Matt i believe ran this probably around a year ago today. Quite a few people joined in but i have not heard of anyone keeping it up.

I personally tried and did not enjoy it. Not to dampen the spirit around here but i did have some views on it which i still feel

- I love the way my mind works. I have a super over active imagination and overthink everything. People would diagnose this as something and i used to hate it but now i love it and embrace it. I think it makes me better at what i do and i don;t want it to calm down yet. Now i understand people reading this will think "he sounds like he is going to blow" or "he will burn out" which i agree with but i feel those things happened already and i learnt from them.

I have heard people say "meditation comes in different forms".....if meditation was just a thing which you enjoyed then yes this comes in many mediums but from what i gather it is to relax, take time to think and to basically get your mind right. Sounds crazy but i have a shower for 10-15 mins each morning and i feel this is my true meditation. I find a ton of my best ideas and thoughts come from this moment. People even know when they get a text/call/email at 9am its because i have just got out of the shower and have a brain wave as such. Now i am now just thinking in the shower i relax also - which is when these things come to me.

It is not just business stuff which comes to me but just thinking about my days and week etc. It puts things into perspective for me.


NOW

Do i believe in meditation? No - not for me but certainly for others.

Am i technically meditating whilst in the shower - YES -

Go figure out that! haha

I don't want to put people off just those were my experiences and thoughts.

I've actually run a meditation challenge on the PokerVIP forum couple months back so I'm definitely in for the ride! Especially because meditation kinda fell out of my routine recently and that's a huge mistake. 40min might be a bit much right of the bat so I will be shooting for 10-15 minutes in the morning and 10-15 in the evening.

Namaste!

Just searched for it - can see how it all played out Here

I'm with ya on the first part. I used to be a therapist, and I was great at prescribing it to others, while avoiding it like the plague meself. But Jon, while it's great that your shower time is productive, it ain't "technically meditating", not even close!

Thanks for joining @MattVIP. I think having a buddy will help me at least for the first 2 weeks, then the course starts and that should get me going. But I'll continue to post here as well. I've never been able to keep up a practice for more than 2-3 weeks.

In case you're interested, the course is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, the 8 week course designed by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Damn thought i was beating the system there.

When i tried it i used an app also - was the one everyone said to get. The bald guy who did TedX. I tried it during the day and even to help me get to sleep.

It was soothing to start but just became repetitive and annoying tbh.

Day 2 in the books. Easier today, I'll give the credit to the "Tibetan Bowls for Chakras Healing" vid on youtube. (Sounds ridiculous I know.)

Every day so far. My hack is to say that I'm not allowed to turn the kettle on until after I've meditated. Man that's incentive.

Starting tomorrow I'm up to 25 min/day.

I totally forgot abut this thread but because if it I started meditating on a regular basis again so thanks for that:)

Thanks @MattVIP. I'm 2 weeks into the class, not enamoured with it yet but we'll see. So far the first week homework was Body Scans, this week we had to add in 5-10 min of breath meditation. I actually do better with that then the guided body scan work. I've skipped 1 day/week cuz I'm a pouty brat, otherwise plugging away.

4 classes so far. The homework is up to 50 min/day. 30 min is (on most days) "mindful yoga", which has been great, and a separate 20 min session is traditional "sit on your ass and notice your breathing", which is a challenge. I've been doing the yoga midday and trying the breath meditation in the evening, but post-session, it is so hard to not just replay hands in my head for 20 min! But I guess that's the point.

Final update (for the 3.5 people paying attention to this thread :P)

The class was 8 weeks in total, with a 5.5 hour mini retreat (silent) after week 6. Daily homework was 30 minutes a day...um, most days? Like 5 days a week, usually?

Progress: I think the best way to look at the situation, like almost every situation, is through the lens of poker. (God where would I be without poker.) Take a noob who knows the rules of poker but not much else. Give them 2 hours a week of videos to watch, they play 30 min a day max, 4-5 days a week, and what do you have? Still a drooler.

I think that's probably a fair assessment of where I'm at, but I actually think that looking at it through this lens is helpful. If I thought after 8 weeks on this schedule I would shave my head and wear a robe, go live in Tibet, well that's about as realistic as the noob's dreams of winning WSOP after 2 months of playing and studying practically zero. My goal should have been and was to drool less, or to put it in the class' terms, "to drool mindfully." I think I got there, but the catch is that I need to keep up with the practice, faithfully, if it's going to have any real effect.

I took the class in order to reduce chronic pain, there's a fair bit of evidence mindfulness work for this. So far I haven't had any difference, but I also need to be honest with how dedicated I've been, and need to be going forward. I didn't learn poker this quickly, no one picks up a foreign language taking a class 1x/week, so I hope that I keep at it. For those interested in the science of meditation, the quick and dirty answer is 'neuroplasticity'. Meditation rewires our brains, and it will take more than 40 hours of work to overwrite 40 years of patterns.

Any other Q's, feel free to ask. otherwise, thanks for accompanying me this far, and namaste, mofos.

Ok @CycleVancouver let's reanimate this one! Meditation is one of the most beneficial habits one can develop, but I'm constantly failing to stick with it. I had months in the past when I managed to meditate every day or almost every day, but it's time to establish it as a core of my morning routine.

I'm going to meditate for 10 min every day after my morning green tea and I hope you (and possibly other folks) will join me in that endeavour. I might gradually ramp it up or add the evening session to the mix, but in my experience it's best to start slow.

@MattVIP I'm in...starting tomorrow! JK, well maybe kinda. What I'll do is I am planning a live session tonight, and I'll aim for 10-15 min prior. I'll call in, get on waitlist, then meditate 15 min before heading out. Since there's no playoff games tonight (hoops and hockey finals happening in N America), I kinda have less than zero excuses.

Tx mucho for bringing this back up. I've been close to zero since taking the course.

June 1st-2nd
Man this is surprisingly hard! If you stop meditating for a while going back to it can be a sobering experience. I was amazed at how though it was to focus on my breathing and how many thoughts were racing through my mind. It's clear that I need some meditation in my life.

What about you @CycleVancouver? Anyone else wants to join? Along with resistance training, meditation is probably the best thing you can do when it comes to your overall well-being.

June 1: forgot to meditate before casino run. Managed 3 sad little minutes when I got back. Man it's hard!
June 2: 10 min. Set the timer, still checked it twice with the official, "I can't believe I'm not done yet" glare.
Today: 10 min, mostly thinking about everything I always think about when meditating: poker, composing messages to friends, babes. Might've got 10 entire breaths in where I actually focused on the breath. Man this is a lot of work!

What if you live in a house that is rarely quiet? Should I sit in my shed or something?

Seriously though, trying to think of a time when I could possibly even try.... Would like to give it a go though, I feel like I need meditation in my life!

Similar to yoga really. I love yoga, but I can't concentrate if I am not on my own, its not quite the same!

Dang, if I haven't posted in 6 days, prob says I haven't meditated in 6 days either.

10 min this morning. I'm back to trying what worked for me before: no kettle, no computer until I've sat me arse on the pillow. I don't believe in discipline, I believe in habits, and this one worked well enough for me before.

Now I'm off to buy some green juice as penance for the pint of Haagen Daaz I ate last night. It's like Cersei's walk of shame, but with less nudity and people throwing dung at me.

This challenge is surprisingly rough so far, but I can see progress. I managed to meditate every other day or so, but the process itself is much smoother than in the beginning (no more racing thoughts and distractions). Starting tomorrow I'll post daily reports that will hopefully help me with being more consistent.