Post by Admin on Oct 9, 2017 12:53:11 GMT -5
Those of you who do not spend much time on the internet may never have heard of Reddit.com. It is called the "Front Page of the Internet" and is worth checking out. It is different in significant ways from other Social Media sites. I came across a reference to a meditation discussion on Reddit in what is called a 'sub-reddit', basically a space dedicated to a particular topic. Should you visit www.reddit.com you'll see the seemingly infinite variety of topics. But tread carefully. To learn more about Reddit, see the Wikipedia page HERE.
Below is the beginning section of the FAQ on meditation on reddit.com. I find it to be objective, considerate of all viewpoints and is now going to be a link I give to someone who approaches me curious about meditation. To me these FAQ are sort of a helpful meditation primer, from which one can make a personal decision to explore their own meditation in an informed way. Comments and opinions welcome.
Below is the beginning section of the FAQ on meditation on reddit.com. I find it to be objective, considerate of all viewpoints and is now going to be a link I give to someone who approaches me curious about meditation. To me these FAQ are sort of a helpful meditation primer, from which one can make a personal decision to explore their own meditation in an informed way. Comments and opinions welcome.
Below is from www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/wiki/faq , the opening section, general info on meditation:
/r/meditation is a community of people dedicated to improving our minds and lives. While many of the practices discussed here have been inspired by ancient Buddhist, Hindu and other religious traditions, we are not particularly religious. Discussions of all kinds of secular and religious meditation practices are encouraged.
THIS FAQ IS A WORK IN PROGRESS
GENERAL
How do I begin?
If you haven't tried meditating and want to know how to start, read what's in here a couple of times and let it sit for a day or two to see how you feel about it. At that point, if you'd like some more help figuring out how to start, please write out as best you can where you heard of meditation, what idea of it you have at present and what you'd like it to do for you.
If you're afraid that you're not sure what to post, just say what's on your mind and we'll do our best to correct any misconceptions.
If you're past that point, you've browsed the headings in here and don't find one that addresses your question or would like clarification, please include the following details in your post:
Your usual meditative practice (what you do with your mind, for how long, in what circumstances).
What resources you've used to inform your practice (books, videos, teachers, real life groups, religious traditions).
Your goals (a specific mental health issue, general wellbeing, progress on a certain spiritual path).
This will help people tailor their advice and call it out if they're coming from a viewpoint that might conflict with the information you've already been given.
What are the benefits of meditation?
For purposes of this FAQ, we'll say that meditation is any mind training that should give you benefits like:
Increased focus
Lower stress
Reduced anxiety
Better mental stamina
Deeper or broader compassion
Insight into yourself and your sensory experience
A better relationship with your emotions
Liberation
These criteria could sort of include activities like zoning out to music or daydreaming. However, the FAQ will tend towards practices that involve some active effort to steady your mind. Why? While daydreaming and music can both hit some of the bullet points above, experienced meditators and science will both tell you that putting some effort into it and sticking with a particular practice and object of focus will probably have a big payoff. You'll improve faster, your improvements will keep coming for longer before hitting a plateau, and you'll experience a wider variety of benefits along the way.
Where can I read research on meditation?
Here is a very useful post outlining some research
(With thanks to /u/SirIssacMath)
Also search this subreddit: meditation research papers
What is a simple meditation technique?
Most traditional meditation techniques are simple to practice.
Practice is the word.
Here is a very simple instruction:
Set a timer for your desired length of meditation.
Sit upright on a chair, cushion or rolled up towel, with your back straight.
Close your eyes. Breathe through your nose.
As your breath rises and falls, bring your mind gently to the feeling of the air moving in and out around the tips of your nostrils. Keep your mind there.
As you do this, other thoughts and feelings will arise.
Maybe your foot itches. Maybe you've got something you want to do immediately after you get up, or two days from now and it keeps coming to mind. Doesn't matter.
Note these thoughts and feelings as they come up, try to avoid judging them as good or bad, just notice they happened and gently come back to your breath.
Under the more detailed discussion of types of meditation, this would probably fall under mindfulness of the breath. It isn't your only option. Please read on and find out what will work for you.
Where does meditation come from?
