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+--- Thread: Breathing and your mind (/showthread.php?tid=1920)
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Re: Breathing and your mind - otto - 10-17-2012
Quote:Wouldn't you say that thinking has to be of some value? Like, I guess we could be totally present almost all the time, but then our life would be completely different and there would less planning and structure, more animalistic. I feel like some thinking is useful, but that each person needs to learn when to put a cap on their thoughts, at the point when they become more of a hindrance than a help.
During breathing meditation, my intension is to not get caught in any thoughts no matter how useful or important or insightful they seem. It is challenging for sure because when we slow down, are thoughts are clearer and penetrate more deeply into the nature of things. But I just go "Oh, here is more thought" and refocus on the breath, knowing that my understanding of myself will continue to grow in tandem with my meditation practice. The point of mindful breathing is to become more anchored in your body and identify less with your thoughts. The better we get at not letting thoughts carry us away from being in the moment the better out ability to relax and understand (deeply) what it means to use our mind and eyes properly. Fishing for really insightful thoughts while mindfully breathing will not advance us towards this understanding but hinder us and keep us venerating thought.
Of course thought and left-brained activity is useful and necessary but as myopes it has too often become our master.
Quote:I can tell if I let that thought go too far to the point of it no longer being of much benefit. I think there is a lot of merit in thinking, and that it can be very useful, but that it should be kept under control and silenced when WE want it to stop, or when we want to move on to something else. Moving on to another thought or back to present moment, for me at least, is a great feeling of letting go at the appropriate time and it seems to be very correlated with feeling when to shift your gaze at the appropriate time.
Yes, the feeling is kind of correlated, the letting go and moving on, not getting fixated. Careful not to see your thoughts as something to be forcefully "kept under control" or "silenced". That which you resist, persists. Simply redirect attention to breath. It's like standing in a waterfall but you find a pocket where there is no water crashing down so you stand there out of the deluge. You can't silence the water around you but you are not affected by it because you have found the spot, your breath.
Re: Breathing and your mind - ted - 10-22-2012
Overcoming the idea that I'm not accomplishing anything if I'm not thinking, letting go of the desire to come up with thoughts, even if they seem nice or useful or intuitive.
I think, maybe there can be a time for that type of meditation, where one is looking for an answer to a certain question, or trying to visualize or be creative. Would you say that more value, though, can be gained when the breath meditation is solely focused on attention to the breath? If I may ask, how long have you been able to stay pretty much attended to the breath, or not getting caught up/identified/pulled in by your thoughts?
Getting a bit personal here, I remember when I was a lot younger I started to develop a bit of OCD toward compulsive thinking, and I would have trouble letting go of thoughts for fear of not being able to remember them later on. I still sense this mildly in me, somewhere deep down. When I am doing this type of present moment attention meditations, I become more aware of the moment when I really want to hang on beyond what is necessary, and I am better able to just let it go. It is a slight feeling of loss, like losing something valuable to me, but it is more so a great feeling of relief. Letting go during these moments seems natural, and in that moment, I am able to really understand the idea of effortlessness. It is effortful to hang on to the thought any longer, and it is effortless to let it go and see what comes up next.
Re: Breathing and your mind - David - 10-23-2012
ted Wrote:Overcoming the idea that I'm not accomplishing anything if I'm not thinking, letting go of the desire to come up with thoughts, even if they seem nice or useful or intuitive.
I think, maybe there can be a time for that type of meditation, where one is looking for an answer to a certain question, or trying to visualize or be creative. Would you say that more value, though, can be gained when the breath meditation is solely focused on attention to the breath? If I may ask, how long have you been able to stay pretty much attended to the breath, or not getting caught up/identified/pulled in by your thoughts?
I haven't really worked at a 100% quiet mind for a long length of time. What I have done is become better at noticing thoughts as they come up. The important thing for me is to notice where my thoughts are coming from. Are they coming directly from my conscious mind for a specific purpose in what I'm doing right now, or are they coming from somewhere else? If somewhere else, is it intuition that is proving to be useful, or is it something else? If it's still something else, then you start to question what the nature of the thoughts are, and the possibilities are all disconcerting.
So as far as vision improvement, it's a way to help you stay focused on what you're doing and not get distracted, but the same could be said for anything you want to accomplish. And I think it may be a bit too much of a sidetrack to try to focus on 100% staying in the moment. That's a really big change.
Another thing to look at is the brainwave states alpha and theta and how your thoughts differ in them. I frequently have thoughts in what I presume to be theta that I try to stay focused on while coming back into beta, with varying levels of comprehension by the time I'm back solidly into beta in a few seconds. It also changes your idea of what it means to focus, if focusing in theta means to stay in theta and not go to beta to do what you have learned is the right way to focus.
Re: Breathing and your mind - wilmanelson76 - 11-09-2012
State of your Mind is linked to your Breathing. Remember how you take long breaths when sad, short rapid ones when angry. Also have you observed any long term stress reflects on the physical organs especially the eyes. Yoga and ancient eastern thought understands this and suggests first focussing on the breath to still the mind. Though stress is part and parcel of our lives, we need to bring about a balance and that is only possible by focussing on your breath consciously.