Meditation is not about relaxation, stress relief, and being in peace with yourself and the world. These things only come as a byproduct.

Meditation is not a band aid you can apply to your life to make it better. You cannot continue living your life exactly the way it is now, medidate for half an hour a day and expect improvement. It is psychological self exploration. If you maintain your life the way it is now, you will very quickly hit a boundary and will make no further progress in meditation until your life is changed.

Meditation is about observing the way your mind works. The only way to do that is to anchor it by sustaining an incredibly focused attention on a single object for prolonged periods of time. It doesn't matter what the object is (although it's normally breath) - your mind responds to any object and by learning to sustain uninterrupted attention you will observe how your mind works.

I would suggest you to seek instruction in Anapanasati from a competent teacher. Ignore new age stuff, buddhist cosmology, relaxation and stress relief business, or any related stuff. None of it will make any lasting difference.

In a nutshell just follow your breathing, one breath at a time. When you discover you've lost attention, relax, smile, accept whatever emotions you're feeling, and go back to the breath. Seek a teacher once you discover how incredibly deep and subtle this process can be.

Good luck!

EDIT: I suppose I should add a disclaimer. I am far, far from an expert. If someone (including me) claims they completely understand meditation, they probably do not.

Having a punch completely take your equilibrium because you let your mind get trapped in an analysis paralysis loop is a wonderfully effective biofeedback mechanism.

The trick, of course, is that nobody's fast enough to do that kind of calculation in the middle of a fight. A simplifying model helps--the most popular model involves "chi"--but even using that model, conscious analytic thought is too slow for anything but mostly-scripted practice.

In other words, chi may be magic fairy mysticism, but if you believe it, at least temporarily, it works anyway.

Instead, what about this: "You willingly suspend the disbelief being thrown up by one part of your mind so you can get something useful done in a different part."

Formulated that way, it covers fiction too.

See also: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/why-fiction-lies.html

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/a-tale-of-two-tradeoff...

Even though I've always 'known better', I've still been tossed on my ass more than a handful of times by a soft arts practitioner, once or twice by a guy who was almost 80 years old.

It's an interesting thing, you can get tossed around for a couple of reasons:

One, you can be a subconsciously willing partner - even if you don't realize it, you want your partner to succeed because it validates what you're spending your time doing.

And two, your partner cheats and uses force in a sly way.

Taiji, Xingyi and Bagua guys are absolute masters at body mechanics. After lots of years spent practicing, they know as much about body leverage as a lot of judo guys. It can be shocking, and your body often won't realize what's happened because it encounters an overload - there's a foot and two hands touching you all of the sudden, and your brain doesn't know what to make of the sudden stimulus when you're already in a mentally stressed state. I honestly don't think that a lot of the practitioners even realize it, hence the devotion to "chi flow".

I've spent many many years studying kinetics as it relates to power generation, and the internal artists are amazingly good at it; it's just not immediately obvious what they are doing.

  > The trick, of course, is that nobody's fast enough
  > to do that kind of calculation in the middle of a fight.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution to the paradox: you learn to anticipate what your opponent is going to do so you can start your response before they even initiate their movement.

Chi probably helps too.

*Xingyi(quan)|Hsing-I Chuan, Bagua(zhang)|Pa Kua Chang, Liu He Ba Fa, and Meihuazhuang are Chinese internal arts. Systema is a Russian art that shares a lot with Tai Chi, but substitutes specialized calisthenics for chi gung, and guarantees you learn how to get punched. Pentjak Silat is an Indonesian art--actually a large group of arts, like Kung Fu--with a lot of fun knife and machete work.

in general, the best ways to relieve stress follow the rule of thumb: "take care of yourself". sleep long/well enough, exercise, eat right, ensure personal health (go to doctor/dentist, get a massage, etc.), and take the time to do the things you enjoy.

Addressing the original question, this is an exceptional introduction: http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Mindfulness-Thich-Nhat-Hanh/dp...

The nice thing about exercise is it will help you sleep better, which I find is half the battle in trying to maintain focus (especially for us programmers who spend most of the day sitting at a desk).

I took a blacksmithing class the other day, and that was excellent.

1) Dark room. Dark.

2) Lie in bed or on the floor.

3) Breathe.

4) More slowly.

5) Nope, slower. Hold it in tension.

6) Concentrate on breathing. This is not a nap.

7) Practice. This isn't magic. You are trying to get your body & brain to do something. It's not something it just does regularly by itself. Think of it as exercise.

I've participated in retreats at a few of their locations and helped out on the volunteer staff a few times. The stuff they teach, though basic -- observe your breath & observe the sensations in your body -- is really useful.

