Could anybody give me some advice? or suggest a book or something that can help me teach myself to meditate?
...sure, but "meditation" is a rather large umbrella. There are many techniques, many schools, many philosophies. To give you an analogy, imagine if you'd come in and asked if doing athletics actually works and then asked for advice on how to get started. Well...you could sign up at a gym, you could jog at nights, you could start playing soccer with the kids around your neughborhood, you could lift weights, you could run, you could play sports, you could focus on strength training or endurance or stretching or distance running or sprinting...you'd have a lot of options. And probably any of them would provide benefits.
What do you want to do?
how does one actually learn to meditate?
At the most basic level, meditation is the deliberate and consscious direction of mental focus. For example, think about bunny rabbits. Imagine bunny rabbits. Close your eyes and see them hopping.
Congratulations. You're meditating.
Now...try this: close your eyes and imagine a single bunny rabbit, not moving. Fix in your mind that image of a bunny rabbit.
Incidentally, let us now make a simply observation. You, reading this,
right now were probably not paying attention to the hum that your computer is making. You would not paying attentino to your breathing. You were not paying attention to the sensation of your feet on the floor, or your butt on your chair, or your blinking or breathing or any of countless other things going on in the room you're in.
Pay attention to those things.
All of them, and
all at once.
Fix that in your mind, and do not lose it by thinking about only one thing. Don't be distracted by something somebody said to you yesterday. Don't be reminded of where you're planning to be tomorrow, or ponder what you'll have for dinner tonight.
Focus on right nowBe aware of your breathing, but be also aware of the sensations in your body, the sounds in the room, be aware of your vision...everything you see, hear and feel...everything you can
observe...be aware of it. But don't think "about" it. Don't look at something and become lost in thoughts about it, where it came from, how much you like it, what you'll be doing with it tomorrow, or whatever. The primary goal is to not become distracted by your own mind from whatever it is you're focusing your mind on.
Most meditation techniques are variations on these basic exercises, with the most significant differences being the "what" you are or aren't focusing on, and whether and how much emphasis there is on breathing while you do this.
For a simple breathing excercise, try the
Anthony Robbins 10 day breathing challenge. Three times a day, for ten breaths, inhale/hold/exhale at a ratio of 1/4/2. For example, inhale for 7 seconds, hold your breath for 28, exhale for 14. Do that times, three times a day, for ten days. There are other cadences and more complicated techniques, but this is a very simple one that tends to give immediately observable results.
As to "what" to focus on...again, like "what kind of athletics shall I try" there are a lot of possible answers. Focusing simply on your breathing is popular for beginners. Focusing on specific points of your body is another. If you do Raja Yoga you might be asked to focus on the sun, the pit of your throat, your heart, conceptualizations of strength, or any of a number of things. The sound of
Om is another popular choice. Lengthy sentence-long mantras, buddhist mudras, yoga postures....any of a number of things.
Which you choose is really up to you. I do, however, advise choosing
one and generally sticking with it. If you focus on the sun one day, your heart the next, then bunny rabbits the after that...that's not all that different from letting your mind wander as it will from topic to topic, though simply over days rather than minutes. Or to go back to the athletics examples, it doesn't really matter if you choose to lift weights every day or go jogging every day, either will benefit you. But if you lift weights one day, then go jogging the next, then play soccer the day after that, and bounce every day to a different activity, you're unlikely to get particularly good at any of them. Meditation can be like that.
Incidentally, regarding yoga postures, it is a very different thing focusing your mind in a dark, quiet room with your eyes closed than it is focusing your mind while contorting your body in a difficult yoga posture, in pain and in a room full of other people. Or even focusing on something while a television plays in the background. When learning to focus, it is worth considering the difficulty of the environment you choose. There's something to be said for meditation alone in silence, and there's something to be said for meditating while on a crowded subway. Have you ever had a paper cut or a bruise, or some injury that you didn't even notice because you were so focused on something else? Have you ever played a game for so long that you didn't notice you were hungry? With practice it is possible to learn to deliberately engage this level of focus. If you want to meditate only at night, in bed with no sound and the lights out...that's fine. But there is something to be said for being able to focus under loud, crowded, stressful situations too.
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Topic: Can anyone tell me if meditation actually works? (Read 4422 times)