How Much Of A Battle Should It Be When Practising Mindfulness?

[Venus]

It seems many things in personal development can be about not actually fighting but relaxing into something. 

But practicing mindfulness always seems an effort and a constant push, like keeping tense a muscle that isn't used to being tense for so long.

Is this how it's supposed to feel at first?

[Dodo]

53 minutes ago, Venus said:

It seems many things in personal development can be about not actually fighting but relaxing into something. 

But practicing mindfulness always seems an effort and a constant push, like keeping tense a muscle that isn't used to being tense for so long.

Is this how it's supposed to feel at first?

Maybe its like learning to walk. After you practise a bit, its the most natural thing.

[TheSophie]

Depends entirely on what kind of state you are in.

I took up mindfulness to counter chronic anxiety attacks, and when I first started (a couple of years ago) I was amazed and delighted that I could find two or three seconds of peace (literally).  Even that was a ray of light.  And I could only practice it for 2 minutes or so.

Stick with it. Relish the small moments. I can now sit for almost as long as I want in complete mental peace.

Remember, there's a reason they call it a 'practice'. Imagine learning to juggle or any other mildly complex activity. It will not be easy, you will drop the balls, you will struggle to juggle two let alone three or four, you will feel like you are making no progress. But keep at it, juggle when you sit on the loo, juggle on the way to work.

Try different techniques. Try labelling more, try labelling less, try not labelling, try counting breaths, try labelling parts of breaths (start,in,stop,hold,start,out,stop,hold), try holding the out-breath until your mind it momentarily clear, try smiling each time a bad thought comes up, try different lengths of sitting (when my mind is stressed it can take 15 mins before it starts to get super calm.)

[Azrael]

2 hours ago, Venus said:

Is this how it's supposed to feel at first?

With mindfulness and meditation in general it's very weired in the beginning because you don't really know whether you are doing it right or how it's supposed to feel. Well, it'll feel every kind of way you can and can't imagine along the journey, so that at some point you stop asking this question.

There'll be times at which it will feel very tensed in your body and especially your head and it seems like you really have to make an effort just to sit. There'll be times at which you just sit and everything happens automatically. This'll ping pong in cycles for some time and you'll be introduced to deeper and deeper levels of this throughout.

So just keep on the show and watch. Everything that happens is just fine. One secret I wanna give away though is this:

You probably try right now to always look that you don't lose your attention and that's what makes you so tensed right now. Cuz you wanna be mindful, right? Well, it'll take some time but at some point you'll realize that the holding of attention and trying to not get in thought stories is itself just a thought or let's say a game you play with yourself.

So what you could do you eliminate a lot of suffering is simply sit and when nothing is on your mind recognize that. Simply be aware that you are empty right now. You are anyway. Don't try to hold it or try to not have thoughts. Simply recognize that you are empty. As soon as another thought story comes up and catches you, you'll automatically lose your awareness and go through the thoughts. At some point you'll get aware again that there are thoughts. When this happens simply be aware again that you are empty and conscious. And this will happen dozen of times. Don't try to not lose awareness or to not have thoughts. This is still neurotic because you think you could decide what happens next. Well, you can't and you'll find that out throughout the practice.

That's why you are aware and conscious when you are being given the moment for that and you are lost in fairytale when that is happening. Take it as it comes and you'll have a wonderful practice.

Cheers