They assume you have no background knowledge whatsoever about meditation, and they teach you everything you need to know. The course is very intensive and hard, but it's really really rewarding. It's a life-changing experience.

I attended this course a few years ago, and while I don't meditate regularly, I do meditate sometimes for 30 minutes. I do it when I feel stressed, or overworked, or when I feel my urges are controlling me. It works great against these things. I feel like this meditation is a sort of super-powerful weapon that I can pull out when life gets tough.

As I said, highly recommended.

(Genuine curiosity not dismissiveness)

According to Vipassana, all misery comes from "Sankaras". A Sankara is either a craving or an aversion. In other words, wanting something badly, needing it emotionally. The feeling associated with addiction.

You have a lot of different little sankaras going on in your daily life. Vipassana is all about systematically eliminating them. It's a sort of ultra-rehab. But they deal directly with sensations: It doesn't matter what the object of the addiction is. They won't talk with you about cigarettes if you're addicted to smoking. They just teach you to feel yourself all over your body, and whenever you feel a sankara, you have to (gently but firmly) destroy it. You destroy it by simply observing it objectively. Over time, you notice that you have less and less sankaras.

Why is it intensive/hard?

The hard part is having to deal with your sankaras all the time. This is very hard.

The intensive part is because there is so much meditation. It's somewhere around 10 hours a day, if I remember correctly, with the biggest chunk being two hours long. You wake up real early and start meditating right away. You have few hours to sleep. There is no dinner. (This is intentional: it's supposed to be better for meditation.) You aren't even allowed to exercise.

I think it's worth it though. I took it twice.

You can check out their site too: http://www.dhamma.org/

Your body needs to be in an alert or awake position in order for you to be able to settle into yourself. Sitting on a couch will just make you sleepy.

It's also hugely important not to expect anything out of your meditation. "Having trouble focusing" is only a symptom of what's actually going on. Meditation won't make it go away; but, if you stick with it, you'll likely gain insight into the causes of it, and hopefully find more productive ways of dealing with it.

Thanks for saying that... it's such an important bit, but so difficult to actually live, and it's ignored by most.

Personally, I learned to meditated from a Shambhala center. They teach shamatha/vipassana meditation, which are the two most common forms of Buddhist meditation. The (over-simplified) explanation is that Shamatha is about quieting the mind, and Vipassana about awareness/insight.

In terms of your basic question, meditation can be as simple as sitting on the couch and watching empty space for a couple of minutes, if you are sitting on the couch and watching empty space the right way. Generally speaking, there are postures that serve better than couch-sitting, and instructions that are more sophisticated than "watching empty space", and a qualified meditation instructor can help you with those.

If you really don't have access to a local instructor, get in touch with me privately, and I'll see what I can do for you.

EDIT: I neglected yoga, which is excellent for de-stressing and working out daily kinks. The problem is it's popular and so it's expensive. As an extra bonus, if you're single, there are many worse places to be than in a yoga class.

I did a ten day course with these guys: http://www.dhamma.org/

I found it to be difficult, but worthwhile. I'm not going to do a brain dump of my experiences here, but I came back with no shortage of focus, that's for sure.

Here's a thread where people talk about their experiences at this course: http://www.yoga.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=18216&...

They tell you at the retreat that you should practice for an hour twice daily after you get back. I did that for awhile, but you feel like you're backsliding doing it for "just" two hours daily, after having put in roughly 100 hours in 10 days, and I was working 12 hour days at the time, so all I really did was work, meditate, and sleep. I ended up switching to this mantra-based approach: http://www.aypsite.org/13.html instead, because it only takes 20 minutes twice a day and seems to give you more benefit per time spent (this is not to say that this program is necessarily better than Vipassana, but it's easier to maintain while you're living in the real world). This is basically the same thing as TM, except you don't have to pay $2000 for a mantra. The people involved in this are too new-agey for my tastes, but the techniques will get you out of that permanent fight-or-flight reaction that does nothing but harm in the modern world.

The bottom line: do the 10 day course or something similar if you can and you are up to it. If not, a mantra for 20 minutes or so will help you deal with stress (although working out might be a good way to deal with too).

There are variations to the breathing technics - so its important that you do a little research on it rather than just randomly trying out something.

Search for 'baba ramdev' in google/youtube - he's a yoga guru in India who's achieved cult status.

I liked the part where the immortal himalaya yogi instantly makes a palace appear, walks in it for a while with his pupil, and makes it disappear again. The point was just to get rid of a desire for luxury that remained in the pupil's karma (or something like that).

Also 'Art of Living' does some basic and advanced courses. They are helpful too.

