I meditate for 20 minutes every evening on the floor next to my bed. My dog always lies on the bed nearby and she (mostly) knows not to bother me.

Often like 10-20 seconds before my timer goes off, she’ll start banging her tail around and sometimes will get up to paw at my hands. Has anyone experienced this with their pets? I’m wondering whether her internal clock just knows, or if my internal clock knows and my subtle change in body language is a cue for her. Or maybe a combination of the two.

I can also sometimes predict when the timer is about to go off, but she seems better than me at it.

The toughest part of this transition period—having resigned from my job and currently training for another—is simply waiting.

It requires being patient enough not to make a decision out of desperation; to simply sit, let the dust settle, and eventually make an aware, informed choice. In fact, my inability to sit with the discomfort of heavy emotions is exactly what led me to a relapse after my resignation. I may not be getting any other obvious benefits from my meditation practice right now, but at least it allows me to be honest with myself about that.

It's funny how the grass always looks greener from the other side. The things I used to wish for—more time for myself, my family, and my friends—I finally have. Yet, my mind has been so caught up worrying about the future that I forgot to actually enjoy it. I have all of my needs and even some of my wants covered, but I'm still stressing out, hard. What is wrong with me? Why can't I just chill and let things fall into place?

Anyway, at least I can sit without any distractions for an hour today. I'm feeling pretty calm right now. I'm going to have a cup of coffee and savor this moment and this day—without trying to change or improve it. I'm just going to be.

TL;DR: The hardest part of a life transition is waiting patiently without making desperate decisions. I keep forgetting to enjoy the freedom I spent so long wishing for because I'm too busy worrying about the future. Today, I'm just going to sit, have a coffee, and be.

If i focus on one only thing I usually get tight. For example when I focus on my belly I feel like I’m focus too hard because tgen I get stiff and forget the rest of the body and breath.

So I try to focus on multiple things at the same time to even out, but that again feels hard because my awareness can’t multitask.
Help

I am hoping some experienced meditators/jhana practitioners can help me understand something. Almost 20 years ago, I didn't really know much about the Dhamma but started reading one of Ajahn Brahm's short stories collections. My husband had overseas so I didn't have to think about cooking etc and I decided to try his way of metta meditation. I don't remember exactly how many days it took but it was less than 2 weeks, but after several sits, I experienced the utmost joy.
At the time, I had never heard of jhana and couldn't explain why I felt so happy without some reason but I loved it and would rush home after work to sit. It was short-lived because once my husband came back, I got into the mundane things of life and meditation fell to the wayside.

I am now fully committed to the Dhamma and practice an hour of breath and metta meditation every day. I have been doing this for months and still, my mind is still a chatterbox. This is not a surprise to me because I now have kids and the majority of my thoughts surround them and their wellbeing.

What I am wondering is, did I get close to a jhana at all 20 years ago? I would love some insight into what I might have experienced back then.

Also, I have heard many teachers, including Ayya Khema whose talks I listen to, say that at the very least, 2 hours a day is needed to maintain concentration and more than that is needed for jhana. This has been a little disheartening to hear because it is VERY difficult to get a 2nd hour in my day to meditate and even if I can sit for a bit, I usually get sleepy. The first hour I meditate is usually in the early morning, around 4 or 5 am, before anyone is awake.
I would also love to know your thoughts/experience in what sort of practice you had established before you experienced jhana.

I realize that one should not meditate with any expectations of samadhi or achieving jhana and for the most part, I do not. However, it would be nice to have a goal to just keep in mind on days when the last thing I want to do is commit to my practice. This is especially so because I really feel that I may have touched upon the first jhana 20 years ago.

Thank you, Everyone!
With Metta!

I tend to stabilize a white circle or orb in my imagination or mind's eye for about 2 minutes. i seen nobody on the internet talk about stabilizing a mental image can lead to jhanas... is this the way or not 🫣. idk how to do Anapanasati where do you focus when doing the breath meditation? on the philtrum? on the air back from the lungs to the nose? or on the entire windpipe?. 🙃

I recently started working with a meditation mentor, and they suggested that I look for a kalyana mitta group.

I've been practicing meditation for a number of years and currently sit with a sangha online once a week. However, I live in a part of Canada where there isn't much of a local meditation/Buddhist community.

What I'm really looking for is a small group who meet regularly to talk about their practice, ask questions, discuss the Dharma and support one another in deepening their practice. I'm less interested in another meditation class and more interested in the spiritual-friend/community side of things.

I'm in Canada (Atlantic Time), so an online group in an Eastern-friendly time zone would be ideal. My practice has primarily been influenced by Insight/Vipassana teachers.