Meditation practices are recorded in the earliest written documents in the history, with mantras being recorded as early as 1700 BCE
As you progress, it will probably help you to have just a little bit of background on where your choice of meditation practice comes from. As your practice develops, you'll probably have some questions and will find yourself more motivated to read from more authoritative sources or find a real life community to practice with. Knowledge of what traditions informed your practice will be a great help when it comes to figuring out who's are talking about the same kinds of practices and experiences you're dealing with. This opens us up to huge fields of knowledge.
Before reading, if you're really turned off by talking about religion, please read the section "Why all the religious jargon?" first.
Many of the world's religions have their own meditative traditions. The oldest known form, called dhyāna dates back to at least 500BC in written records of the pre-Hindu Vedic religion, although even then it was thought to be ancient. “Dhyāna” was (and is) a way of stabilizing the mind for the attainment of higher spiritual states, whether unity with the universal Self in Hinduism or enlightenment in Buddhism. If you've taken a Western yoga class that offered instruction in mental meditation (as opposed to the body- movement-oriented meditation of yoga asanas that makes up the bulk of Western hatha yoga practice), you were probably doing something along the lines of dhyāna. much of this early vedic practice was based around mantra meditation. Today, this is also referred to as Vedic meditation.
In Buddhism, dhyāna (also called samatha in Pali, literally translating as concentration, calm abiding or tranquility) is not held to be the central meditative practice but is practiced and developed in support of a subtly different form of meditation called vipassana (Pali: lit. "insight"). Buddhists believe that diligent practice in these forms of meditation can lead to the eventual cessation of all suffering. Much more detail at the /r/buddhism FAQ.
Secular but Buddhist-inspired practices are largely responsible for the recent explosion of talk about meditation in the West. An early milestone was The Relaxation Response, a stricly secular distillation of Buddhist-inspired techniques that the author ran scientific tests on and found to be useful for treating a bunch of issues rooted in the mind. Since then, Jon Kabat-Zinn has taken things 10 steps further by packaging a few different Buddhist styles of meditation in a secular form and validating them for the treatment of anxiety, depression, ADHD, addiction and just making people happier in general. If you became interested in meditation from a quick article on how to ease stress by focusing on your breath and letting thoughts go, the author of what you read probably has one of these two sources to thank.
There are other kinds of meditation with their own histories that aren't covered here yet. If you have some experience with them, please talk to the mods and get permission to add more info here. From India, there are the more energy-oriented practices like kundalini and kriya yoga. From China, Daoism has its own meditative tradition, as well as movement practices (tai chi) and energy work (qi gong) that might be comparable to the various Indian yogas. Tibetan Buddhism incorporates yogic and shamanic practices from India and from Tibet's indigenous Bon religion. These and others have probably been mixed and muddled into New Age movements at various points, sometimes losing explicit connections to their historical sources along the way.
Even this much history isn't usually reported in popular articles about meditation. For example, The Huffington Post has been one of the major forces popularizing meditation in America, but their articles are usually vague about where their ideas come from - maybe intentionally so. If you want to get as many page clicks as possible, it's probably in your interest to appear as if the style of meditation you're presenting is completely secular and compatible with any worldview and any existing religious or spiritual practice the reader might be coming from. Unfortunately, this leaves out any hooks the reader might otherwise use to answer the inevitable questions not covered in news blurbs, like: what other kinds of meditation are out there? Who do I go to for help? What does it mean when I'm just doing my usual meditation routine, trying to relax and something new and possibly mind-blowing comes up? Hopefully we can do a better job.
Should I find a local teacher or centre?
Do a Google map search in your area for "meditation" and see if there are any centers that would have an intro session worth trying. Most of them are free or ask for a small donation. Besides guiding you through your first few meditation sessions in person, the people running these sessions can also recommend reading materials to help you outside of class, and some have libraries of their own. Favoring real-life resources and full-length books over the DIY online approach is liable to be much less confusing and sidestep the common anxieties of new practitioners about whether you're doing it right, what's coming up, what that crazy experience you just had means, and all the rest.
What has meditation got to do with Yoga?
Yoga are a set of complementary physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that aim to transform body and mind. In Hindu and Vedic traditions, Yoga means to “Yoke” the body with the mind, eventually achieving “Moksha”, or liberation.
This is largely achieved by gaining “direct experience” through a core practice of meditation.
The idea of Yoga in the west is dominated by Hatha Yoga; the practice of physical postures (asana), which are particularly useful for training a body into health, keeping it in good condition and ready for meditation. Hatha Yoga - of which there are many types, may also be considered a type of moving meditation, as concentration and mindfulness is very much required in most practices.