Update: http://us.artofliving.org/art-of-living-course/index.html

See http://tinyurl.com/cx39vd

Fourfold Breath is the basic technique. Or google pranayama yoga. I idea is to control your breathing and through that control your being.

- focus on your breath (count to N as you breath in; count to N as you breath out - where N=4 or some other integer that is comfortable for you. I sometimes use N=2 if I'm very stressed).

- focus on the texture of something in the real world - trace the actual edge of a rock, or a doorway, or a road. Don't skip ahead with your idea of the edge - trace the actual edge, observe the actual texture of it.

- focus on the sounds around you, middle, near (your own sounds, breath, cloth moving) and far (traffic hum, birds, wind).

Being in nature, and thinking about what is stressing me, then observing infinite reality around me (sky, ocean, plants, earth) somehow calms me and puts things in perspective: those things are much more complex. I also get ideas from this new perspective. :-)

Not saying these will work for you. But one of them might.

Rinse, repeat (daily).

The best book that I've seen on the subject is "How to Meditate" by Lawrence LeShan. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316880620

Meditation isn't magic, it's not stress relief, and it's not easy. Approach it like working out, because that's what it is. Do some research, formulate a routine, keep track of your progress, and maybe even get a friend to join you on the path so you can help each other stay motivated. It's easy to quit, and there will be LONG stretches when it seems like you've plateaued and there's no point.

Imagine if your legs got sore and tired every time you walked from your apartment to the car. You might conclude (correctly) that you need exercise your legs to make them stronger so that you won't get sore so easily. However, the first few times you work out, you'll be much more sore than otherwise.

Similarly, stress may be indicating that you need more balance and self-awareness. Meditation can give you that, but it can be a very stressful experience! At first, it may seem like it's making things worse. In fact, if you're doing it right, you'll probably hate it a little, because it won't be comfortable.

On the other hand, stress may be indicating that you need to make your heart and lungs stronger, and increase your muscle mass. So get out and move around.

I've had great results from physical activity like biking regularly. I just recently started taking taekwondo, and it's pretty incredible. It's best if it's something repetitive that you can gradually get better at with practice.

You might also consider seeing a shrink to talk about what's stressing you out. No one gets out of childhood without scars, and there's no shame in tackling the problem head on with a professional. Do you fix your own pipes? Remove your own wisdom teeth? Sew your own clothes? Isn't your mind even more complex than all of these things? Get help. Like meditation and exercise, therapy might not "feel good"; it's work that you do for long-term benefit, and it should hurt a little.

http://www.mindfold.com/

(Don't laugh, nothing has ever worked better for me.)

1. Get a good noise-blocking pair of headphones. Such as the Etymotic ER-6is I have.

2. Get some relaxing music. I usually pick up an album a month of new music. It keeps the music effective.

3. Walk around a bit with the headphones playing the music. Just outside the office is fine, maybe up & down a street or two -- depends on where you/the office is.

Stress relieving can be done in several ways such as: running, yoga, swimming or even just something simple like doodling or painting.

Few good books if you really want to look into meditation are: http://www.amazon.com/Wherever-You-There-Are-Mindfulness/dp/... http://www.amazon.com/Minute-Meditation-Quiet-Mind-Change/dp... http://www.amazon.com/Book-Secrets-Keys-Love-Meditation/dp/0...

For me, they are the exact same thing. Just relax and stop working on anything for a while. Just sit there. Think about work, think about people you know, or don't think about anything at all, it doesn't really matter. Time passes amazingly slowly when you're not doing anything. I find random thoughts start naturally flowing through my head when I do this.

I've also known people who seem physically incapable of doing this. They sit for maybe twenty seconds, then some neuron fires in their brain, and they're off running again like a hamster in a wheel. Those people never seem to do well in the long run. Don't be a hamster :)

After you get used to it, you can do it by yourself, but starting out I find it better to do it along with a recording. I have rhapsody, so I use the tracks on this album. Both of them are good, but I think the progressive one is better.

http://www.rhapsody.com/phd-edward-a-charlesworth/relaxation...

If you don't have rhapsody, you can listen to them with the trial, or maybe try to get them from iTunes or Amazon or something.

Read through it, try a few, see what works for you. Different techniques work for different people.

The best is to learn in a live environment from a trained teacher. I recommend Isha Yoga (www.ishafoundation.org) They have a program called "inner engineering" which imparts a yogic practice which is quite effective at lowering stress and bringing clarity to the mind. There have even been some scientific studies looking at changes in the brain through doing the practice.

There are some risks involved...

http://florin.myip.org/blog/node/22

...but it will disconnect you from all stress and worries in a tremendous way.

