The Number One Rule of Meditation is: DO IT YOUR WAY.

in #meditation6 years ago (edited)

An important rule of mindfulness is to follow your instincts in the beginning.

Don’t let some other person’s idea of meditation interfere with a practice that makes you feel good. You can meditate (or practice mindfulness) in any way that suits you.

The words that we use - “meditate,” “mindfulness,” etc, these are shortcuts that help us communicate, but they shouldn’t limit us in any arbitrary way. If you have a mindfulness practice that doesn’t fall into traditional methods, that is cool.

I think many people get caught up in the technicalities of mindfulness. They want to “do it right” as opposed to just getting started.

The truth is that there isn’t much of a “right way” to be learned, other than a few of the absolute basics for meditation. If you want to do traditional meditation, all you do have to do is sit perfectly still and focus on your breath (usually through your nose) for 10 mins. And that’s not the only way to start practicing mindfulness, you could use the even easier gratitude priming exercise.

What matters is simply to do something if you feel the urge to. Many people want more mindfulness and calm in their lives… and I want them to know it’s accessible. These “mental exercises” exist and many apps are around for your favorite flavor of mindfulness methodology.

I’m not saying that mindfulness or meditation are absolute cures for anything, but I do think “mental exercise” is somewhat like physical exercise. If nothing is too wrong with your natural body or mind, this kind of exercise makes you stronger and can pull you up into the zone of a natural good mood more often.

If anybody tells you you’re doing it wrong, don’t worry about it. You may strive to get the definitions right for clarity’s sake i.e. “meditation” has certain definitions, but DO whatever thing you want to do.

All words aside, you can just do any mindfulness practice for a few minutes a day and its better than nothing.

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Hey Matt, as a musician who meditates, do you consider listening to music intensely with your eyes closed in the dark mindfulness?

It's certainly a mindful way of listening. Reminds me of how some people focus on mindful eating, the idea of not looking at a phone or TV while eating food alone.

I do enjoy that kind of listening sometimes, but even for me it's not so common.

Regardless I think theres a big difference between "mindfulness" and "meditation," which imo has to involve sitting still without external stimuli. Once you start moving and/or having stimulus (other than a sparse spoken "guide"), to me that becomes a mindfulness practice that is not meditation as far as I define it.

Thanks Matt!

I remember reading something decades ago that compared the bio-physical effects of TM vs listening to music in the dark, and the bottom line was that they were similar. It might have been Psychology Today, but I'm not sure.

So far I'm been able to listen to music and be mindful in some situations, but I don't have the feeling that I've ever properly meditated -- it wasn't for lack of trying ;-)

I can appreciate this. I live in a town where, if you don't do TM, you don't know how to meditate. I have yet to be impressed by any of these people, haha.

Ugh I'm not a fan of TM from what I have heard. Nothing against it but it seems like they insist on irrational spiritual stuff and respecting the "guru" as a special person of some kind and thats a hard pass for me

Agreed. And everyone that does it seems to get glazed over eyes when they start talking about it. :/
I'm like, NO THANKS, zombie!

So much right you are .
Good write . i appireciate your work

@therealwolf 's created platform smartsteem scammed my post this morning (mothersday) that was supposed to be for an Abused Childrens Charity. Dude literally stole from abused children that don't have mothers ... on mothersday.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@prometheusrisen/beware-of-smartsteem-scam

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