What To Do While Sitting by dozens | sitember

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What To Do While Sitting

dozensHost1 year ago

Not sure what to do while sitting?

Here are some tips!

Counting. Try counting your breath! This is a classic sitting activity.
Noticing and Labeling. You can do this while counting! Every time your counting is interrupted by a thought, a feeling, or some other distraction, give that thing your full attention. Really notice it. Then label it. For example, "That's a thought. That's narration. Future thinking. Remembering. That's a dog barking. That's anger." Etc. Once you have noticed and labeled the thing, then dismiss it and return to counting.

You can get pretty far with Counting and Noticing + Labeling!

~lucidiot1 year ago

Some tips about counting from past experience:

If you lose track of the count, that's okay. Nobody actually cares about the count; the goal is to make you focus on your breath. Just start at 1.
Don't make the counting too complicated, so you keep on focusing on the breath and not on doing math; once you get at 10, go back to 1.

dozensHost1 year ago

These are super good tips! Thanks lucidiot!

I'll add that you should in fact expect to lose count at some point. It's gonna happen. Start over again at 1.

~lucidiot1 year ago

Another technique that I like, the body scan: start by noticing whatever you are feeling at the very top of your head. Don't try to fix anything, just notice how it is feeling. That's usually enough to cause your body to relax the muscles by itself. Then work you way down the rest of your body, noticing how you feel in every other body part; the forehead, the back of the head, the nose, each cheek, the lips, the neck, the left shoulder, go along the whole left arm slowly all the way down to the fingertips, do the same on the right side, etc., ending at the tip of your toes.

I use that technique when I want to force myself to sleep, with the difference that I let myself switch positions or do anything necessary to be comfortable since the goal isn't to meditate but to sleep, and it works to be relaxed.

Can you tell I've tried and failed to maintain a habit of meditating many times before?

dozensHost1 year ago

lucidiot, you might enjoy this variation on the body scan you described. I have found it very relaxing in the past, and have felt increased connection and empathy after doing it.

gemini://tilde.town/~dozens/gemlog/8.gmi

~lucidiot1 year ago

That sounds interesting, though that's already a whole other layer of complexity that I haven't tried in my meditation. I might play with that a little later once I sleep better!

phosphor1 year ago

hi, i just found out about this site + challenge from your post on fedi!

i'm joining the challenge because it fits in with a habit i've been doing for the past couple weeks--i've been sitting and trying to be aware of my emotions, to try to process them somewhat.

it's kinda funny because several years ago, when i first tried to get into meditation i'd stopped because it was too hard to not get caught up in emotions, but now i'm using that exact same phenomenon to my advantage because honestly, setting aside time to Feel Things is really useful to me, since i end up using less energy trying not to Feel Things.

dozensHost1 year ago

Hey and welcome! Glad you decided to join us!

That's a good insight you had. The idea that meditation is about "not thinking" seems to be as pervasive as it is incorrect. And I think that emotions and feelings fall into that same bucket. It's much more, obviously, about just being aware and mindful of thoughts + feelings, and not letting them run amok and not getting swept up in them.

I've been playing around with the idea that thoughts and emotions are pretty much the same kind of "thought object". That most thoughts have some kind of emotion associated them, and nearly all emotions have some kind of thought associated with them. So the same kind of noticing and labeling and dismissing techniques that work (for me) for thoughts ought to work just as well for feelings.

Another technique that I have enjoyed using in the past to process feelings is the repetitive "How are you?", in which you notice a feeling and ask yourself the question. And it might turn out you're feeling rage. And then you ask yourself again, how are you? And you might discover you feel perfectly happy experiencing rage. Again, how are you? Maybe concerned about joyful rage? Okay, how are you? And you just keep peeling back the layers of the onion like that.

Anyway, you didn't ask for all of that. Sorry if it's not welcome. Excited that you decided to sit with us!!

~lucidiot1 year ago

Something that I found while plowing through my RSS feeds: guided meditations and exercises for self-compassion, which some research apparently says is better than trying to build up your self-esteem. I have no idea how this will turn out, but I might try some of that later.