Let's use the example of Ashtanga Yoga to look at where the confusion often is. Ashtanga Yoga is very popular and considered to be the most powerful sequence of postures (asana) within Hatha Yoga. These postures and are performed in a specific order, frequency and duration, culminating in a series of back bends and front bends. Practice hones strength, balance, endurance and flexibility, ridding the physical body of tension and stress. This actively prepares the Yogi for meditation.
The real meaning of Ashtanga yoga is "eight-limb yoga". Only one of those limbs being asana (the physical postures). The other seven limbs are about living life in a kind, pure manner, breathing, focusing, meditating, which are combined to attain a persistent state of bliss.
In reality - any form of physical postures aka "Hatha" Yoga would fulfil the role of asana within Ashtanga proper.
Can you suggest a book to introduce me to meditation?
The most commonly recommended book/online resource for those interested in starting out with a secular or Buddhist approach is Mindfulness in Plain English. This ebook describes a simple technique oriented around focusing on the breath. If you're really itching to try it out without any further explanation you can jump straight to chapter 5, but please take a look at the rest of the book at some point as it will clear up many more questions about this type of practice than this FAQ or any one post in /r/meditation possibly could.
Can you suggest some other books to read?
More book suggestions can be found on our reading list here
If scientific backing is important to you or you're dealing with a mental health issue, give this Google Tech Talk by Jon Kabat-Zinn a watch.
Is there a good online resource for vedic/Hindu techniques?
If you're interested in a more Hindu-inspired approach, kundalini, energy practices, or the combination of the techniques you might run into in a yoga class with meditation and a broader philosophical system, aypsite.org seems to be a good resource, and /r/kundalini is working on building up a library of experience.
If you feel like your chosen technique hasn't been covered here and you know a good place to start, please add it here! Message the mods for write access to the FAQ and add it yourself.
Why does meditation have a religious aspect?
The quick answer:
Mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy are probably the driest, most scientific approaches. They were both developed recently with specific goals to be as secular as possible, useful in clinical environments and amenable to scientific study.
The slightly longer answer:
Meditation only made its first big inroads in the West around the 1960s. In India, Burma, Tibet and surrounding areas, the same kinds of meditation that are coming available to us now have been practiced for thousands of years. The culture (and religion!) that's had time to develop around these practices gives a rich context for describing what you're doing, where you expect to go with it and what's happening along the way. For example, sometimes a Pali or Sanskrit word for some meditative phenomenon has a direct translation into English, but using the untranslated word can skip some of the normal English connotations that distract from the core of the experience you're describing. So that's one reason you'll see words like "vipassana" used instead of "insight", "samatha" instead of "concentration" and so on.
A deeper problem for many people who are just starting to explore this is that lots of explanations and discussions come with more explicit religious baggage. If the teacher you're trying to listen to is explicitly Buddhist or Hindu, and you're not, it can be a huge turnoff when they take a detour into talking about the cycle of death and rebirth, karma from past lives and that kind of thing. Just know that the techniques they're talking about almost always have to do with the present, not with some unknowable metaphysical existence, so you can follow their directions even if you don't agree with them about the source of our salvation or what happens after death or whatever. They may put things in terms of energy flow or something that you find similarly bogus, but you're free to suspend disbelief for a few minutes, try their technique and go about your day treating what they said as nothing more than a rule of thumb to help you use your mind in a particular way. This doesn't have to come at the expense of healthy skepticism....
To read rest of this Reddit FAQ on meditation click-push HERE.
/r/meditation is a community of people dedicated to improving our minds and lives. While many of the practices discussed here have been inspired by ancient Buddhist, Hindu and other religious traditions, we are not particularly religious. Discussions of all kinds of secular and religious meditation practices are encouraged.
THIS FAQ IS A WORK IN PROGRESS
GENERAL
How do I begin?
If you haven't tried meditating and want to know how to start, read what's in here a couple of times and let it sit for a day or two to see how you feel about it. At that point, if you'd like some more help figuring out how to start, please write out as best you can where you heard of meditation, what idea of it you have at present and what you'd like it to do for you.
If you're afraid that you're not sure what to post, just say what's on your mind and we'll do our best to correct any misconceptions.
If you're past that point, you've browsed the headings in here and don't find one that addresses your question or would like clarification, please include the following details in your post:
Your usual meditative practice (what you do with your mind, for how long, in what circumstances).
