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After many years of meditation, aged 66 now, I have finally given up sitting on a cushion and now use a little stool. It’s been fantastic. Now I can sit at any time in jeans. My knees thank me. I put my little stool in a warm room instead of going up to sit on my cushion in my cold bedroom. Letting go of fussing about blankets and loose trousers has given me a freedom that has refreshed my mind also. Bringing my stool downstairs into my life is also symbolic. So don’t get hung up on posture as long as your back is straight and you feel grounded. There is a lot of cultural baggage that can get in the way of meditation. ❤
In addition to all your tips, what works quickly for me is to use soft eyes while candle gazing. It's like peeking through mostly closed eyelids and blurring my vision. Relaxing all the tiny muscles around the eyes and eyelids. This is why so many statues of Buddha have mostly closed eyelids. "Soft eyes" is a technique that involves maintaining a relaxed gaze and paying attention to the edges of your field of vision, or peripheral vision. Soft eyes can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which can help you feel calmer and more balanced. It can also help reduce stress chemicals like adrenaline. Thank you for all your wonderful videos. Really high level stuff.
Before meditating, some practical things that have helped me to reduce agitation and get a better start include: tapping, massaging the vagus nerve, writing down thoughts, getting physically refreshed to feel clean and relaxed, refresh the space I'm sitting in to set the tone. I've had some success with open awareness meditation and am looking forward to trying the more focused approach. Thanks for your channel Ben.
I meditate in the morning during my fasting time. I eat at 12pm and again before 6pm which gives me 18 hours of not eating. Meditation on an empty stomach improves my experience.
Always make the out breath longer. Activating your parasympathetic via the dorsal vagal complex is the key!! Look up HRV Resonance Breathing by Forrest Knutson and skip years of pranayama experimentation.
Thank you for the tips Ben. What really works for me to get the para sympathetic nervous system engaged, is making the out breath longer than the in breath. It takes me deeper faster.
Came to the comments to drop this too. Get really comfortable then extending breath with the outbreath longer. My hand become numb and tingly after a few minutes.
I first learned of this technique from Forrest Knutson here at RU-vid and from his book “Mastering Meditation, 8 Steps from Beginner to Adept”. I find it a bit difficult because my body likes to make my in-breath equal to my out-breath.
i imagine my feet and i say feet relax, i imagine my legs and i say legs relax...and i keep working...hips stomach lungs hands arms neck...when i arrive to neck i am very relax then i keep going with mouth eyes and brain relax...it takes a couple of minutes and helps my a lot for starting the meditation...i try to breth very little and if a thought passes by my mind i try not to entangle with it. ben i love your content thank you very much...best wishes
I am new to your channel and I absolutely love it already. ❤ I don’t know if you already talked about this on a different video but what do you think about using a smart watch to track your meditation time and heart rate? When I started meditating I was just so determined, so many things happened in my life and I was hardcore into meditation. I had no idea what I was suppose to do because I thought I had to stop my thoughts so I envisioned my body floating into the universe because that is the only BLACK place I could think of. And it worked so well for me, not to stop my thought though but I felt my body was no longer there I couldn’t even feel the body and I was addicted to meditation. Nowadays I can feel my blood running through my veins, I don’t know if this is normal but I love it. What I do is breath it until I fill my lungs and hold the breath as long as I can and this way I can feel my heart beating. And I do this as long as I can and then I just focus on the 3rd eye. I have no idea if what I am doing is right but I do love it.
Thanks Ben for the very helpful tips. A nice little ‘trick’ I’ve found with focusing on candle flames is after a while, when you close your eyes, you can still see the image ‘behind’ your eye lids. So you can continue focusing on it if you wish, Davide. 🙏
I actually love the watchers method. I am aware of what my brain is aware such as where is its focus, why is that the focus, and is it important? Once I go back to center I just let it wash away because typically its not important in the moment. After that I transition into a focus mediation of a safe place know one could find me at. I stay there until its gone and everything is black. Typically I see colors in my mind but I only bring awareness to them and do not interact with them. I have found it is a kind and gentle way to give my brain away to relax and calm down from its daily work. You have some great advice and I wish I would have saw this when I was getting started because I am 100% self taught lol.
I know you have mentioned it before but diet is huge too. I took my family to the buffet yesterday and I ended up overeating and having some ice cream. The next two meditations after that were not great. I Lao didn’t sleep well. As I usually eat very clean, my body wasn’t too happy with the trip to the buffet 😅
I think the hand position you have mentioned is for Sacral Chakra meditation. It is probably that effective because it is really a connection with creativity... I also came across the breathing practice of 13, 8, 5, 3, 2 and 1 second breathing in and breathing out.
Doing mantra japa for a good bit like with beads and 108 reps right before meditating is very helpful I find. You calm the mind quite a bit before the meditation so once you are meditating you can get deeper more quickly this way.
I've been doing Japa, I'm so grateful for this process. I feel the presence of the divine and sometimes see visions. I tend to state the mantras from within the heart chakra. After grounding to mother earth and father sky
Hi Ben I had a question for you based on this video if you see it - i enjoy guided and visualization meditions a lot, but feel they can create attachment and also that they dont allow for the fullness of experience, or that they rely on belief structures and with vipassana we try to not get attached to belief structures. Is it okay to practice both since they seem to counter each other a bit ? Thank you for your time 🙏🏾
Loved this video but you didn't say much about the Superconscious...can we assume that when our breath becomes shallow we have entered the superconscious? I am confused on this.
All of these forms of mediation that he described allow you to enter into the subconscious mind by having alpha brain wave patterns (opens the gate to subconscious) or even theta state (realm of the subconscious). If you’re looking for more information about the subconscious mind I’d encourage you to do some research on Dr. Joe Dispenza and Bob procotors teachings. They do a great job at explaining the how it works and how to impress the subconscious mind.
Ben, thanks for this video. Very helpful. I had a couple questions on your Skool community and not sure how/where to ask you those before signing up. Interested in understanding what getting 'deeper' means relative to my current level of depth and also curious of time zones/typical times of live sessions to know if they are feasible for me to attend. I am in mountain time zone. Any insight is appreciated!
Hey, great questions! The sessions at the moment tend to be either 6:30am or 6pm London, UK time. The community is only 1 month old, so this may change in time depending on everyone’s preferences etc. I will be recording future sessions and loading them onto the platform so they will be available to everyone regardless of whether they attend the live sessions or not. There’s a classroom section on the platform where I’ve uploaded a course and also a guided meditation. As time goes on this will fill up considerably. There’s also an area to chat with other members, share your experiences, ask questions etc. In terms of getting deeper, this is related to meditation as a whole - your understanding, your knowledge, your skill set and if you do the right work, your depth within the practice. Hope this helps 🙂🙏
Thanks for the tips. I’ve been practicing meditation for maybe a year now jumping from one technique to the other. I’ve used the ticking clock as a single point of focus in the past, I have some hearing loss (too many years standing near speakers at music festivals) so I need to really pay attention. Is that suitable as a focus point like watching a candle?
I've heard both ways for both things. One particular teacher says one way is intended for men the other for women. Very confusing. When I first started meditating I often did the left hand over the right and I was getting good results this way. But then you know there's the tendency to want to keep improving so I started following the teaching of doing it right hand over left. I am going to go back to left after watching this to compare.
Yeah that’s right. I wouldn’t do them personally. I know many people have had breakthroughs with them, but in terms of genuine spiritual growth, you won’t get that with any external substance
