A meditation practice(in the Soto Zen tradition) over the course of five years changed my life. Daily 40m of sitting facing a wall watching the breath and returning the mind to the present moment when it strays. No judgement. Just returning the mind to the present, again, and again, and again.... The BS starts to drop away. No enlightenment moments. But later, away from the practice you have more patience, more acceptance, more little moments of joy, less fear.

▲

smeg_it 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I've been doing it on and off for years. Trouble is my "career" is dead. I think I'm technically "middle" aged, but really over "middle" of life. It's harder to relax the mind and body right now. When I do it "right", I feel more relaxed on both fronts. My body doesn't sit for hours or anything but 15-30 is my norm when it works. It's hard for me to continue, if I hadn't relaxed by say 5 min. I think mine is basically the same except I try and return to paying attention to my breathing when my mind wonders. I know my breathing is in the "present"; so this might just be a semantic difference. *I don't like the word "concentration" because, I think, it throws people off (so that's why I didn't use it)

	▲	post-it an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The worse it feels, the more it's helping. It means you're surfacing and dismissing thoughts that would otherwise plague you when you're trying to get things done.
	▲	dijksterhuis 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> When I do it "right" i get the scare quote usage. but still feel like it’s a good time to point out. there’s no right zazen. there’s no wrong zazen. there’s just zazen. sitting down and taking what comes. that’s all we’re doing. sitting down and getting quieter. emphasis on the -er in quieter. 30 minutes of “crap” zazen is probably the most rewarding zazen. i just don’t appreciate it at the time. something that helped me recently is just giving myself a day off. it’s okay. i’ll come back to it. as someone said to me recently — the worst way of maintaining a practice is to force it / control it.