What resources you've used to inform your practice (books, videos, teachers, real life groups, religious traditions).
Your goals (a specific mental health issue, general wellbeing, progress on a certain spiritual path).
This will help people tailor their advice and call it out if they're coming from a viewpoint that might conflict with the information you've already been given.
What are the benefits of meditation?
For purposes of this FAQ, we'll say that meditation is any mind training that should give you benefits like:
Increased focus
Lower stress
Reduced anxiety
Better mental stamina
Deeper or broader compassion
Insight into yourself and your sensory experience
A better relationship with your emotions
Liberation
These criteria could sort of include activities like zoning out to music or daydreaming. However, the FAQ will tend towards practices that involve some active effort to steady your mind. Why? While daydreaming and music can both hit some of the bullet points above, experienced meditators and science will both tell you that putting some effort into it and sticking with a particular practice and object of focus will probably have a big payoff. You'll improve faster, your improvements will keep coming for longer before hitting a plateau, and you'll experience a wider variety of benefits along the way.
Where can I read research on meditation?
Here is a very useful post outlining some research
(With thanks to /u/SirIssacMath)
Also search this subreddit: meditation research papers
What is a simple meditation technique?
Most traditional meditation techniques are simple to practice.
Practice is the word.
Here is a very simple instruction:
Set a timer for your desired length of meditation.
Sit upright on a chair, cushion or rolled up towel, with your back straight.
Close your eyes. Breathe through your nose.
As your breath rises and falls, bring your mind gently to the feeling of the air moving in and out around the tips of your nostrils. Keep your mind there.
As you do this, other thoughts and feelings will arise.
Maybe your foot itches. Maybe you've got something you want to do immediately after you get up, or two days from now and it keeps coming to mind. Doesn't matter.
Note these thoughts and feelings as they come up, try to avoid judging them as good or bad, just notice they happened and gently come back to your breath.
Under the more detailed discussion of types of meditation, this would probably fall under mindfulness of the breath. It isn't your only option. Please read on and find out what will work for you.
Where does meditation come from?
Meditation practices are recorded in the earliest written documents in the history, with mantras being recorded as early as 1700 BCE
As you progress, it will probably help you to have just a little bit of background on where your choice of meditation practice comes from. As your practice develops, you'll probably have some questions and will find yourself more motivated to read from more authoritative sources or find a real life community to practice with. Knowledge of what traditions informed your practice will be a great help when it comes to figuring out who's are talking about the same kinds of practices and experiences you're dealing with. This opens us up to huge fields of knowledge.
Before reading, if you're really turned off by talking about religion, please read the section "Why all the religious jargon?" first.
Many of the world's religions have their own meditative traditions. The oldest known form, called dhyāna dates back to at least 500BC in written records of the pre-Hindu Vedic religion, although even then it was thought to be ancient. “Dhyāna” was (and is) a way of stabilizing the mind for the attainment of higher spiritual states, whether unity with the universal Self in Hinduism or enlightenment in Buddhism. If you've taken a Western yoga class that offered instruction in mental meditation (as opposed to the body- movement-oriented meditation of yoga asanas that makes up the bulk of Western hatha yoga practice), you were probably doing something along the lines of dhyāna. much of this early vedic practice was based around mantra meditation. Today, this is also referred to as Vedic meditation.
In Buddhism, dhyāna (also called samatha in Pali, literally translating as concentration, calm abiding or tranquility) is not held to be the central meditative practice but is practiced and developed in support of a subtly different form of meditation called vipassana (Pali: lit. "insight"). Buddhists believe that diligent practice in these forms of meditation can lead to the eventual cessation of all suffering. Much more detail at the /r/buddhism FAQ.
Secular but Buddhist-inspired practices are largely responsible for the recent explosion of talk about meditation in the West. An early milestone was The Relaxation Response, a stricly secular distillation of Buddhist-inspired techniques that the author ran scientific tests on and found to be useful for treating a bunch of issues rooted in the mind. Since then, Jon Kabat-Zinn has taken things 10 steps further by packaging a few different Buddhist styles of meditation in a secular form and validating them for the treatment of anxiety, depression, ADHD, addiction and just making people happier in general. If you became interested in meditation from a quick article on how to ease stress by focusing on your breath and letting thoughts go, the author of what you read probably has one of these two sources to thank.
