state of your mind (well, not ANY, but still, you are much more tolerant to your mind activity). You become ok with the thinking mind and imagining mind. You let it go. You are ok with not being mindful even (however, you often become mindful automatically). By not touching your mind, instead of editing it all the time, you surprisingly become more detached from it.

I think it's not a bad combination with my current Self Acceptance practice also.

[Raquel]

I personally practice transcendental meditation combined with my own version of meditation that I discovered that works for me the best.

Transcendental meditation is basically the silent repetition of a mantra that your TM teacher gives you in a week course.. of course there is more to understand than that. This meditation is practiced 20min twice a day. 

Before jumping into a meditation I start with my eyes open for several minutes and breathing deeply to settle my mind in. 

I found that the mantra helps me to focus my awareness for the first 15 min of my meditation when I feel more unsettled..  then I stop using mantra at all.. (Unless my mind is really active that day). After more or less this period of time my focus becomes the space between my eyebrows .with the head slightly upwards.

If im in a public space or waiting somewhere and there is noise around me I like to listen binaural beats

 

[Saarah]

@Naviy thats helpful to know that it helps you detach from your mind, I'm using do nothing too as it's the easiest to get started with and I sometimes wonder if it's doing anything for me

[Naviy]

@Saarah

If you want to see more obvious results of Do Nothing, I'd suggest you this. Apply your skill of Doing Nothing to your thoughts and emotions during the day. For example, when you notice some negative thought web is happening and triggering emotions in the body, you consciously make a choice to Do Nothing with it. Do not edit it, and also even do not try to be mindful of it. Let it be as it is 100%. Do not try to edit your reactions to it too. Do not try to stop or edit the stream of thoughts. Do not try to not to fall asleep into thoughts. Let your mind do everything it wants, whatever it wants. If then confusion happens, or you become very mindful, or you fall asleep into thoughts, or desire to control appears, or whatever - you consciously make a choice Do Nothing with all of it. For example, if a web of thoughts and emotions appear that say "I have no idea, if there is any sense in this stupid Do Nothing thing" - make a conscious choice to Do Nothing with it too. Let these thoughts happen as they want. Let yourself dive into fantasies about it. Let yourself become mindless. Let next thoughts appear. Let judgement appear.

With time you will develop an ability to Do Nothing with more and more different kinds thoughts and emotions. You will start to notice your automatic habits to control particular thought patterns and emotions. Then you will even see, how funny and stupid this desire to control is, and it will drop. Try to Do Nothing with everything, with every object, with every movement of your will, with every intention, with every thought, with every emotion, with every knowledge, with every memory. When you fail to do some mental exercise, including the one I mentioned here - you Do Nothing with all the thoughts and emotions that come because of it. But also, do not try to force it. Do it a little bit. Just a little bit. Only when it happens with you by itself. You almost do not do it at all. It's ok if this will happen to you once in 3 days or once in 2 weeks, or whatever. This is not an intense practice. Your main practice is the formal Do Nothing meditation, which you do every day. The formal meditation will do the thing. Again - when you accidentaly become mindful of something, then you Do Nothing with it and with the fact of noticing it. Even just remembering about this message after reading it (the remembering will happen automatically), and not even trying to do the exercise, will work.

And also, watch the latest Leo's videos about dropping "should" and "should not"'s. You do not have to be mindful. Use Leo's technique from those videos - "I should not be more mindful", "I should not develop my skill of meditation", etc. Take the current moment as perfection. What is in the current moment - is the only thing that should be. It is the best thing, the most perfect. Nothing esle should be. So, when you are not mindful, and when you do not see the results of you practices, you will not judge yourself for it. And with no-judgement much better results will come.

 

 

 

 

[Saarah]

@Naviy Thank you! That's great advice, it's also very powerful to notice that everything is as it should be with my thoughts too as I've watched half of that video but I never thought about applying the attitude in my meditation and with my own thoughts too! I shall do nothing with everything I come across 

[ZenBlue]

I just started the watching the awareness meditation. I started out from do nothing, then transitioned to letting go of my thoughts, and now just started watching awareness. I still don't really know what it means to watch my awareness, and if I'm even doing it right. I'm going to focus more on the question: what is awareness? during the session.

Edited June 12, 2016 by ZenBlue

[Zane]

I don't meditate often but i've experimented with guided meditation, breathing, and mindfulness meditation. I feel like if I make meditation a habit, I will use a variety of meditation techniques.