Adventures in Meditation
Meditate Like You Mean It
- Meditation for Beginners & Beyond
Not too long ago, a friend bought me a pocket copy of Meditation for Dummies. I tried not to interpret this as an insult that screamed "You're a high strung idiot!" I've been staring at this little instruction manual to enlightenment for a while now, and when the Kundalini Yoga Meditation for Beginners & Beyond DVD arrived in the mail this week, I decided the universe was sending me a sign.
Chapter one, paragraph one of my little pocket novel to nirvana says: "The great thing about meditation is that it's actually quite simple. Just sit down, be quiet, turn your attention inward, and focus your mind. That's all there is to it, really." Sounds easy enough.
The rest of the book summarized goes like this:
- Don't think about stuff
- Meditate for 5 minutes or an hour, you pick
- Find a quiet place
- Remember to breathe
- Don't eat a big meal before meditating
- Consider making a shrine
- Don't move around, just accept that sitting down not thinking kind of sucks.
Maybe I'm too much of a dummy for Meditation for Dummies because the words of wisdom in the allotted 56 pages brought me nowhere close to enlightenment. I decided it was time for video intervention.
Next stop: Kundalini Yoga Meditation for Beginners & Beyond. This TWO HOUR LONG meditation DVD is a double team effort by Ana Brett and Ravi Singh. Ana is the face of the DVD; Ravi just does some intermittent voiceover. And let me tell you, where Meditation for Dummies may have been all things practical, Meditation for Beginners & Beyond is all things breathing, chanting, and chakra soothing.
There are 12 segments to this video, and I suggest picking and choosing rather than trying to do all 2 hours—at certain points my feet fell asleep which seriously detracted from my inner peace.
The good thing about the video is that I felt like it empowered me with mantras and breathing techniques to use in the future. At certain points with super deep breathing I got that "I'm so drunk the room is spinning" feeling, which I assumed meant I was doing something right.
The bad thing is it's really hard not to think about something when there's a voice literally telling you not to think about anything. Also, the music was a little whacktastic, way faster at points than I deemed appropriate for my meditating needs. Also, throughout, Ravi says things like "Now meditate." Umm, isn't that what I've been doing? Second favorite phrase, "Meditate like you mean it." Ravi, why are you doubting my commitment to meditation?
All in all, I think Meditation for Beginners & Beyond is more of an occasional friend, useful for little breathing and chanting nuggets while I get my dummy on and just sit down, be quiet, turn my attention inward. Next stop, ashram?
- Kimberly Rae Miller's blog
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Comments
Haha! The advice I received on meditation is not to trying jumping right into thinking about nothing. We're so overstimulated that it's just too drastic of a change, and meditating takes practice. Maybe start by focusing on one thing, like your breathing. And try not to get frustrated when your mind inevitably wanders...
Submitted by syrupandhoney on 04.02.10 at 12:06.
Yeah, I've heard that thinking about nothing is like best-monks-in-the-monastery level meditation. Which made me feel a lot better about not being able to do it. I like the audio files here: http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=22 they're really practical in tone and once you've listened to them for a while, you can run through the steps yourself. It looks like there are a lot more than there were when I downloaded mine, but I have the 19 minute instructions, the 5 minute breathing meditation, and the 3 minute body and sound meditation, and all three are good.
Submitted by seshat on 04.02.10 at 04:03.