Hiii Friends!!

I was just wondering if someone would guide me on meditation and a effective way to reach the alpha state?Somehow i either fall asleep or become too active to sit!so i havent yet been able to meditate properly.could someone help?
thanks
love
shagun.

Hiya!!

Does anyone do some regular meditations here?yooohooo!Im talking to youuuu!Could someone PLEASE help!!I really want to start off meditation and i want to know some techniques to it.My virgo moon just DOSENT let me relax.Someone help?
love
shagun.

Hello dear Shagun,

I am certainly no expert on meditation but you seem so anxious to get an answer, I thought I'd chime in until someone more knowledge-able does.

I meditate a lot. Or at least I try to. I used to think that I never could meditate if I didn't go into another "state of mind". Which of course didn't ever happen because my mind is SO active!!!! I am, on average, a very tense and mentally/emotionally active person (however not physically ) so I never could quiet my mind down enough to reach any other "altered state" (altered? does that have anything to do with al-tar from "Gooberz"?). I used to get very very angry and frustrated at mys-elf for drifting off during meditation or thinking of what homework I had to do, or when I'd get to see my then-love next...you know how that goes, I'm sure. I just couldn't quiet my mind down.

I did the wrong thing, though. Instead of gently leading my attention back to the meditation, I SLAPPED my mind on its "rear end" and said "BAD MIND! GET BACK TO WORK!"
My poor mind hung its poor "head" and dragged its "feet" back to meditating. Thus, I began to dread meditating because it meant being mean to mys-elf.

So what is all this trying to say? BE KIND TO YOURS-ELF! I really think it doesn't necessarily have to do with reaching that altered state, I think meditating is being at peace inside. You can meditate while watching a bird. You can meditate while listening to good music and staring out the window, letting your mind wander. Heck, you can even meditate while reading these threads here on the webiste because it gives you peace inside, right? Right.

But none of this gives you the answers you are looking for, does it. Well, if you want actual suggestions for meditating, I suggest lighting a candle and focusing on the flame. Try to clear your mind of external thoughts but REMEMBER that it is OKAY and EXPECTED for your mind to drift and for other thoughts to enter it. Just GENTLY and KINDLY, bring your mind back, like leading a child over by the hand, and put it back to the purpose of relaxing.

One last thing: for people who find meditation and clearing their minds hard to do, guided meditation sometimes works -- where a person who knows what they're doing leads you in a meditation, and describes things you see and sense. It gives your mind something to focus on. Maybe you'd like to try that.

I hope I have been of some help. I have other things to say about meditation but I'll post that some other time.

As my meditation instructor (and dear friend and Teacher) here at school says,
"breathe deeply!"

LMB

Shagun,

Have you considered purchasing a guided meditation tape? There are many helpful ones out there that can provide some scaffolding while you're building up your own abilities.

KJS

Hiii Lmb and Kjs!!

Thank you,thank you ,THANK YOUUUU!!!
Lmb,what u said about urself during meditation...i fully identify with that!!im always wandering or sleeping off.And yes,its true u could meditate taking anything u really love,but even there my attention wavers and i ALWAYS worry,worry,worry!!Due to the virgo moon i guess.
well,im going to do the candle thing today...right now!!wow!i cant wait!!Thanks again!!
Kjs..thanks so much for that tip.I justwent out and got a meditation tape tonight!!!i cant wait to start off!!Im going to write my experiances right here!
thanks once again!!!
lots of love and bubbles!!!!
shagun.

Shagunj,

Hi! From one Virgo moon girl to another, I hear you on this one, sister! I have the same problems with focusing however, I'm noticing that each time I try to meditate it's becoming easier to clear my mind. I have to make sure I tell myself that it's OKAY for me not to think about work, or bills, or things I "should" be doing, for the 10-20 minutes or so that I meditate.

I've never really been able to truely visualize during meditation. I usually just imagine what I want to focus on, and leave it at that. However, something interesting happened to me a few weeks ago. I was lying on the couch, not at all concentrating on anything, when I randomly closed my eyes. All of the sudden, a vision appeared on the backdrop of my eyelids. A circle of light opened against a black background. In this circle I could see the sky and a younger version of myself hanging upside-down (like on bars at a playground). The vision of me was smiling and laughing.