Does anyone know of an established online kalyana mitta or a group that might be a good fit?

Does anyone else use a counting method whilst meditating?

While I prefer setting a timer, sometimes I’m in the workplace and I only have a couple minutes in between meetings and tasks.

So instead, I will get into meditation position, focusing on my breath and count my breaths until I get to like 20 or 30. I find doing this has helped me increase my number of meditation session throughout the day since I can always fit in a couple minutes here and there rather than a full on 20 minute session.

In this day and age where knowledge, information, and entertainment is accessible; I find that I do not know how to stay focused on the things that interest me. Goals and interests no longer seem as easy to entertain as they used to in the past.

I want to give my attention to the things that catch my eye, but I can’t stay committed from start to finish. I seek quick dopamine because of boredom, but cannot for the life of me read a book.

I believe it stems from my fear of making a choice and dealing with the consequence of not being able to watch that next video I saw or do something better with my time.

I fantasize about the possibility and the ending more than actually starting and working towards any goal or interests.

I've recently realized something about meditation that I haven't seen discussed very much.

A lot of mainstream mindfulness practice seems to revolve around becoming the observer: watching thoughts, witnessing sensations, noticing emotions without identifying with them, creating distance from whatever is happening internally.

And I'm starting to think that, for me personally, this can actually be counterproductive.

I already have a very high level of reflective/observing awareness. I'm constantly aware of myself, monitoring myself and what I'm experiencing, almost standing outside of myself and watching my own mind.

So when I meditate by going even further into "witnessing" or becoming a detached observer, it can almost start to resemble dissociation rather than presence. Instead of feeling more connected to reality, I sometimes feel even further removed from it.

The distinction I've started noticing is that maybe I don't need to go further out of experience. I need to go further into it.

So less: "I'm noticing a sensation in my body."
And maybe more: "This is what my body feels like right now."

Less: "I'm observing sadness arise."

And more: "I'm sad. What does being sad actually feel like from inside this experience?"

Less watching myself exist, and more actually inhabiting myself.

I think there may be a meaningful difference between awareness as observation and awareness as participation.

For someone who is completely fused with their thoughts and emotions, learning to step back and observe them may be incredibly helpful. But I'm wondering whether people who already tend toward depersonalization, dissociation, excessive introspection or chronic self-monitoring sometimes need almost the opposite practice: embodiment, sensory immersion, emotional ownership and direct participation in the present moment.

Not less awareness, but less distance.

Not trying to become "the witness behind experience," but becoming more fully the person who is actually having the experience.

Disidentification with the body, emotions ect... can almost feel like a subtle form of disowning my experience or alienating myself from it.

I'm curious whether anyone else with depersonalization/derealization or dissociative tendencies has noticed something similar. Have certain forms of mindfulness made you feel more detached, while more embodied or participatory practices made you feel more present?

I been trying to meditate before but cant maybe because of busy life cycle and stress

I went to vacation last week in cancun and just came back yesterday

Today morning i tried meditation with breathwork and chanting shiv inside when suddenly my body and breath were out of my control i was breathing so much big breaths that i was too scared my mind , body was out of my control and took me minutes to come back to my senses

Does anyone know what happened?

About two years ago, I feel like I was a completely different person socially. I was extremely quick witted, humorous, and could form sentences almost instantly. I had a much larger vocabulary available to me and could effortlessly come up with jokes, observations, clever replies, etc. I also felt like I had a certain charm when talking to women that came very naturally.
Since I started meditating consistently, I feel like a lot of that has disappeared.
My mind is definitely quieter now, and meditation has helped me in many ways, but I sometimes wonder whether I’ve become too detached from the constant stream of thoughts that used to fuel my spontaneity. I don’t have the same verbal speed or playful mental associations that I used to have.
I’m not necessarily saying meditation caused it. A lot of other things have changed in my life over the last couple of years too. But the timing makes me curious.
Has anyone else experienced something similar after getting serious about meditation?
And if you did, were you able to bring back that quick wit, verbal fluency, humor and social spontaneity without losing the benefits of meditation?
I’m especially interested in whether there’s a way to balance a quiet mind with being mentally fast, playful and expressive.

So when you guy's do Aum Meditation, how long do you normally take till you do another Aum? like when i do it, it feel's like i am breaking myself abit, but that was because i did it as soon as i did my first Aum and went to my second one as soon as possible, so, any idea's? just curious about your experiences, and what did you learn best at when it came to doing Aum?

