Do you meditate daily, if so what type especially if you have Adult ADHD??
Question: There are so many types of meditation that is advertised and practiced. I was curious to see what methods people use. I am just starting out and trying to make a decision what would be the best for me.
Answers: There are many types of meditation, all of them work, it is just a matter of choosing which one you like best. The one I use is called centering prayer. There is a book by Thomas Keating called Open Heart, Open Mind or something like that. It is described well in the book but it is really just allowing yourself not to attach to your thoughts. The mind is a busy and noisy thing and will rarely stop talking to you. The other respondant recommended, shh. Keating recommends a sacred word or phrase to use when you find yourself running away with your thoughts. This is just to remind you to rest where you are and to allow your thoughts to move past you. Keating uses the image of a river, like you are sitting on the edge of the river which is consciousness and your thoughts are the boats that float past. it is ok for them to be on the river and for you to notice that they are there. You just want to avoid jumping on board and searching the cargo hold. When you see that you have done so, simply and gently, without anger, use your sacred word or phrase to remind you that you are really sitting on the edge of the river.
You may feel like your mind is so noisy that it is driving you crazy and that you want to just jump up and run around screaming because meditation can be so frustrating with your noisy mind. You may want to fidget and find it impossible to keep still. This may make you feel like a failure at meditation but this is often what meditation is.
Eventually you may find moments of stillness and quiet during mediatation but you may not. This is ok. Set a time, maybe as little as 5 minutes and do not quit until that five minutes is up, gradually build up to 30 minutes a day. Even if you never experience a still and quiet moment in meditation, you can not fail as long as you show up and do it with intention.
After a good 30 days of consistent daily practice you may find yourself being overcome by a deep sense of peace in the middle of a busy or chaotic time in your day. You will find this happening more and more frequently the more consistently you practice meditation.
This is how you will know it is working. Good luck!
What works best for many Adult ADDers I know is practicing the technique from Shambhala (secular organization using some Tibetan Buddhist techniques, but made up of mostly non-Buddhists).
Why?
1)You meditate with your eyes open, focused on a spot on the floor.
For ADDers this is much better practice than with your eyes closed. You don't want to escape the world--that doesn't help you at all in day-to-day problems. You learn to focus with your eyes open, staying alert, clearing your mind over and over again and returning to the point. That's the single most important technique for ADDers to learn. Otherwise we go off on all sorts of tangents at rocket speed, and cause huge messes everywhere.
2) You honor your own experience. It's one of the very few traditions where you always, as they say, start where you are . The point is not to work to be a better person or to get richer or whatever. It's to take who you already are and see where that leads you, without all the junk people have told you over your life.
You don't start where somebody else thinks you are, or where they think you ought to be, or where you think you ought to be. That would be like taking cancer medicine when you have the flu. Not only a waste of time, energy, and money, but it can kill you, mentally and emotionally and spiritually, as well as physically.
3) It's about unwinding all the knots and tangles in yourself and your life, gently and slowly. Nowhere to be, no place to get to. If there's one thing I trip over all the time, it's not only life's tangles but all the ones made that are left over from my past.
YMMV but don't do anything rigid, don't do anything that recruits you, and don't do anything that isn't forgiving, always. You'll have ADD forever (probably), so you need something that will always be there, when you're ready for it, or ready to return.
My favorite audio books and books in this tradition are by Pema Chodron and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Another alternative, a little less accessible in the US: meditation and talks by Thich Nhat Hahn. Vietnamese Zen, but not the mean kind of Zen. He makes love seem like a nice word, not a stupid one. Both of these traditions do.
Both focus on working with what's great about being you and being human, but not in a superficial, buy-my-book, self help kind of way. These ideas and techniques have been developed over thousands of years by millions of people of all kinds.
Disclaimer: not a teacher, not a member, not a Buddhist, not anything official. Just grateful for the generosity of these people.
Put all the hipe aside.
All you really need is a quiet room where you will not be disturbed for at lease 30 minutes.
I basic idea in meditation is to quiet your mind ( meaning not to talk to yourself in your head.) Every time your mind starts to talk to you , you internally say shh!!.
The idea of Consentrating on an object is to give your mind something to focus on other then talking to you.
Also the image you consentrate on helps to enforce where you want your meditation to go. Such as an image of you sitting or standing in a body of water . as far as you can see is clear cool water and the harizon with a clear blue sky.
As you meditate you consentrate on feeling the water and where it is at on your body. Later you try to feel the sun warming the areas it is shining on as the cool wind blows across you. If you can get to this state of meditation then not only own your self but thoughs who do not possess this form of meditation. Simple meaning your in control of the situations you find your self in.
