What is meditation?

yes... a lot of people expect way too much out of meditation, even relaxation...
personally, I've been meditating for years and years and meditation DOES NOT relax me.
sure...deep breaths and lowering my heart rate can feel slightly relaxing, but it's not like that's the Point.
although, I do consider cooking a meditation, and I find that relaxing...so you can spin around around in circles but it doesn't matter.
Much is going on on a cellular level, kind of like defragmenting your hard drive.
Just turning into stone for a while...

 

RIGHT! Expecting things from it can be a problem. I try to do it just to do it.

There is an element of POISE or BALANCE to the experience because we are not reacting to fight-flight, correct? We're simply observing it. But I have a problem with the stereotypical idea that we are westerners who live in a world full of wrong and stress and then we meditate to relax or escape or correct something. Sheesh!

PRACTICE
JUST BEING OR SIMPLE BEING
POISE
DIRECT EXPERIENCE

Those concepts ring a bell for me. Not any of the hyperbolic metaphysical stuff-

How long have you been doing it and how did you start?

 

I started when I was 5 because I was forced to do martial arts at a young age all throughout my childhood/teenage years.
I didn't quite understand meditation until I ate my first psychedelic mushroom and sat like the buddha exploring the mind. That was years ago...

Poise and balance is just something that happens when we do these things.

Fight or flight happens automatically, anyway. (It's not like we ever make these conscious decisions, they just happen)
It jumps from the solar plexus.

this is where you belly breathe and think with your belly brain that's rotating like some stellar orbit.

 

Cool-

You're lucky to have started at such an early age and in conjunction with the martial arts.

 

deep breaths belly out
exhale belly in
this creates the rotation
and you actually start to think with divine balance
which is the nature of the solar plexus

very interesting.
I always feel a sun burning
incinerating the negativity
breathing out rusty ash
breathing in the atomic healing potential

mmmm

just being is bliss.

 

Indeed-

I just feel something which is both poised and spontaneously moving.

Ha!

 

kundalini flows any which way she wants.
there is no controlling her,
just entrancing.

 

Parasympathetic practice!!!

 

sure, you could say that

 

Meditation means awareness. Cutting through all the meditation/awareness techniques, there are only two pure types of awareness/meditation: Mantra and mindfulness. Mantra is any one point of attention, such as a word, object, phrase, thought, sound etc. Mindfulness encompasses the mantras and the space/stillness between them -- it is everything that goes on in your mind and around you.

Awareness is about attitude, not technique, and mindfulness is the attitude that lets you observe your mantras/thoughts without casting judgment, and relax without following them around like a dog on a leash.

 

Meditation is a holistic discipline during which time the practitioner trains his or her mind in order to realize some benefit.
Meditation is generally a subjective, personal experience and most often done without any external involvement, except perhaps prayer beads to count prayers. Meditation often involves invoking and cultivating a feeling or internal state, such as compassion, or attending to some focal point, etc. The term can refer to the process of reaching this state, as well as to the state itself.

learn more about meditation here http://meditationsecrets.org

 

It's different for everyone, as it depends on what you are trying to get out of it. some merely use it to relax, some to focus and others to try and reach out of body experiences.