Dreading Meditation

[MiM]

In particular one piece of advice I heard in the audio guide - to congratulate yourself when you recognise your attention slipping, instead of beating yourself up about it - has been a real development in my way of thinking.

Yup, that has been a biggie for me too. And I believe it is something most of us need to keep consciously training for the rest of our lives.

I keep a timer on my phone playing a gong every 5 minutes when I do unguided sitting meditation. Maybe it's cheating, but it helps me keep some track of the passage of time and avoid glancing at the watch.

btw: I didn't see you as churlish at all (and I had to google the word

[Peter]

I agree with Jon. Just keep doing it. In general about mindfulness, I would say: The more difficult it is, the more reason there is to do it.

I don't like it either, and I almost never do it. And I'm as committed to mindfulness as you can be.

I think some of my reasons might be similar to Fee's. ie there are parts of my body that don't give me a great deal of sensation any more, and maybe that's tricky to handle emotionally.

If I'm being honest, I think that's all the more reason to do it.

I think the bodyscan is a very important exercise for three reasons:
* A very effective way to ground yourself.

* A very good way to keep track of what's going on in your body (tensions, pains, etc.); If you check your body very often, it will be much easier to notice it when something is not normal.

*And, most importantly, your body is a sort of 'mirror' (that is very easy to watch) of what's going on in your mind. All sorts of events in your mind will trigger physical responses that are very easy to pick up on. Just like you can stay with the difficulty in your mind to learn to accept things, it is often just as effective to stay with the physical response. For instance: If you zoom in on the adrenaline rush after stressful events and keep with it, you break the cycle; your mind learns that the adrenaline isn't caused by something that is actually dangerous, and in time your mind accepts this and it doesn't produce extra adrenaline, which would otherwise feed the feeling of danger, and would cause the anxiety to become ever bigger.

I've also noticed that if you keep doing bodyscans, that over time you become wired (in the head) to notice everything much easier, much more vividly, and in much more detail.. So, just hang in there, and keep doing bodyscans.

[JonW]

That's a brilliant case for the body scan. I agree with every word.
Cheers,
Jon

[ranparas]

Coming from a Chan background, I had a penchant for sitting meditation. I didn't like bodyscan to begin with either. I just wanted to sit.

But gradually I started giving it a try. Besides the body being a primary vehicle for the embodied experience, there is a more practical aspect of bodyscan that can help with pain problems.

I used to wake up with stiff left shoulder and a stiff back for many days. Upon a recommendation, I started doing intensive bodyscan practice. After a couple of weeks I started realizing that center of the pain was in the left shoulder, but the instinctive reaction of stiffness was not only in the left shoulder but in the whole of the back.

After a few days I was able to relax the back, but the left shoulder was still stiff and it took a couple more weeks for it to resolve.

It is only through the bodyscan practice that I became more familiar with parts of my body, which in turn helped me identify where the core of the pain problem was and where the stiffness was just a peripheral over-reaction.

This is a subjective experience, which may not be reproducible, but I've heard similar stories from many other people.

[Happyogababe]

Coming from a Chan background, I had a penchant for sitting meditation. I didn't like bodyscan to begin with either. I just wanted to sit.

But gradually I started giving it a try. Besides the body being a primary vehicle for the embodied experience, there is a more practical aspect of bodyscan that can help with pain problems.

I used to wake up with stiff left shoulder and a stiff back for many days. Upon a recommendation, I started doing intensive bodyscan practice. After a couple of weeks I started realizing that center of the pain was in the left shoulder, but the instinctive reaction of stiffness was not only in the left shoulder but in the whole of the back.

After a few days I was able to relax the back, but the left shoulder was still stiff and it took a couple more weeks for it to resolve.

It is only through the bodyscan practice that I became more familiar with parts of my body, which in turn helped me identify where the core of the pain problem was and where the stiffness was just a peripheral over-reaction.

This is a subjective experience, which may not be reproducible, but I've heard similar stories from many other people.

I can't thank you enough, as I was reading your post I realised that I am holding tension along my back that is related to pain/pulled muscle in my neck and shoulder.