Answers: There are many types of meditation, all of them work, it is just a matter of choosing which one you like best. The one I use is called centering prayer. There is a book by Thomas Keating called Open Heart, Open Mind or something like that. It is described well in the book but it is really just allowing yourself not to attach to your thoughts. The mind is a busy and noisy thing and will rarely stop talking to you. The other respondant recommended, shh. Keating recommends a sacred word or phrase to use when you find yourself running away with your thoughts. This is just to remind you to rest where you are and to allow your thoughts to move past you. Keating uses the image of a river, like you are sitting on the edge of the river which is consciousness and your thoughts are the boats that float past. it is ok for them to be on the river and for you to notice that they are there. You just want to avoid jumping on board and searching the cargo hold. When you see that you have done so, simply and gently, without anger, use your sacred word or phrase to remind you that you are really sitting on the edge of the river.
You may feel like your mind is so noisy that it is driving you crazy and that you want to just jump up and run around screaming because meditation can be so frustrating with your noisy mind. You may want to fidget and find it impossible to keep still. This may make you feel like a failure at meditation but this is often what meditation is.
Eventually you may find moments of stillness and quiet during mediatation but you may not. This is ok. Set a time, maybe as little as 5 minutes and do not quit until that five minutes is up, gradually build up to 30 minutes a day. Even if you never experience a still and quiet moment in meditation, you can not fail as long as you show up and do it with intention.
After a good 30 days of consistent daily practice you may find yourself being overcome by a deep sense of peace in the middle of a busy or chaotic time in your day. You will find this happening more and more frequently the more consistently you practice meditation.
This is how you will know it is working. Good luck!
What works best for many Adult ADDers I know is practicing the technique from Shambhala (secular organization using some Tibetan Buddhist techniques, but made up of mostly non-Buddhists).
Why?
1)You meditate with your eyes open, focused on a spot on the floor.
For ADDers this is much better practice than with your eyes closed. You don't want to escape the world--that doesn't help you at all in day-to-day problems. You learn to focus with your eyes open, staying alert, clearing your mind over and over again and returning to the point. That's the single most important technique for ADDers to learn. Otherwise we go off on all sorts of tangents at rocket speed, and cause huge messes everywhere.
2) You honor your own experience. It's one of the very few traditions where you always, as they say, start where you are . The point is not to work to be a better person or to get richer or whatever. It's to take who you already are and see where that leads you, without all the junk people have told you over your life.
You don't start where somebody else thinks you are, or where they think you ought to be, or where you think you ought to be. That would be like taking cancer medicine when you have the flu. Not only a waste of time, energy, and money, but it can kill you, mentally and emotionally and spiritually, as well as physically.
3) It's about unwinding all the knots and tangles in yourself and your life, gently and slowly. Nowhere to be, no place to get to. If there's one thing I trip over all the time, it's not only life's tangles but all the ones made that are left over from my past.
YMMV but don't do anything rigid, don't do anything that recruits you, and don't do anything that isn't forgiving, always. You'll have ADD forever (probably), so you need something that will always be there, when you're ready for it, or ready to return.
My favorite audio books and books in this tradition are by Pema Chodron and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Another alternative, a little less accessible in the US: meditation and talks by Thich Nhat Hahn. Vietnamese Zen, but not the mean kind of Zen. He makes love seem like a nice word, not a stupid one. Both of these traditions do.
Both focus on working with what's great about being you and being human, but not in a superficial, buy-my-book, self help kind of way. These ideas and techniques have been developed over thousands of years by millions of people of all kinds.
Disclaimer: not a teacher, not a member, not a Buddhist, not anything official. Just grateful for the generosity of these people.
Put all the hipe aside.
All you really need is a quiet room where you will not be disturbed for at lease 30 minutes.
I basic idea in meditation is to quiet your mind ( meaning not to talk to yourself in your head.) Every time your mind starts to talk to you , you internally say shh!!.
The idea of Consentrating on an object is to give your mind something to focus on other then talking to you.
Also the image you consentrate on helps to enforce where you want your meditation to go. Such as an image of you sitting or standing in a body of water . as far as you can see is clear cool water and the harizon with a clear blue sky.
As you meditate you consentrate on feeling the water and where it is at on your body. Later you try to feel the sun warming the areas it is shining on as the cool wind blows across you. If you can get to this state of meditation then not only own your self but thoughs who do not possess this form of meditation. Simple meaning your in control of the situations you find your self in.
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