There are other kinds of meditation with their own histories that aren't covered here yet. If you have some experience with them, please talk to the mods and get permission to add more info here. From India, there are the more energy-oriented practices like kundalini and kriya yoga. From China, Daoism has its own meditative tradition, as well as movement practices (tai chi) and energy work (qi gong) that might be comparable to the various Indian yogas. Tibetan Buddhism incorporates yogic and shamanic practices from India and from Tibet's indigenous Bon religion. These and others have probably been mixed and muddled into New Age movements at various points, sometimes losing explicit connections to their historical sources along the way.
Even this much history isn't usually reported in popular articles about meditation. For example, The Huffington Post has been one of the major forces popularizing meditation in America, but their articles are usually vague about where their ideas come from - maybe intentionally so. If you want to get as many page clicks as possible, it's probably in your interest to appear as if the style of meditation you're presenting is completely secular and compatible with any worldview and any existing religious or spiritual practice the reader might be coming from. Unfortunately, this leaves out any hooks the reader might otherwise use to answer the inevitable questions not covered in news blurbs, like: what other kinds of meditation are out there? Who do I go to for help? What does it mean when I'm just doing my usual meditation routine, trying to relax and something new and possibly mind-blowing comes up? Hopefully we can do a better job.
Should I find a local teacher or centre?
Do a Google map search in your area for "meditation" and see if there are any centers that would have an intro session worth trying. Most of them are free or ask for a small donation. Besides guiding you through your first few meditation sessions in person, the people running these sessions can also recommend reading materials to help you outside of class, and some have libraries of their own. Favoring real-life resources and full-length books over the DIY online approach is liable to be much less confusing and sidestep the common anxieties of new practitioners about whether you're doing it right, what's coming up, what that crazy experience you just had means, and all the rest.
What has meditation got to do with Yoga?
Yoga are a set of complementary physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that aim to transform body and mind. In Hindu and Vedic traditions, Yoga means to “Yoke” the body with the mind, eventually achieving “Moksha”, or liberation.
This is largely achieved by gaining “direct experience” through a core practice of meditation.
The idea of Yoga in the west is dominated by Hatha Yoga; the practice of physical postures (asana), which are particularly useful for training a body into health, keeping it in good condition and ready for meditation. Hatha Yoga - of which there are many types, may also be considered a type of moving meditation, as concentration and mindfulness is very much required in most practices.
Let's use the example of Ashtanga Yoga to look at where the confusion often is. Ashtanga Yoga is very popular and considered to be the most powerful sequence of postures (asana) within Hatha Yoga. These postures and are performed in a specific order, frequency and duration, culminating in a series of back bends and front bends. Practice hones strength, balance, endurance and flexibility, ridding the physical body of tension and stress. This actively prepares the Yogi for meditation.
The real meaning of Ashtanga yoga is "eight-limb yoga". Only one of those limbs being asana (the physical postures). The other seven limbs are about living life in a kind, pure manner, breathing, focusing, meditating, which are combined to attain a persistent state of bliss.
In reality - any form of physical postures aka "Hatha" Yoga would fulfil the role of asana within Ashtanga proper.
Can you suggest a book to introduce me to meditation?
The most commonly recommended book/online resource for those interested in starting out with a secular or Buddhist approach is Mindfulness in Plain English. This ebook describes a simple technique oriented around focusing on the breath. If you're really itching to try it out without any further explanation you can jump straight to chapter 5, but please take a look at the rest of the book at some point as it will clear up many more questions about this type of practice than this FAQ or any one post in /r/meditation possibly could.
Can you suggest some other books to read?
More book suggestions can be found on our reading list here
If scientific backing is important to you or you're dealing with a mental health issue, give this Google Tech Talk by Jon Kabat-Zinn a watch.
Is there a good online resource for vedic/Hindu techniques?
If you're interested in a more Hindu-inspired approach, kundalini, energy practices, or the combination of the techniques you might run into in a yoga class with meditation and a broader philosophical system, aypsite.org seems to be a good resource, and /r/kundalini is working on building up a library of experience.
If you feel like your chosen technique hasn't been covered here and you know a good place to start, please add it here! Message the mods for write access to the FAQ and add it yourself.
Why does meditation have a religious aspect?
The quick answer:
Mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy are probably the driest, most scientific approaches. They were both developed recently with specific goals to be as secular as possible, useful in clinical environments and amenable to scientific study.