This may not seem like a big deal, but to me it was incredible. The picture was as clear as if I were vividly dreaming.

All this to say, I feel like it was my inner-self telling me that I AM making some progress with my inner abilities. I think that my attempts at meditation are beginning to condition me into allowing my conscious self to "see" more.

Keep trying. I don't know if meditation will ever be easier for you or me, but the conscious effort, at the very least, gives your mind and soul some much needed attention.

Good luck.

Best,
Vixengrrl

Sometimes I find that when I need to meditate and can be outside, sitting on the ground, literally grounding myself to Mother Earth, gives me a connection to peaceful earth vibrations...and, also, being a water sign, simply sitting near a body of water, a lake, a pond, reservoir, or if I'm lucky enough to venture to the Cape, beside the ocean - "drinking in" the sounds of the surf...
totally giving myself back to the vibrations of Nature... closing my eyes, taking long, slow, deep breaths,feeling the calmness being inhaled and the tension/anxiety leaving my body... absorbing the light... this is what kind of perfect meditation I need to re-energize myself, strengthen my aura...

Hope you find this as helpful as it does me!

------------------
Summer

[This message has been edited by SummerRain (edited 04-01-99).]

[This message has been edited by SummerRain (edited 04-01-99).]

Hiii Vixengirl!!
My sister virgo moon!!right u are!!Its exactly the same with me during meditation.But it was lovely hearing of that experiance yknow.Really!bcos ysee i always have my communication with my elf in pictures...something like the way u described.Just today,i was meditating and i saw a picture flash by...of two people,one of my friends online and someone she loves,and it told me something...and i just KNEW what it wanted to say.Only thing was...it was dark...almost like a negative of a snap!whys that i wonder?could someone answer that?All my past life,or other picture flashes of future or past are always dark,negative like in colour.!!!Its funny.
Youre right vixen,i guess if i keep going at it,i shall acheive something in the end.Thanks a lot for that.Actually,im meditating every day and i do feel subtly more energetic!!!!
Oh,one more question for u guys.....why is it that each time i relax,let go and feel truly peaceful...that i feel like cryng uncontrollably?does that happen to u too,guys?It happens to me always!!I feel there are so many blocks!how do i remove them?
Summerrain,firstly i LOVE ur name!!Are u a water sign?I dont know,but if u are,ure a perfect one!The water meditation sounded...awesome!!Ysee i myself am a water sign so ...it felt..so..cool,serene!yes...i think ill try this too!
THANKS SO MUCH guys!!i really appreciate the tips!
love
shagun.

Good day, Shagun!

Glad to hear you've been practicing your meditation. I can relate to what you said about getting to a point where you just want to cry. Years ago when I was taking a yoga class, I would become so relaxed that when lying in corpse pose at the end, all I wanted to do was bawl! I stopped going to class because I had no clue how to deal with it. I didn't know anyone else in the class and the teacher made no effort to build community, so I didn't feel it a safe environment to let my emotions flow. Yoga, though I'm not regular practitioner, can still do that to me. For some reason, tai chi never has, which may be why I've been more devoted to it. One of my friends wept uncontrollably the first time she did tai chi (and this was in a large group of people).

Anyway, based on various reading over the years, here's why I think we end up wanting to cry: When we finally help our body to fully relax, we loosen up those more difficult emotions that have bound up in our muscles (think of tensed shoulders, necks, jaws). I'm imagine you know what it's like to feel strong emotions but fight hard not to let them show. Stopping up our sorrows like that for many years leads to a real build up. When we finally learn to relax, we lose the tension with which we were storing those emotions. Thus, they flow, and we again experience the sorrow we may have believed left us long ago.

My advice is to let yourself cry if you need to. Experience those long-held emotions and try to figure out where they originated. Try to be gentle and non-judgmental with yourself. Crying won't hurt you, as long as you don't end up wallowing in sorrow. Be happy that you are finally letting it go! I'm sure it will pass eventually.

That just scrapes the surface, but I hope I've made some sense and that it will be helpful to you.

