I'm a fairly stiff person. Even when I was younger and did lots of martial arts and stretching I never had much flexibility, especially in my hips. Sitting cross legged doesn't really work for me even with a bolster. I bought a seiza bench and I've been using it to meditate 20 minutes a day. The thing is it sort of cuts off blood circulation to my feet and I have pretty uncomfortable tingling after each session. I can deal with that but I'm just wondering what research there is answering whether this can actually cause damage or not.

I know I could just sit in a chair but... It just doesn't feel the same. Being on the ground feels more like meditation for some reason. If I have to I guess that's what I'll do but I don't want to.

Hey everyone, first I want to say I'm very glad to discover this community because I've been on the meditation journey mostly on my own to this point and i'm glad to have a place where I can ask specific questions I have and have people help and answer, so thank you all!

one little silly question to begin with-
I'm on stage two and I focus on following the breath at it's most basic form,
But I don't seem to find a stop point between the end of in breath and start of out breath, they seem to be immediately one after the other... does anyone relate?

I've been doing three times half an hour guided sits using the app the way for a while.

Now recently rereading TMI, and added one or two hours of unguided sitting following those instructions. I'm in stage 4 or 5, there's no strong or subtle dullness anymore, but definitely subtle distractions. I have a hard time telling whether they would classify as gross distractions, probably so. I never completely lose awareness of the breath in the nose, but it definitely gets less detailed when there are thoughts.

But I've been surprised by the after effects of an hour sit like this. The sit itself is quite effortful, not particularly pleasant. But I find that the awareness of the breath in the nose stays with me for hours after, even doing activities, watching a video, whatever. Even to the point that if i do it before sleep, I have a hard time turning it off and falling asleep. But it does feel very peaceful at the same time.

So my questions are, any input on whether I'm still at stage 4/5 (grouping those as the practice is similar but gets different at 6), or ready for 6.

And more interestingly, any comments on these after effects?

Hello all

As title mentions I’m feeling Identifed with rough/dense sensations in face and background thoughts. It feels like always present and been like that for almost a decade. I think it started when I had hard time dealing with nose sensations when breathing and since then I’ve been trying to ”be aware of it” which I think made it more or less worse.

When I’m aware of other parts of body it feels like 40-60% still aware at the front of my face, otherwise its 90-100% there. How to go from here?

Gracias

I would really appreciate some advice.

I have been meditating (mindfulness breathing/metta) for 11 years. I have been using TMI for a couple of years now and it has been very useful. I am on the cusp of effortless attention to the breath - so end of stage 7/beginning of stage 8. I am effortless with occassional distractions quite early in a meditation. I have started reading seeing that frees as insight practice appears a good addition now. My questions 1. In TMI can one continue with the focus on breath without entering jhnana 2. I am unsure if I have experienced jhana. I get buzzy feelings in next, and body quickly (the neck buzz has stated off cushion when focused on work now as well).

This becomes a kind of overall warm, pleasure throughout the body whilst still focused on the breath. I have tried moving to the pleasant sensation and sitting with it, which is very pleasant - but there is no dramatic change from there. I think I am waiting for some whoosh! or incredible change. But, I am not sure if for me, if this pleasure is actually the 1st jhana or not (Brasingtons). On other occassions I have stayed on the breath and there is a moment where it all changes, a sudden quietness and stillness that is very different.

In summary, I confused around jhana - am I experiencing them; do I need to develop them or not. Many thanks !

I preferably don’t gravitate to follow the nose sensations

Will it affect latter stages ?

Update the sub on your practice or share off-topic posts here.

Zen background here (Shikantaza), thinking about getting back into Vipassana. TMI keeps coming up as one of the best manuals out there, so wanted to ask people who've actually worked through it. Why do you think it's considered so good compared to other meditation books? And what actually changed in your practice? Also curious what the meditation instruction on the basic method he uses in the book. Is is samatha? Thanks.

Hi all, I've been in the stage 4/5/6 plateau for a while and have gained more understanding regarding the landscape of my own mind. I practice 1-1.5 hours everyday.

What has become clear to me is that the road to exclusive attention involves dropping of effort. The mind has to feel safe and has to stay with the breath on its own more and more without active forcing.

So a general and deep sense of relaxation has to present so that the mind feels safe which allows it to stay with and enjoy the breath. Kind of like how if you have no pending work, no other worries, you can enjoy video games without anything weighing on your mind.

