Any practice mindfulness meditation?

[Bob]

Just curious.

What do you do?  

What are the results?  Is the work in worth the payoff out?





Serenity now!.... 

[kevin69]

Just breathe calmly and deeply, and focus on your breathing.
When your mind wanders, refocus on your breathing.
Continue for 5 minutes, and after five minutes write down any thoughts are you haven't been able to clear from your mind.
Repeat every day if possible.

The results (for me) are that i can refocus on living in the present, rather than re-living events from the past (that can't be changed, but must be accepted) or worrying about possible future events (that may never happen). I find living in present to be less stressful.

Once this becomes a habit the cost of five minutes a day is low, and the benefit in greater relaxation and less stress is (for me) quite high.

hth

[theholygideons]

What are some good books or practitioners of meditation? I'm not interested in the religious side of it either. There's always guys with meditation books, who try to solicit money from you on george street...

[kevin69]

Really, save your money, there isn't enough to it to warrant a book.
Just focus on your breathing: its as simple (but difficult) as that.

Googling gave me this:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-courage-be-present/201001/how-practice-mindfulness-meditation
which suggests meditating for 20 minutes up to an hour.
5 minutes suffices for me, i don't know what the additional nenefit of the extra time would be.

[ryankmfdm]

 Gunaratana's Mindfulness in Plain English is probably the single best resource I've encountered to date. I'd advise doing some basic research into the different types, as mindfulness isn't necessarily the end-all, be-all method. But I've personally concluded that it's the best for my personality type.

[slane]

Free mindfulness mp3s
http://www.freemindfulness.org/download

The art of practicing has quite a bit about mindfulness at the piano in it. Focussing on the sounds, feel, vibration etc. Worth a read IMO.
http://artofpracticing.com/book/

For taking my mind of things at night, I just listen to Jane Austen audio books on my phone with a 30min timer. I know the books inside out so I usually get as far as "Its a truth universally acknowledged.." and I'm asleep. The familiar and pleasantly read words just give me something to focus on but slightly more distracting than breathing.

[thorn]

If you're not into the religious side. Also if you're not into ruminating upon the various one liners of spiritual leaders...

I used to have severe anxiety issues and mindfulness meditation was as useful as CBT for sorting me out. In fact it was my therapist who suggested mindfulness meditation.

She pointed me to a book called "Mindfulness- Finding peace in a frantic world" which centres around Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)

It steers away from anything religious and focuses on practical stuff. It comes with a cd of 8 tracks and the book explains the purpose of each track and you only do one a day in the beginning (working up to three a day at the end- it's an 8 week program). There are also a couple of chapters about the therapy itself for those who are interested.

I can only talk about my own experience which is that it really helped with what I wanted it to help with and that my therapist couldn't speak highly enough of it.