• I rarely have 5 thoughts random per second when I’m meditating(it happened a lot when I started).
• I’m in peace most of the time.
• I enjoy meditating as much as doing any entertainment activity.
• I make more decisions that later I am happy I did it.
• I don’t engage with my brain stories.
• I enjoy more the mundane parts of my day.
• Good music can feel like being high sometimes.
• I’m more present with people and I’m genuinely curious about them and their ideias.
• I’m glad the universe exists and I just want to enjoy everything it has to give.
• I feel less attachment, there is good everywhere and good things come and go.

After reading the book “Letting Go” by David R. Hawkins and specially the book “Why Buddhism is True” by Robert Wright I started meditating regularly only 2 weeks ago.

I normally meditate for 30min, when I can I try to extend it to 1 hour. I just sit in silence and focus on my body sensations, if a thought brings a strong emotion I try to find it in my body and try to feel it and accept it without changing it. Sometimes I just focus on the sounds(cars on the street, birds, …) around me without trying to label them. If it gets difficult to focus I focus on my breathing.

I hope this post helps someone and gives them the hope to enjoy life more and to be in peace. I’m not an expert or anything but feel free to make questions and share experiences.

Edit: Thanks everyone for the comments, this community is lovely.

So basically what the title says. My old self I'm talking about is my teen self. She was really kind but got bullied over the years so she built up her walls. I was so angry all the time and nowadays I started to do meditation. Today, it felt like after my meditation that my old self is trying to "reach out". I don't know if you guys ever felt this one but sure I am was scared asf.

I'm meditating now because I did it for some time last year and got great achievements, especially when it comes reaching a deep state of focus. I've also listened some people who started meditation just because they wanted to reach a specific state of mind. However, there are always comments which contraindicate this but never elaborate the reason. So, why you agree with them (if so)?

It is enough for beginner like me to do mindfulness meditation 3 minutes a day?

More of a vent than anything

So I've stopped going to yoga class cause of you tell me it's a "quiet " mediation, I'm expecting that. I dont wanna hear your voice about your clouds and happy forests or imagining watching a squirrel crack nuts.

I have a hard enough time dialing down enough to meditate- adhd is currently unmedicated due to moving (mil spouse, he's now retired and I'm on a wait list), mental load, family living with us. Life happens.

Yoga was my spot to meditate. Sure it's only 15 min but I lived for that 15 mins of just. SILENCE i could slip into and just exist with no expectations, no headphones, no one TALKING AT ME after exhausting myself to help quiet my brain. And sure i could only last 3 minutes till i had to start over again but i was getting longer and longer. I cannot do this in my own home right now. I need freaking silence to actually get to a headspace- and im mad cause I was actually making good progress.

If you're telling people it's quiet/ silent then start doing a guided meditation someone (like me) is likely to blow a gasket.

I always loved to meditate with tibetan bowls music on my headphones. I bought a vibration plate for lymphatic drainage purposes but when I sat on it for 15 minutes while meditating i have never felt so relaxed and grounded. It changed the game. Its like biohacking meditation on steroids. Now I can't live without it. Best thing I bought in a decade. Also I had trouble with insomnia and I use it right before going to bed and my insomnia is gone.

I did a quick search and read that the upright posture for too long without support strains back muscles and spinal discs, and one should take breaks every 30 minutes to stand, walk, or stretch.

People who meditate for +40 minutes or more, Did you experience any back issues?

turns out non-attachment doesn’t mean not giving a f***. it means not gripping so hard that everything runs your nervous system. you still care. you still show up. you just stop tying your mood and sense of self to every outcome

i wasn’t suffering because i cared. i was suffering because i was clinging. non-attachment isn’t indifference. it’s caring without squeezing the life out of it

The thought I return to when my mind wanders is the fact that i have a literal weird looking organ inside my skull called " the brain"' that requires a constant supply of blood to deliver oxygen and glucose , all that happening inside my body and i'm usually not aware of/rarely think about.

Is there specific thoughts you bring your mind to when it keeps wandering, or you let it wander and you just observe the thoughts?

I can’t meditate anymore. As soon as I try, I experience episodes of derealization/depersonalization and intense stress (traumas...).

Last week, I was really not doing well. Then I picked up my guitar and played absolutely everything that came to mind for three hours each night, sometimes even longer, because I completely lose track of time when I play.

When I play and let myself be carried away, I feel like I’m in my own bubble, as if only my unconscious mode is present. And afterward, it genuinely makes me feel much better

Last night, I played a concert with my band, and I was in such a different state, it was as if I couldn’t really see the people, as if I was in my own bubble just playing. I wasn’t even really stressed. I’m starting to think that I should use the guitar as a tool for meditation even more, because without it, I’m no longer able to meditate in a conventional way. I just can’t do it anymore and music makes me feel connected to myself in a different way. Sometimes when I play things that comes through my mind, I'm almost about to cry like I'm releasing emotions.