The slightly longer answer:
Meditation only made its first big inroads in the West around the 1960s. In India, Burma, Tibet and surrounding areas, the same kinds of meditation that are coming available to us now have been practiced for thousands of years. The culture (and religion!) that's had time to develop around these practices gives a rich context for describing what you're doing, where you expect to go with it and what's happening along the way. For example, sometimes a Pali or Sanskrit word for some meditative phenomenon has a direct translation into English, but using the untranslated word can skip some of the normal English connotations that distract from the core of the experience you're describing. So that's one reason you'll see words like "vipassana" used instead of "insight", "samatha" instead of "concentration" and so on.
A deeper problem for many people who are just starting to explore this is that lots of explanations and discussions come with more explicit religious baggage. If the teacher you're trying to listen to is explicitly Buddhist or Hindu, and you're not, it can be a huge turnoff when they take a detour into talking about the cycle of death and rebirth, karma from past lives and that kind of thing. Just know that the techniques they're talking about almost always have to do with the present, not with some unknowable metaphysical existence, so you can follow their directions even if you don't agree with them about the source of our salvation or what happens after death or whatever. They may put things in terms of energy flow or something that you find similarly bogus, but you're free to suspend disbelief for a few minutes, try their technique and go about your day treating what they said as nothing more than a rule of thumb to help you use your mind in a particular way. This doesn't have to come at the expense of healthy skepticism....
To read rest of this Reddit FAQ on meditation click-push HERE.
The sidebar, which gives an outline of the entire FAQ on meditation is below:
GENERAL
:
How do I begin?
What are the benefits of meditation?
Where can I read research on meditation?
What is a simple meditation technique?
Where does meditation come from?
Should I find a local teacher or centre?
What has meditation got to do with Yoga?
Can you suggest a book to introduce me to meditation?
Can you suggest some other books to read?
Is there a good online resource for vedic/Hindu techniques?
Why does meditation have a religious aspect?
WHAT ARE THE MAIN TYPES OF MEDITATION?
:
Noting
Mindfulness of the breath
Mindfulness during daily activities
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
Body scanning
Zazen
Two-player meditation
Choiceless awareness
Metta (loving kindness)
Mantra
QUESTIONS!
Why am I seeing, hearing, feeling weird things?
Why can't I sit still?
Why can't I stop my mind racing?
Why do I get drowsy or fall asleep?
Am I forcing my mind to do this?
Why do my back or legs hurt?
Why can't seem to get past x minutes?
How long/often should I meditate?
How should I sit?
Can I meditate listening to music?
Why am I experienced and going through a rough patch?
Why do I feel disconnected?
Why is this/that chakra blocked?
I have just started kundalini/chakra meditation, help!
MEDITATING TO ADDRESS A SPECIFIC ISSUE
Chronic pain
Mental illnesses
ADD/ADHD
Depression
Anxiety
What else can I to make myself more positive?
Should I smoke weed and meditate?
GENERAL
:
How do I begin?
What are the benefits of meditation?
Where can I read research on meditation?
What is a simple meditation technique?
Where does meditation come from?
Should I find a local teacher or centre?
What has meditation got to do with Yoga?
Can you suggest a book to introduce me to meditation?
Can you suggest some other books to read?
Is there a good online resource for vedic/Hindu techniques?
Why does meditation have a religious aspect?
WHAT ARE THE MAIN TYPES OF MEDITATION?
:
Noting
Mindfulness of the breath
Mindfulness during daily activities
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
Body scanning
Zazen
Two-player meditation
Choiceless awareness
Metta (loving kindness)
Mantra
QUESTIONS!
Why am I seeing, hearing, feeling weird things?
Why can't I sit still?
Why can't I stop my mind racing?
Why do I get drowsy or fall asleep?
Am I forcing my mind to do this?
Why do my back or legs hurt?
Why can't seem to get past x minutes?
How long/often should I meditate?
How should I sit?
Can I meditate listening to music?
Why am I experienced and going through a rough patch?
Why do I feel disconnected?
Why is this/that chakra blocked?
I have just started kundalini/chakra meditation, help!
MEDITATING TO ADDRESS A SPECIFIC ISSUE
Chronic pain
Mental illnesses
ADD/ADHD
Depression
Anxiety
What else can I to make myself more positive?
Should I smoke weed and meditate?