Tag: change

How I Changed Everything in the Universe, Including Meditation

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A dramatic cloud-filled sky with a single open red parachute gliding gracefully across the vast and peaceful canyon below.

This is a true story about how I changed my meditation practice and everything else in the universe in one simple step. Well, one simple jump, anyway. In an effort to overcome fear of something entirely different, I jumped out of an airplane because I thought skydiving would be scarier. As it turns out, I was wrong: skydiving was way less scary than the thing I was avoiding. But the point is that the overarching result wasn’t what I expected. I sought to overcome fear, but instead I learned  first-hand how everything becomes different when seen through the lens of…

How Long Is Long Enough in Meditation?

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An hourglass on gravel. The sand amount is roughly equal for both ends.

Even if you have just 5 minutes to relax, doesn’t it feel great? There are days when you can relish a 5-minute break as though it were a mini-vacation. But with meditation – how long is long enough? What if you have just 1 minute? Can you experience benefits from a mere 60 seconds of meditation? Let’s find out. One Minute Together  We’re going to do a single minute of breath meditation, together, with eyes closed or open.  All we’ll do for one minute is gently notice the breath, coming in…and going out. Move at your own pace, gently and…

How Can You Tell When You’re Meditating?

There's an old man with a white beard with his eyes closed. He seems to be praying. A little girl is sitting next to her watching him.

Often, even people who’ve been meditating for years will express a concern that perhaps they’re not doing it right. After all, each of us has only our own experience of meditation, so there’s not any actual objective point of comparison. (Even if you’re hooked up to an EEG, different brains will show different results.) And while a quiet mind might sound absolutely fantastic, figuring out how to still the mind seems mysterious…even impossible. What is the mind doing when it’s still? Nothing? Hardly. Meditation Is a State of Two Minds The conscious mind thinks thoughts. That’s its job. It craves…