How and why do you meditate?

[Ivan]

I am curious as to how you involve meditation in your routines? I personally really enjoy using the Wim Hof method:

1. 30 breaths in and out as quickly and deeply as possible
2. At the last breath exhale as much as possible, and hold your breath (or lack thereof) for as long as possible
3. When you can't hold it in any longer, take the deepest breath possible and hold it for 15 seconds
4. After 15 seconds, exhale and begin from step 1 again

After about 3-4 rounds of this, it feels like I am getting 'high' on oxygen, and during the 2nd step, I can think and properly reflect on whatever I wish to focus on, or just let everything be and focus on slowing my heart rate to make the retention last as long possible.
I haven't been able to properly engrain meditation as frequent habit; I tend to either do it daily for weeks and then I just stop and don't do it for a while and constantly flip flop.

How do you guys meditate?

 

[mograph]

I set a timer using the Insight Timer app on the phone. I sit in half lotus. For a while, I was doing it for twenty minutes, now less. I did it regularly for a couple of years, now it's not so regular.

Pretty much, I do this when stray thoughts arise:

• bring my attention back to my breath
• attend to my surrounding visual, auditory sensations
• pay bare attention to thoughts without judgement

So, you could call it mindfulness. I wouldn't call it Vipassana, because I don't really focus on internal sensations in a systematic manner.

The long-term effect has been a greater sense of clarity outside of the practice, and I see my life with a bit more equanimity.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

How do you guys meditate?

Do this before training:

- Make your palms warm by rubbing on each other.
- Put both palms on your eyes.
- Rotate your eyeballs clockwise 8 times and then counter-clockwise 8 times.
- Inhale fully, exhale fully.
- Inhale 1/2, inhale another 1/2. exhale 1/2, exhale another 1/2.
- Inhale 1/3, inhale another 1/3, inhale another 1/3, exhale 1/3, exhale another 1/3, exhale another 1/3.
- ...
- Inhale 1/8, inhale another 1/8, ..., exhale 1/8. exhale another 1/8, ...

 

[Stuarto]

I have never tried meditation before but have heard a lot of positive feedback. I am willing to try it. Any good methods that the MT community could recommend?

 

[Ivan]

I have never tried meditation before but have heard a lot of positive feedback. I am willing to try it. Any good methods that the MT community could recommend?

I think the Wim Hof method is personally the best out of all the different methods I have tried, because it was the only one where I could actually feel its effects. There are plenty of guided meditations by Wim Hof himself on YouTube.

 

[Gyakuto]

Susokukan is the method I mainly use.

Why? I have no idea why I bother. It doesn’t seem to make me feel and different but all the science research says it’s very good for mood and brain health, so I continue practising.

 

[HighKick]

I am curious as to how you involve meditation in your routines? I personally really enjoy using the Wim Hof method:

1. 30 breaths in and out as quickly and deeply as possible
2. At the last breath exhale as much as possible, and hold your breath (or lack thereof) for as long as possible
3. When you can't hold it in any longer, take the deepest breath possible and hold it for 15 seconds
4. After 15 seconds, exhale and begin from step 1 again

After about 3-4 rounds of this, it feels like I am getting 'high' on oxygen, and during the 2nd step, I can think and properly reflect on whatever I wish to focus on, or just let everything be and focus on slowing my heart rate to make the retention last as long possible.
I haven't been able to properly engrain meditation as frequent habit; I tend to either do it daily for weeks and then I just stop and don't do it for a while and constantly flip flop.

How do you guys meditate?

I never meditated on a regular basis perse', but I always had a pre and post workout breathing routine. The exert below is from the link below. It gives great insight into the mechanics of breathing.

The lungs are like sponges; they cannot get bigger on their own. Muscles in your chest and abdomen tighten or contract to create a slight vacuum around the lungs. This causes air to flow in. When you exhale, the muscles relax and the lungs deflate on their own, much like an elastic balloon will deflate if left open to the air.

How Breathing Works

In my competition days, I adopted a mental routing before matches. I was extremely energetic, and if I let it go, I would be seething before a match. I mean truly burning on the inside, on the verge of out of control. At first, I used this as a driver, but I learned it was causing me to burnout before some matches were over. This is when I started to research breathing drills and calming methods. It was quite counter-intuitive to me at first but, after a time, I learned that simply shutting out the room and 'seeing' myself go through fighting drills helped calm me down and control my breathing. It really helped me learn that 'slowing down' made me go faster.
I doubt this is what you are actually looking for, but hope it helps in some way.

 

[Gyakuto]

I am curious as to how you involve meditation in your routines? I personally really enjoy using the Wim Hof method:

1. 30 breaths in and out as quickly and deeply as possible
2. At the last breath exhale as much as possible, and hold your breath (or lack thereof) for as long as possible
3. When you can't hold it in any longer, take the deepest breath possible and hold it for 15 seconds
4. After 15 seconds, exhale and begin from step 1 again

Is this meditation? The act of giving your attention to only one thing, either as a religious activity or as a way of becoming calm and relaxed? If you find it helpful, then that’s great.

After about 3-4 rounds of this, it feels like I am getting 'high' on oxygen,

It’s actually a high caused by blowing off too much CO2. Blood CO2 concentration provides the drive to breath (unless you develop COPD when it flips over to O2 concentration). If you blow off CO2 to below the normal 20-29mmol/L, respiratory drive is reduced and you breathing rate and depth decrease until normal tissue metabolism re-establishes the normal level and rate/depth becomes normal again.

and during the 2nd step, I can think and properly reflect on whatever I wish to focus on, or just let everything be and focus on slowing my heart rate to make the retention last as long possible.

While you’re ‘high’? When you’re high, are your critical facilities reliable? Are you able to generally ‘think straight’?

To slow your heart rate and reduce your blood pressure, try this; take a deep breath in and on maximal inhalation try and take in a bit more breath and hold for a few seconds. This stimulates the vagus nerves which causes cessation of inhalation at maximum lung volume. The vagus also innervated the heart’s sinoatrial node (pacemaker) and so doing this slows it’s output and reduces heart rate and blood pressure. SCIENCE BIT*H!

I haven't been able to properly engrain meditation as frequent habit; I tend to either do it daily for weeks and then I just stop and don't do it for a while and constantly flip flop.

It’s very hard to form the habit but repeating it everyday with no more than a day off at most, for about up to 200 seems to make it become a habit. Here’s a document about forming forming that I wrote a while ago for my dojo newsletter.

Loading Google Docs

I’m not a fan of Bim Boff. I’ve read a few of his nebulous books and it’s clear he’s just a man trying to cope with the loss of his beloved wife by doing all those stunts. Just my opinion as an academic physiologist/neuroscientist/anatomist, nothing more.