KJS

P.S. Have you ever thought of trying a moving form of meditation, such as tai chi or astanga yoga?

P.P.S. A book that might be helpful to you is Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body, by B. K. Frantzis. It tells how you can work through blocked emotions without expressing them or repressing them. He also has a web site, but I don't have the address at hand right now. I'll post it later.

[This message has been edited by KJS (edited 04-03-99).]

That web address for B. K. Frantzis is www.energyarts.com.

Hiii KJS!!!

and thank you SO much!!!!That answer really has solved a major problem of mine!!truly,i just didnt know whether to sob or bury it and continue.But if i was burying it,it was becoming awfully hard to meditate!!
Oooooh thank you,thank you!!
Gosh!i wonder what my moms gonna say when she sees me bawling my heart out in the room!!haha!wonderful!but thanks for the tip!!
yoohoo!im happy!
love
shagun.
Oh yeah....im going and checking the site out too!thanks!

Mellow greetings Shagun!
Glad you like my name...thank you! that was sweet of you to say! Oh my, yes, I'm very much a water sign...Scorpio...sometimes a little too intense for my own good (sometimes you can use that intensity for WONDERFUL things in life ...so...I find that meditation and a little soul-searching every now and then keeps my sanity and spirit in order...simply to melt-down my anxieties and then I will be able to start that natural flow with the universe once again.

I, too, am very prone to tears when things have built up so intensely for me and I find myself running to the nearest body of water to meditate...just to sit and stare at the water - watch it move and see it's life calming me - zoning out, if you will. If you have a friend that will understand and accomodate you in this emotion and just sit and have him/her just **hold** you..not speaking..but the warmth and energy of your friend will calm you... I have been searching "forever" for such a friend to do just that for me...human touch is VERY important, especially to a Scorpio!
Sometimes I know that it gets very lonely "out there" in life and a water sign can be overly sensitive and distraught... but as long as you know this and understand that this does not last forever, that your life does get better, embrace your anxieties and then LET GO OF THEM before they swallow you--- not that you other Sun signs out there don't feel this - but water signs feel passionately about life a bit more intensely at times... tears can relieve so much inside...I find that I am totally exhausted after a good cry and am able to go into a very deep sleep afterwards.

There are so many tears that we shed in our lifetime - hopefully, most of your tears are shed out of pure joy and happiness!

I also keep a journal and write down my emotions..this is a good release of anxieties...
have you tried aromatherpy?? I answered your postings about this in another thread..check it out!

Love and Light,
Summer

Dear dear watery Shagun. Yes, my friend, let the tears fall like a beautiful rainbow-sprakling waterfall. I wholeheartedly agree with both KJS and SummerRain. Let yours-elf be in a safe, comforting environment, relax, do your meditating or yoga or whatever else, and let yours-elf release. It is so important, what KJS said, be gentle and non-judgmental with yours-elf. Think of yours-elf as a little child. Would you scold and judge the child for crying? No, you would hold her dear to your heart and stroke her hair. I know you are adore dogs, how about using that anaology? If a dog was crying, would you think badly of him/her and scold him/her? Of course not, if I know you, YOU would cry FOR the dog too!! You would pet him/her lovingly and gently. Do that to yours-elf. Comfort yours-elf.

If I may, I'd like to say that personally, I find it very difficult to *let* mys-elf cry. I have done so much crying for all of my life, I feel like that is all I do (or have done for now I am slowly getting better). And I didn't always do it in the most productive and nurturing ways. I did it out of anger and depression and hopelessness. So I find it hard to *allow* mys-elf to cry now because I'm afraid, well, I'm afraid that I'll never stop and that it will serve negative purposes. But that is just me. Because of that, I think it IS very important to let yours-elf cry and release. You obviously have some blocks and little fairies inside that just are so scrunched up with something, they need to be let loose and soar around.