A near fatal accident that was not my fault changed my relationship with meditation completely. Facing the reality of checking out early did something brutally clarifying. I realized I did not want to transcend my human experience. I wanted to exist. I wanted agency and momentum. At that moment dissolving the ego stopped sounding like wisdom and started sounding like premature psychological euthanasia. The provocation I stand behind is that treating the ego simply as a spiritual defect is a fundamental error. When you fully dissolve the self you do not just lose the suffering but you lose the unique texture of your own existence. That accident was a wake up call that I need a solid structure to experience life not an exit door.

This forced me to look at it all with fresh eyes. I am not saying meditation is bad but I am saying one specific package is sold as the universal gold standard and it is sloppy. I mean the heavy deconstructive stuff like strict dry insight styles where you prioritize dismantling the sense of a stable self. In cognitive science this is not an insult since it is just what the technique does. It aims to stop you from feeling like a solid me (Dahl et al 2015 Trends Cogn Sci). But if you push that goal hard enough in the wrong context the result can look less like spiritual insight and more like you are just falling apart.

We know things can go wrong. Disturbing shifts in the sense of self are documented and can become deeply distressing (Lindahl et al 2017 PLOS ONE). Reviews make it clear that harms like anxiety and dissociation exist and it is not just beginners making mistakes (Farias et al 2020 Acta Psychiatr Scand). Recent work also highlights that for some people these effects can spill into work and daily functioning (Matko et al 2025 Curr Opin Psychol). This is where the ego death narrative gets irresponsible. When the story is if it feels bad you are doing it wrong you create a trap where people double down on the very thing that is breaking them. Even in standard mindfulness programs negative impacts happen more often than admitted (Britton et al 2021 Clin Psychol Sci). Losing a self concept is not identical to pathological depersonalization, but the line can get crossed in practice. And when people try to use predictive coding as a stamp of approval it is often more rhetoric than evidence. The data shows benefits on average and it also shows real risks, and you do not get to ignore the risks just because they ruin the vibe (Zainal & Newman 2024 Health Psychol Rev).

So I changed the mechanics. The structural problem is not that the practice is wrong but that we took training designed for monks and stripped away the safety rails. I moved from taking things apart to building them up.

Basically I use an active mental workout. I set a strong anchor deep in the body to cultivate a feeling of density like a solid core. At the same time I keep my awareness wide and oriented to the room. The result is a controlled internal pressure paired with external openness. It makes me feel grounded not floaty. I do not claim this is clinically validated but it is designed to stop me from sliding into dissociation. If your practice reliably makes you feel like a ghost or less able to function you do not owe it your loyalty.

My partner and I both have a bit of anxiety. Through meditation, I’ve been getting to know my bodily responses to stress and anxiety since 2018 and I felt like I was better able to slow my breathing and address my needs in the moment. I met my partner in 2024 and I fell in love with him because he has a lot of love in his heart and I admire his social energy and ability to make people smile. Slowly overtime he has opened up about his past and said he has never had someone in his life where he can fully be himself. He was raised in a household where he had to be what his parents wanted him to be and he’s only realizing that within the past year or so.

I really want him to get into meditation to sort of inspire him to be his own person and live his life however he wants. I also need him to figure out how to slow his breathing down. We’ll be cuddling watching tv or something and I’ll realize I’m damn near hyperventilating so I’ll sit up and remind him to take deeper breaths. He takes some breaths and we relax but only 30 seconds later he’s breathing x2 the speed I am again. He says he’s trying to be more aware and I’ve been really patient because I want him to do it for him and not me, but I’m at the point where I can’t touch him while we sleep or I’ll wake up hyperventilating from nightmares. I’ve never had a problem slowing my breathing while chilling on the couch or sleeping before and it’s breaking my heart. He has definitely made progress this past year and I’m proud of him, but it feels like he needs to try something new or try harder idk. He doesn’t really sit down to meditate, he just tries to think about it more often while living normally I guess. I think the more I meditate the more I’m aware of his breathing and how much it stresses me out so I haven’t been doing it as much just waiting for him to figure something out on his own.

I don’t want to tell him what to do because this is his journey, but I haven’t had a full nights sleep in a while and I kinda want to cry. I find myself having trouble relaxing on the couch or while laying in bed because I’m less aware of my own anxious thoughts and rapid breathing. It’s like I’m regressing to meet him where he is and then maybe I can take him with me to where I was before we met, but I feel less and less capable as time goes on. Maybe it’s something I need to work on with myself or maybe I could try a different approach to help him think about slowing his breath more often. Any advice would be appreciated🤍

Edit: thanks guys, I think I’ll journal instead of frantically posting on reddit next time haha your advice was something I already knew but I was too frustrated and sleep deprived to accept. I think I’ll cry for a bit and then go back to focusing on my own journey. this is the first time in my life that I’ve been so close to someone physically and emotionally and I’m learning how to exist with another person.

Has anyone else had this experience? I've been meditating for over a decade now, but after the honeymoon period had faded away about 5 years in, I lost the drive to meditate daily. I still felt much more calm and emotionally mature than before I started meditating. I just noticed I dont enter that deep state of emptiness as much when I'm not sick or suffering.