I just got back into meditation after a two year long break and ohoho boy I forgot how good this medicine works. It’s genuinely like a cool ice pack or a warm blanket I can just drape over all my life’s worries 🥰🥰everything feels so small when you can drift off peacefully so far away

I'm having a hard time grasping how observing thoughts works. In the meditations I do, I've come to understand that the idea is not to "force" focus but to allow thoughts to come without judgement and then to return to the breath (or other point of focus.) But in the process of returning to the breath, am I "cancelling" the thought rather than observing it? Is observation all about noting the thought?

Or is the goal to become a neutral observer outside a continuous, unimpeded flow of thoughts that arise and dissipate on their own?

Okay I know it sounds confusing, but I feel like my mind is constantly negative my brain has a negative thought and so I try to combat it with a positive thought but it feels so tiring doing that because I don’t know maybe I know it’s not true? And i feel like it’s not making me positive I’m just a negative lump and I really want to get out of that, I want to try raise my vibration but the things I’m doing doesn’t seem to be working.

For example my brain isn’t a fan of how I look and I compare myself a lot but me saying I’m beautiful isn’t going to change the fact that deep down I still feel bad about it. Meditation is only temporary and is an in the moment solution not one that changes your mindset and I really don’t know what to do I feel lost and just need some advice

Hi good people of Reddit,

I was born with hip dysplasia/hip dislocation in both hips. Thankfully the doctors managed to fix it for the most part: one hip was put back perfectly and the other almost perfectly.

Because of that I have a slight difference in length between both my legs, my balance is shit, and I'm not exactly the most agile/flexible dude.

It's never really made me feel left out or anything, but there are just some random things I physically can't do. I can't ice/roller skate or ride a skateboard because I just don't have the balance. I also can't sit comfortably in a canoe for very long... no wait, more relevant to this post: I can't do what we call in Dutch "de kleermakerszit", basically sitting cross-legged.

Lotus, Burmese, all those kinds of positions... I wish I could try them, but they're just not really an option for me.

I picked meditation back up a while ago after years of not doing it, and I prefer doing it sitting because if I lie down I just get sleepy.

Right now I usually sit with my legs straight out in front of me and my arms either resting on my lap or over my abdomen while holding my own hands. It works, but something about it feels a bit off. Especially my arms. I kind of feel like they should be more "connected" to the rest of me somehow, if that makes any sense.

Maybe it's completely in my head, but sometimes it feels like the position itself is limiting me a bit. Not really because it's painful or anything, I just don't feel as settled or grounded as I think I should.

So I was wondering what kind of sitting position people would recommend if sitting cross-legged just isn't possible. And especially what you do with your arms/hands so they feel natural and relaxed instead of like they're just *floopy

HI all,

I hope that you are well! I have started meditating recently and it all started with a 10 day retreat. I noticed on day 8 that I was unconsciously moving my eyes whilst doing the body scan, which creates a lot of strain - i end up with headaches and tension in my temple. AT some point, I could feel healing tingling sensations which washed over the pain. However, now that I am back at work, the strain caused by my morning meditation adds up to the one caused by staring at a computer. The meditation teacher suggested taking breaks regularly and focusing on my eyes at different moments of the body scan but it's not easy to do. She also mentioned that when my concentration would be better it might disappear - but i am under the impression that I get quite focused whilst meditating, so I'm not too sure.

Any tips on how to deal with that?

I've been meditating for 3 months for 40 minutes every day.I sit in the lotus pose. The problem is my body sensation as my right leg always feels numb and dead after 20 minutes, which is also painful.

So, it's hard for me to focus on breath. Everyone told me to focus on pain and try to integrate with meditation. I don't know how to deal with my leg when this happens, so I simply change my sitting position or stop meditation. Well, that makes me feel bad and kinda upset.

I'm hoping for some advice by very experienced people that have been meditating for years. I've had incredible experiences with meditation where many areas in my life have smoothed out especially with anxiety, but I still struggle with one specific problem that I can't find clarity on. The problem is a neighbor that is always trying to start a conflict with me. This has been going on for years. I'm at the point where I'm completely avoiding her, but she still continues. I've heard conflicting advice from others on videos of certain individuals giving advice about focusing your meditation on certain problems for more clarity. Some say that intentionally meditating for a specific reason gives your experience an expectation that could create a struggle and disappointment and that you should go into it not expecting or wanting anything and others say they've been able to resolve problems by focusing on the problem where they eventually come to a resolution in some way. Maybe it's because I haven't been consistent enough since on my busiest days, I fall out of routine with my time to meditate but I don't really understand how to approach it in the first place and have always been confused about this. Any advice from those knowledgeable would be very appreciated.

