I also was on a plateau with breath-work meditation (although it did bring good benefits). And different people resonate differently to different meditation techniques, so itâs worth trying a lot of them. This one sounds very promising.
I wonât be able to attend this one, but I could do the one after the summer. Do they have a âstay notified for future sessionâ link?
Thanks! You can fill out this form to get notified about future retreats. Their in-person retreats might well be worth doing as well if youâre able to, and generate similar results according to their survey. Theyâre more expensive and require taking more time off work. But given their track record I wouldnât be surprised if it was worth the money and time. I have a friend who has done an in-person and online retreat with them and preferred the in-person one.
That said, I have a hard time imagining my experience being as positive doing the retreat in person, largely because I got a lot of value out of feeling comfortable expressing my emotions however felt natural (and crying in particular). I would not have felt comfortable potentially disrupting others while meditating in the same room.
And strong +1 to trying things. I wish I had read Romeo Stevenâs meditation FAQ (and the rest of his blog) years ago, and this excerpt in particular.
There needs to be some sort of guiding principle on when to keep going and when to try something different. The answer, from surveys and measurements taken during longer term practice intensives, seems to be about 30 hours of practice. If a practice hasnât shown some sort of tangible, legible benefit in your thinking process, emotional stability, or skillful behavior in the world it very very likely isnât the practice for you right now. This doesnât mean it is a bad practice or that others might not derive great benefit from it. This also doesnât mean it might not be useful to you in the future. But it isnât the practice for you right now. Granted, there are exceptions to every rule, and some people get something out of gritting their teeth and sticking with a practice for a long time. But I strongly suspect they could have had an easier time trying other things. 30 hours might sound like a long time, but its just a month of practice at one hour per day. This caps how much of a time waste any given technique is. In the beginning it is very likely that you can get away with less: two weeks of practice time should show some results. If you try lots of things for two weeks each and nothing works you may need to resort to the longer standard of 30 hours.
Jhourney recommends approaching meditation like a scientist outside of sessions (e.g. considering experiments and variables to isolate), but with child-like playfulness while meditating. Iâve found that approach quite helpful. It led to an impromptu experiment to listen to music to amplify positive emotions while meditating, which IIRC preceded my first jhana of the retreat.
Very useful, I will check it!
I also was on a plateau with breath-work meditation (although it did bring good benefits). And different people resonate differently to different meditation techniques, so itâs worth trying a lot of them. This one sounds very promising.
I wonât be able to attend this one, but I could do the one after the summer. Do they have a âstay notified for future sessionâ link?
Thanks! You can fill out this form to get notified about future retreats. Their in-person retreats might well be worth doing as well if youâre able to, and generate similar results according to their survey. Theyâre more expensive and require taking more time off work. But given their track record I wouldnât be surprised if it was worth the money and time. I have a friend who has done an in-person and online retreat with them and preferred the in-person one.
That said, I have a hard time imagining my experience being as positive doing the retreat in person, largely because I got a lot of value out of feeling comfortable expressing my emotions however felt natural (and crying in particular). I would not have felt comfortable potentially disrupting others while meditating in the same room.
And strong +1 to trying things. I wish I had read Romeo Stevenâs meditation FAQ (and the rest of his blog) years ago, and this excerpt in particular.
Jhourney recommends approaching meditation like a scientist outside of sessions (e.g. considering experiments and variables to isolate), but with child-like playfulness while meditating. Iâve found that approach quite helpful. It led to an impromptu experiment to listen to music to amplify positive emotions while meditating, which IIRC preceded my first jhana of the retreat.