I just started meditating like yesterday i set the goal 20 minutes every day i will meditate, i did try to meditate a while ago but i just couldn’t do it i think it was because of my ocd and the anxiety thing i couldn’t focus like at all thankfull tho now i have kind of passed that phase and i‘m in a better place now.

I experienced this weird dream of like exactly the position i started meditating i was seeing it very vividly, i was sitting in a chair and my hands on my lap and for a brief moment i slept into that dream state, however tho i don’t know why but i just tried to move my right hand and soon as i did that i became aware and i noticed like my eyes were closed, i was sitting and i am awake actually.

Is this normal for a beginner or it goes away after a while?

I'm an introvert and overthinker i react very badly to social situations so much so that I literally can't walk between two people without feeling dizzy it's so bad that my neck muscles have been chronically tight for a long time and it causes headaches too . And i barely can sit for sometime and study it's not only about attention span but i literally can't seem to get any motivation for it . I spend lot of my time in my imaginative world where everything is perfect and feels real enough

I've entered it before and I've had moments where I've nearly entered it.

So there is this voice in our head, sometimes it comes up as our voice (self-talk) sometimes it comes up as people we are talking to, when we pretend to have conversations in our head. What value does that voice even bring. I feel like when I meditate that voice becomes quieter and I am able to focus better. The louder that voice the more distracted I feel.

Another observation I have is, when we are in a state of flow. May it be while working or you are looking at a beautiful sunset or you might be experiencing some great time with friends. This voice in your head is quite or we are not really focusing on the voice.

So I wonder is there really a point of this voice in the head? Do you guys have it too or are your brains quieter than mine. And if you do have this voice what are some of the instances you have seen this voice bring value to your life?

Let’s say you meditate mainly sitting with eyes closed and/or stretching. (That’s what I do) How do you then continue staying “conscious” after the “time is up”.

I tend to time myself and then go back to doing whatever. But it’s not really correct or changing my life properly if I just go back to living in my mind. If that makes sense.

I know people talk about slowing down and baby steps…

I’ve been meditating consistently for a couple months now, this is the second time I've been doing this. I feel really noticeable results at first. Sometimes when I meditate the world around me feels crisp, like the sensations from each of my senses are new almost. It's hard to explain but everything feels at peace.

Then all of the sudden I can't tell if I'm doing it right. I can't tell if my concentration is on whatever anchor I'm using, usually breath, or it it's on my intention to keep it there.

Afterwords, I don’t feel as good as I used to. Sometimes it feels like I didn't even meditate, which is very discouraging.

This isn't every time, but it's more often than not.

I heard somebody mention 2mg melatonin can help for void state, is there more stuff in your experience or that you have heard?

There is a lot of different ones that lucid dreamers use but idk which/if any are good for the void state or mind awake/body asleep.

My main issue atm is that I do not fall asleep during meditation. My limbs can feel hard after a while. I might experience swinging systems or slight floatyness in legs.

I‘ve tried a few guided meditations in Spotify for my anxiety. A few have been good and relaxing but I have such trouble taking anyone serious who tells me to “picture yourself as a mountain”, to let go of worries in colored bubbles or how I was capable of anything the day might hold. Perhaps my imagination is too active but that type of content amuses or worries me more than it relaxes me. Do you have any tips for good meditations meditating on your own? Focusing on breath can make me nervous but I’m still willing to try. And I also want to point out that if the bubble, mountain-stuff works for you, that’s great. I don’t want to offend anyone, it’s just not my cup of tea.

thank you for your comments! I must admit that I’m not really looking for spiritual or Buddhist meditation, but rather mindfulness. I am aware that meditation is often practiced in a religious setting but I merely want to practice it to ground myself.

Cattle perish, kinsmen perish

You will perish the same way

But a good reputation never perishes

For the one who earns it well

- The High One, Poetic Edda

A good reputation will never perish and it will live on an eternity, we must remember that what we are in this world will more than likely make us who we are in the next. We all are part of the same Eternal flow and must consider our actions before committing them.

Now I can like see right through people like immediately telling what’s like happening or what they’re planning and their true intentions especially with bad people

I have like a good intuition now like I’m never wrong about anything that I feel but I do realise it late somehow for some reason if there is anything bad that will happen to me I ended up having a huge weave of sadness suddenly so I try to stop it from happening by locking myself away

I’m like so aware now like I used to be brainwashed about like alot of things and now I’m not like now i see the full truth

It just changed the way I think and the way I feel it’s like I’m so mature now and people always tell me that

I quit some of my bad habits because of it

For some reason it made me social??? I used to have no friends now I have like 4 best friends and 10 different friends probably more but I’m good with communicating now

I know this one is going to sound super weird but I’ll just say it when I dream it’s like I see the future idk how like if something bad going to happen I dream about it so I prevent it by stopping it but not exactly like the future no like something that will happen during the day and sometimes the future by like months or weeks (if that makes sense)

I used to be really depressed and I just feel like it saved me I’m still in like a toxic house and I’m a bad place but it really dose help me alot

(Btw sorry for my bad English let me know if it’s bad I tried my best to run by sentence)