This is my first day, how do i start to meditate? Some tips to start?
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For someone who hasn’t meditated at all before, I would recommend simple mindfulness meditation which involves focusing on your breath. You sit down comfortably, set your timer, and start observing your breath and how it feels in your nose and further inside without trying to control it. Your attention will invariably waver and you’ll start thinking about stuff rather than watching your breath - As soon as you realize that, you gently bring your focus back to your breath without being hard on yourself. That’s all there is to the practice.
In a sense, you learn to encounter the boredom that usually forces you to keep doing doing something to entertain yourself, and by learning that you get in touch with your own power.
If you have not meditated at all before, then I would recommend starting with as little as 10 minutes, making sure you meditate at the same time every day and not missing any day. When you have meditated regularly for a certain duration for a few days (e.g., a week), then increase the duration by five minutes. It is much more important to be regular and make the practice a central part of your life rather than trying to go for long durations to prove something to yourself. The mind is like a muscle and meditation is like any other exercise - It is important not to overexert yourself and to be methodical in your approach.
It will change your life.
I would also recommend checking out zenmister.com or zenmister.tumblr.com as he has amazing ideas on practical, meaningful mindfulness/zen meditation, particularly for beginners.
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Very well said… are you talking about vipassana meditation…?? Because I have been doing it for a week, and it seriously brings along lots of benefits… At first it’s tough… but the secret is to not to strain yourself, and just bring the awareness back to your breath.
After my Exam on Feb … I will do a 10 day course…
I would ask everyone on this forum, to do vipassana meditation, BECAUSE it seriously brings a lot of health benefits and a lots of mindfulness…
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Hi @babi I have learnt Vipassana meditation in the 10 day program conducted by the Goenka foundation (dhamma.org), and I practice it to the extent I can. However, in my comment above, I was only talking about simple breath-focused meditation. Although the practice of focusing on the breath is an important initial part of Vipassana itself, in its entirity, Vipassana is more about developing minute awareness of your whole body and the smallest of sensations in all parts of it.
I believe Vipassana (the whole thing and not just breath-awareness) should only be learnt at a proper extended program and not passed on casually from one practioner to another, as it is a fairly sophisticated practice. Also, the questioner is a beginner so I didn’t see merit in mentioning Vipassana to him. However, I do consider it to be an immensely beneficial, even if difficult, practice to learn, and I would recommend it to anyone who has the basic mental strength to go through a serious 10 day silent meditation program, with nearly 10 hours of sitting every day.
As a kind of light substitute for Vipassana, one could do one of the various guided body scan meditations that are available on YouTube, or do one of the ‘Yoga-Nidra’ (yogic sleep) meditations that are also available there.
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Could attest for Vipassana meditation, seriously changed my life. A fun fact, most of the ideas for the app came during my 10 day Vipassana session.
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i started with meditation using an app called headspace and insight timer.
described them both in this topic.
got the paid version of headspace and I really like it.
it’s mindfullness meditation
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Absolutely… I believe the very first step is to have control over our breathe… That’s the basic part which we should try to do at our home, and the rest we should do under guided meditation centre. Also, I should stop saying about stuff infront of people more experienced than me…
Thank you for enlightening me.
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Wow @Taher that’s great to hear.
Thanks a lot for creating this app man, seriously… We were having a very tough time… trying to handle pmo. But, with this app… we finally found a way to overcome the obstacle.
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@babi Yes everyone can do basic mindfulness meditation without much effort and it would be great if more people take it up.
All the best for your Vipassana course whenever you decide to do it!
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That’s great to know, Taher. So we see one more way in which the practice of meditation is contributing to the good of the world 
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Thanks… Man…
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Thanks! I’ll start meditating. I think is the way to succeed in this process. Healing the inside will make the change.
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