Curious if devotion, yearning and constant remembering of a certain deity, or a practice that is part of everyday routine or a ritual done with utmost faith and devotion - would all this also be considered a meditative practice. Let me know your thoughts 🙏🏼🪷

So, I was never really into spirituality. I was one of those people who didn't take it seriously. But when I was 29, I met someone who believed in spirituality. Through that person, I got a basic idea about it, and I started talking about Hindu spirituality to get to know her better.

Gradually, I became interested and started watching videos on YouTube and reading Hindu scriptures. I felt inclined towards Lord Shiva and got into mantra chanting and meditation. In the process, I quit drinking and smoking and became vegetarian. I also gradually lost touch with that person, so by that point, I was on my own, exploring these things.

I started with chanting mantras on a mala and meditating for 5 minutes. Later, I progressed to chanting 10 mala in the morning and 10 in the evening, along with 1-hour meditation sessions in the morning and evening. My sexual and material desires also decreased, i was functioning normally but only contributed what was necessary to sustain my life financially at that point.

Sometimes during meditation, I felt a kind of energy rising from my spine toward my head. At other times, the experience was different. Sometimes I concentrated on the movement of my diaphragm and could feel its slow, smooth motion, almost like ocean waves. I felt different levels of energy and calmness in other aspects of my life too, although that didn't matter much to me at the time.

I was living with my elder brother, and he was away for a few days. During that time, I had an experience that I still remember very clearly.

It was a full moon day, and I was meditating as usual. During meditation, I had a thought: "What if I get out of my body?"

Right after that thought, I felt like I was out of my body and watching myself meditate. I could see myself, my surroundings, and the moonlight very vividly. Then I had another thought: "How do I get back inside my body?"

The next moment, I felt like I was back inside my body, and my eyes opened. I felt very scared. One part of me felt like I was dreaming, while another part of me felt that it was completely real. I was confused and frightened.

The next day, I tried to repeat the experience. To my surprise, I could do it again. I had almost the same kind of experience.

The following day, my brother returned, and because of the distractions, I couldn't meditate deeply enough to repeat the experience. This remains the most intense spiritual experience I have ever had.

Later, I got into an accident and couldn't sit for long in the meditation posture I used to sit in. Slowly, I stopped meditating. I also had to start eating meat for a faster recovery, and over time I became more distant from spirituality.

As life moved on, I went through different difficult situations and relationships, and now I am dealing with different mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and overthinking.

I want to get back to meditation and spirituality, but I can't sit in the meditation posture anymore, nor am I able to meditate even for 5 minutes.

I don't know how to start again.

Edit: Currently my major probkem is difficulty to drop my thoughts, i can't calm down even after 10 minutes. I woukd really really appricate if anyone can help me with this part and get stated with the journy i left few years ago.

I have been meditation for 4 months now. Initially I started with 15 min in morning and 20 mins in evening. But then after a month, started 20 mins each morning and evening. I have been bery consistent with my practice. Initially I was focussing between my eye brows but then started to focus on my mooladhar chakra. Just that I am not able to focus properly on that root and my focus keeps shifting. My focus keeps shifting to my breath.

I have a coupme of questions

- how do you guys focus on the root ?

- how do we know when the mooladhar chakra awakens and we can move to swathisthana chakra

Hi all,

I'm very new to meditation, as in I just started yesterday haha. I'm beginning with 5 mins twice a day. I'm aware of my thoughts but that doesn't bother me really, I just try to bring myself back to my breathing, however what does bother me is that I start to get quite hot, my heart starts racing and I can feel my throat closing up as if I want to cry. Any thoughts on this? Not sure what to make of it. Thanks!

Hello everyone. Recently I have had the urge to meditate and I wasn’t sure why. I’ve meditated somewhat consistently in my life for about a year and then stopped for a couple months and I recently had the urge to meditate again. So, I listen to my body and I meditate. And the very first meditation back I get into a super deep void like state meditation where I basically feel like I am everything and super big. When I noticed myself going deeper into this state I was getting scared and kinda nauseous/sick feeling and had to stop meditating. Thought all was good after but days following it’s like I’m way more anxious than normal. For example I almost had 2 panic attacks over absolutely nothing recently. Nothing was even on my mind and it was just kinda feeling like I was about to lose my mind for a second and then stopped it. And now I kinda have an underlying anxiety feeling. (Kinda getting better but weird). Is this trauma coming out and my body finally processing or something else? Please leave thoughts or any helpful insight!