If meditation seems a good idea, but .....

[Annemieke]

If you would like to try meditation, but you
• can’t - or won’t - sit in the lotus position
• can’t - or won’t - empty your mind
• can’t - or won’t spend much time on it
• are not religious, or put off by oriental hocus-pocus
Don’t worry - these things are not necessary at all! On the contrary: they may well be counter-productive.
Whenever the word ‘meditation’ comes up, it is accompanied by a picture of an attractive young person, sitting cross-legged, preferably on a beach. Oh dear. You can meditate in ANY position, provided you are comfortable. I have meditated for years sitting in a chair, with good lower back support. And these days I do my favourite: walking meditation.
So many are put off by the idea that you have to ‘empty your mind’. Emptying your mind is impossible! The harder you try, the more full it gets.
Meditating is actually easy: whenever your mind wanders, as it is bound to do, just gently steer it back, time and again. And again. Without worrying. Without telling it off. It doesn’t matter at all.

Here are a few nice websites for beginners: just experiment.
http://theconsciouslife.com/best-med...-beginners.htm. Ignore the pic!
http://www.stress-relief-tools.com/b...technique.html
http://aboutmeditation.com/common-me...st-meditation/ Ignore the pic!
https://www.everyday-mindfulness.org...itation-myths/
http://thedailymeditation.com
http://www.bexlife.com/2015/06/3-med...for-beginners/

If sitting still, even in a chair, is a problem, try Walking Meditation:
https://jackkornfield.com/walking-meditation-2/
https://www.meditationoasis.com/how-...ng-meditation/
http://www.wildmind.org/walking/overview
https://www.verywell.com/use-walking...relief-3144792
http://howtobehappy.guru/what-is-walking-meditation/

Or you can do ‘Mindfulness Meditation’, which means simply paying attention to whatever you are experiencing at that moment. It can be done while brushing your teeth, driving or washing up.
For a beginners technique see https://www.verywell.com/mindfulness-meditation-88369.

Just experiment - play around! It may be the best thing you’ve done this year.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Annemieke

If you would like to try meditation, but you
• can’t - or won’t - sit in the lotus position
• can’t - or won’t - empty your mind
• can’t - or won’t spend much time on it
• are not religious, or put off by oriental hocus-pocus
Don’t worry - these things are not necessary at all! On the contrary: they may well be counter-productive.
Whenever the word ‘meditation’ comes up, it is accompanied by a picture of an attractive young person, sitting cross-legged, preferably on a beach. Oh dear. You can meditate in ANY position, provided you are comfortable.

Why does it have to be comfortable?

I have meditated for years sitting in a chair, with good lower back support. And these days I do my favourite: walking meditation.
So many are put off by the idea that you have to ‘empty your mind’. Emptying your mind is impossible! The harder you try, the more full it gets.
Meditating is actually easy: whenever your mind wanders, as it is bound to do, just gently steer it back, time and again. And again. Without worrying. Without telling it off. It doesn’t matter at all.

Here are a few nice websites for beginners: just experiment.
http://theconsciouslife.com/best-med...-beginners.htm. Ignore the pic!
http://www.stress-relief-tools.com/b...technique.html
http://aboutmeditation.com/common-me...st-meditation/ Ignore the pic!
https://www.everyday-mindfulness.org...itation-myths/
http://thedailymeditation.com
http://www.bexlife.com/2015/06/3-med...for-beginners/

If sitting still, even in a chair, is a problem, try Walking Meditation:
https://jackkornfield.com/walking-meditation-2/
https://www.meditationoasis.com/how-...ng-meditation/
http://www.wildmind.org/walking/overview
https://www.verywell.com/use-walking...relief-3144792
http://howtobehappy.guru/what-is-walking-meditation/

Or you can do ‘Mindfulness Meditation’, which means simply paying attention to whatever you are experiencing at that moment. It can be done while brushing your teeth, driving or washing up.
For a beginners technique see https://www.verywell.com/mindfulness-meditation-88369.

Just experiment - play around! It may be the best thing you’ve done this year.

[stars]

I love doing walking meditations. There is a 90 acre water preserve within walking distance from my house, full of hiking trails and forests, and I feel so lucky to have moved so close to it. I do my best power-thinking and problem solving during my walking meditations.

I am someone who does have problems clearing my mind, so I have been teaching myself to steer it back to one single thought. I like to pick a word and then just meditate on it. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to clear my mind. Some of the words I like to pick are based on the chakras that I want to work on: Love- for heart chakra, Grounded- for root chakra.... etc.

One of my favorite ways to do this is lying in bed, before going to sleep, with or without isochronic tones to slow down my brain waves. I will focus on a word until I start to get hypnagognic, and then the images start flooding in. They are kind of fun to watch and describe to myself, since I am one of the people that can't produce visual images whenever I want, and it is something that has never happened to me before I started meditating. I have done remote viewing using this method, with some great results!

[Annemieke]

Why does it have to be comfortable?

So that you can do it for a while without long training! So that the length of your meditation is not limited by the state of your poor old Western body.
I expect there are those who are happy doing it uncomfortably - fine, but I'm not one of them, and there are many more like me ....

[Melahin]

Originally Posted by Gem

Why does it have to be comfortable?

So it can be meditation of course, otherwise you are doing something else which by all means can be more valuable.

[slowsnake]

Originally Posted by Annemieke

So that you can do it for a while without long training! So that the length of your meditation is not limited by the state of your poor old Western body.
I expect there are those who are happy doing it uncomfortably - fine, but I'm not one of them, and there are many more like me ....

Hello,
And I am one of them,comfort is of vital importance when it comes the meditations main prerequisite! "relaxation"

Kind Regards Billy.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Annemieke

So that you can do it for a while without long training! So that the length of your meditation is not limited by the state of your poor old Western body.
I expect there are those who are happy doing it uncomfortably - fine, but I'm not one of them, and there are many more like me ....

What I assume is, people think meditation requires comfort because unpleasant sensations are distracting - in the sense that discomfort creates some degree of mental agitation.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by slowsnake

Hello,
And I am one of them,comfort is of vital importance when it comes the meditations main prerequisite! "relaxation"

Kind Regards Billy.

Totally, relaxation is the basic essence of the thing. I merely question is comfort is necessary in that regard. To me, there's the reality of a life that includes comfort and discomfort - and I see no necessity that one need be disturbed by the latter experience.

[iamthat]

Trying to meditate while feeling physically uncomfortable is very difficult - our attempts to focus on meditation are continually distracted by physical aches and pains, so there is a lot to be said for comfort.

At the same time, there are definite reasons for sitting cross-legged, or ideally in the full lotus. It is all to do with the flow of energy. And if you can sit comfortably in the full lotus then it is ideal for meditation, because the body is naturally stable and upright.

One of the eight stages of raja yoga is the practice of asanas or yoga postures. The purpose of these asanas (hatha yoga) is that the body becomes more supple, thus making it easier to sit comfortably in meditation for longer periods of time. So hatha yoga is not an end in itself, it is just a part of preparation for meditation, the final three stages of raja yoga being concentration, meditation and samadhi.

Stilling the mind is not impossible -the ability to still the mind and sit in a state of no-thought can be developed, but few of us have the discipline to do so. It is not the mind that stills the mind, it is consciousness refusing to engage with thoughts. As we stop giving energy to our thoughts, so the interval between thoughts becomes longer. Thoughts arise out of nothing and return back into nothing. We simply rest in that state of nothing.

Peace.

[Melahin]

Originally Posted by iamthat

the ability to still the mind and sit in a state of no-thought can be developed

Have you done that, or is it more the state of not being the thinker, and only the receiver of inspiration?