In the last months, I cleared a major portion of my debts, relocated to my home town, started doing yoga/exercise regularly took care of my back problem... I am solving each of my problems one by one. The stress levels are slowly coming down.

Imagine a sine wave, a real smooth one (or a circle, with a revolving point on the circumference). Breath as a sine wave, very slowly and gently reversing the direction of your breathing. Reverse so gently, that there is no clicking or jerking. It is actually quite hard and requires a lot of patience and focus. It is incredibly relaxing.... give it a try.

In contrast to the majority of the rest of the posts, I have found meditation to be very valuable to relieve work related stress.

(1) Start regular exercise. For stress, it's better to do smaller amounts/intensities more often than to do too much but infrequently.

(2) Check your diet. Too much processed sugar and caffiene in addition to the usual issues around sodium imbalance. Also good to look into what and how much you eat later in the day and how that affects your sleep. Also, make sure that you're staying well hydrated.

(3) There are lots of different things that people jumble together under the notion of "meditation" -- especially as it's accreted into a big business for some people. Serious, hard-core forms of meditation that have been shown to have long-term transformative effects physiologically often induce (certain forms of) stress (otherwise, how are you going to learn to deal with it? :-). I'm all for learning this but it's not a quick fix to stress management.

(4) A lot of the basic, introductory techniques that are often passed on as being part of "meditation" are really just relaxation techniques. They are great to learn because you can often apply them nearly anytime and anywhere.

In particular, self-guided relaxation of each area of your body is a fantastic tool to help with stress. It's also each to fit into whatever chunks of time you have available (3 seconds, 3 minutes, 3 hours, whatever :-). For those quick, at your desk, self-checks I would suggest especially focusing on tension being carried in and around the mouth, face, head, neck and then shoulders. Also a good time to tune up one's posture.

(5) Do more (light) stretching. The lighter side of yoga, etc.

(6) Take more small breaks. Get a drink, pee, stare off into space, stretch, do some relaxation, take a walk, listen to some music, etc.

(7) Get enough rest.

(8) "Clean your plate." I.e., really finishing things so that you can let them go. Even seemingly silly things like keeping the sink clean, dishes washed and put away, etc. can have a bigger affect on stress levels than you might think. Doing a nightly list of things you need to deal with tomorrow is also a good ritual to start.

(9) Write in a journal. Self-reflection, venting, etc. but be sure to also celebrate, too.

Hope this helps, John

I've experimented with positive results. The program has also been recommended by 2 trusted friends. I'm not sure just how effective it is compared to typical meditation practices, but worth checking out.

I found it helpful..

That's how I got started. Since I was REALLY planning to focus, I wanted some basic assurance that I wasn't throwing my mind into some kind of black hole I couldn't get out of. (Remember how seriously I was planning to try to focus.) I decided that an alarm clock or timer would be my signal that I could release my focus. I was sort of worried about losing myself or my ego entirely, so I would tell myself that there's no possible way that could happen. (I'd eventually fall asleep, wake up, and my personality would be reloaded.) I made sure that everything could stay on hold for a couple of hours--no fire on the oven, whatever. Mostly, this was just to get rid of any possible excuse for not focusing to the highest degree I could ever achieve. Anyway, I did this for many hours per day while I was unemployed, and ... it works. You will focus like you've never focused before. Amazing things will happen--I remember meditating in my room, and hearing a family member call my name... except that I only perceived it as physical sensation. It was only after I was done meditating that I recalled the sensation that had hit my ears and knew that someone had tried to call me--it had no meaning during the duration the meditation. It actually can be kind of dangerous if you do it like that because you can go past the level of unresponsiveness would you get in sleep. You reach a point where even if you felt pain, you just wouldn't respond. The neurons would fire, you would perceive it, and your mind would assign no meaning; you just wouldn't "care."

If you focus to that degree, you can't be stressed, because you simply have absolutely no thought of anything that can stress you, and even if you did, you would not comprehend / respond do it. Getting good at meditating like this can steam-roll everything. I swear I was in states of mind where losing an arm wouldn't have concerned me in the slightest.

I remeber afterward, in times of stress, I would start meditating like this again. Eventually, you're just different. Like, I would feel stress start to rise, and then just decide to block it out. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but it's like if you can push your attention around so rigidly, you can just refuse to pay attention to anything, and it just goes away. You can feel the stress rise, then just focus on it an ... extinguish it. It's hard to explain. You can stop it as if it were an ordinary voluntary thought.

http://www.buddhanet.net/budsas/ebud/mfneng/mind0.htm

If you set a goal such as "stop thinking in words" you will never actually stop thinking in words because this is what you're thinking about.