As for what SummerRain said about letting someone be there with you, I think that is very important too, if that is what you need. And it is very important to choose someone who will not judge you, who will not try to *fix* it, who will simply be there to hold you. It is difficult to find someone out there like that. I am an empathic person by nature and have this intense need to be held as well as to hold others...however some part of me also has a need to *fix* people...so when I hold someone, part of me REALLY wants to take the pain AWAY...and that is not always best. So it is important who you choose if you do choose this. And what SummerRain said about physical touch being important....oh YES YES YES. I call mys-elf "skin hungry" because I never let anyone touch me growing up. I held such pushed-down, suffocating anger and sadness, I put a wall up around me. But growing up, I both pushed people away yet at the same time ached for someone to just hold me, stroke my hair....like a puppy. It caused much heartache. Being "skin hungry", as i call it, can be the source of many miseries.

I'm sorry, I've strayed from the subject. I tend to do that...

I was reading someone's post about yoga and remembered something my meditation Teacher told me about yoga - how it is so important even as a life-thing. Because, in yoga, you breathe IN...HOLD...then breathe OUT. You breathe IN on a certain move....then HOLD on a certain move...then breathe OUT on a certain move. That is how life should be, right? You take IN a situation...you HOLD it...then you RELEASE IT.

Good luck in all of this. I'm sure if you were here or if "we" were all there, we would all give you so many hugs and holdings. So many!

LMB

[This message has been edited by LMB (edited 04-05-99).]

Oh my my!!
What beautiful inputs i see here today!!

Summerrain and lmb!!Those were WONDERFUL,touching and very informative posts!!
yes my friends...i took heed of ur words and i ...did it!!! I finally cried!!oh....there was so much!i didnt think there would be much to cry...im still bleary eyed...but it worked!!
THANKS EVER SO MUCH!!

Summerain....the way u express urself,really identifies with me.Its so deep,so true,so...watery!beautiful, scorpio girl!!its true,i think that water signs could be so much more sensitive and cry so much more.and the "friend"to hold!!oh,its the most ,most important thing!!I do have a wonderful,beautiful best friend but she isnt where i live so she cant be there when i put my head on her lap and cry...just let go...
isnt it amazing how much we build up in one liftime?i wonder why and where we get so hurt?
I do really think that one of the things we must do is to face our emotions.so many times we ignore the fact that we hurt...we think we are overreacting and this is so common bcos the world is like that.But!!!but the fact remains that u got hurt and u pushed it away.oh so many of us do that.i do too,i know!we would be so much more peaceful if we only learnt not to fight with our own selves!!God give us strenght!
Summerrain...i have answered ur post on the homeo thread.I think aromatherapy is FABULOUS!!its a wonderful way to meditate.We at our house have a small altar kind of thing with various icons of god and we light an aromatic incense stick every day and meditate there!!its a most beautiful way to meditate.I always do it!Thanks so much for the tips on other things!i really appreciate it!
LMB,im with u when it comes to not crying.I dont know how or why it happened but somewhere along the way,i just decided...enough of crying!!i was doing it day in and day out and i had begun to sound like a sissy and moreover it wasnt helping.So,i dont cry.Even now when i feel like a good cry,i just read a book or laugh and talk nonsensical things.Hiding behind a pathetic mask.it didnt help..it made me miserable!
I am learning to cry now after a long time i guess(gosh!this thread seems so intense suddenly!).
Lmb,u write so well...gosh!!it just brought such peace to my heart.Theres a lovely human quality in ur writing and it comes from the fact that u share ur private self with people and thats why it touches them.
Ooooh!i all of a sudden feel very nice,very supported!!hey...with friends like you guys....i know where to come when im sentimental!!!!THANKS once again guys,for those precious tips and encouragements!!

love always!!
sniff'
shagun.

Hiii friends!!
here iam again!!
well,i just wanted to tell u some amazing results with my meditations.
well,now as soon as i lie down and close my eyes for a minute and concentrate...there are so many images going around my mind...flashing by!!they are oh so real!!of people i know who dont look like its them but are,of me,of strange lights,sometimes it seems like stars!!but it always leaves me breathless!!how come these images are coming?re they for real?why are they so short and quick?Oh,i know these are so many questions....i would really appreciate it if u could give me answers.you have helped me so much already..im very greatful!!
love
shagun.
hey...one more q..ummm..how do i keep from falling off to sleep during meditation?usually i just get those images,or cry and then sleep off.Summerrain ure right...sleeping does come beautifully after a good cry!!