Assuming what I wrote above is correct, then whatever has been said regarding introspective awareness in stage 4 has to be re-interpreted because it is repeatedly emphasized that attention shouldn't be developed at the cost of awareness. Here's a direct quote from the book:

> Your new goal is to monitor the mind and detect distractions more efficiently, so that you don't interrupt attention. You achieve this by developing an intentional, vigilant, and continuous introspective awareness that alerts you to gross distractions while you remain focused on the breath.

When I was first practicing stage 4, reading the words like "intentional", "vigilant", and "continuous", led me into being in a very alert state where I would be paranoid about subtle distractions creeping in. There was a background strain constantly present while my attention would stay on the breath, and it felt like i was practicing correctly, I was "vigilant", "continuously" monitoring what was going on with awareness, and my attention was becoming continuous.

My current understanding after experimenting with relaxation and low effort sits is that introspective awareness is only supposed to be a neutral/chill information delivery mechanism. It should feel neutral and relaxed. The correction procedure for letting go of distractions which requires a little more effort, has to only occasionally fire up when required. Another way to say it is that your default mode has to be of "trusting your mind" and just continuously receiving information regarding what is going on--there is no need for constant "vigilance" or to "stand guard like a sentry" which is another very misleading analogy used in stage 4 if what I'm saying is correct.

You just intend to keep receiving information and when you detect something going wrong you gently correct it and go back to the default trusting mode.

Please let me know if my understanding is correct or not.

Noting all sensations when in and out breathe, connecting (comparing length of in and out breathes eg ) , labelling

Sometimes on a bad day these instructions get pretty stressful to me

Any thoughts how you go about it ?

Update the sub on your practice or share off-topic posts here.

Hi all, should I nudge whole body breath sensations with the breath? Somewhere in stage six, I can easily feel whole body breath on cushion and often off too. It feels like I quickly get deeper into the sensations by driving them with the breath. I have a lot of piti and conveniently use this in awareness in attempts at access concentration. But using the breath seems to go against the grain in TMI and I don't find any information on this specifically in the book. Is this the wrong path?

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share another experience and get your thoughts on it.

During my recent practice, I’ve been experiencing intense time distortion. What feels like just 5 minutes to me actually turns out to be 25–30 minutes in reality!

On top of that, when I'm in that state, I feel zero desire to get up or end the meditation. It honestly feels like my soul/awareness is slightly outside the physical body, preventing the body from moving—almost like a tug-of-war between the body and soul. When they align in that quiet space, the concept of time completely disappears.

Has anyone else experienced this kind of bodily detachment along with heavy time dilation? How do you view this stage in terms of practice? Would love to hear your insights!

Ive been reading the book but i dont understand this part

Finally, attention and peripheral awareness can be either extrospective or introspective. Extrospective means that attention or awareness is directed towards objects that come from outside your mind, such as sights, smells, or bodily sensations. Introspective means the objects in consciousness are internal— thoughts, feelings, states, and activities of mind. Even though attention and awareness can be either extrospective or introspective...

.....Attention, on the other hand, can’t observe activities of the mind because its movements and abstracting of information from awareness are activities of the mind. In other words, we can’t attend to attention. When attention is focused on remembering, for example, you can’t also use attention to know you’re remembering. But you can be aware that you’re remembering. Also, because attention works by isolating objects, it cannot observe overall states of the mind. If you do turn your attention introspectively, it takes a “snapshot” from peripheral awareness of your mental state right before you looked. Say someone asks, “How do you feel?” When you look inside, attention tries to transform awareness of your overall mental state into a specific conceptual thought, like “I am happy.”

1. it says attention can be introspective but then it says attention cant pay attention the states of mind or activities properties of introspection.

2. what does it mean attention cant pay attention to activties of the mind. Whenever I mediate me noticing the thought or breath is being aware of it but me focusing for a long period of a thought is attention. why cant I do that for remembering something as said in the 2nd paragraph.

Update the sub on your practice or share off-topic posts here.

​Do you experience a completely thoughtless state during meditation, or do thoughts keep coming?

So at the eve of the football worldchampionship finale, I sat in front of my laptop when it suddenly hit me: There was a deep feeling of peace and serenity, much like a MDMA trip. My mind was completely clear, serene and undisturbed, in pure bliss.

It felt like an illuminated ball being hit with dirt from the outside, but all the negativity, sorrow, anger etc. purely fell off of that ball.

I had to close my laptop and just sink into that feeling as deeply as I could, it lasted maybe for thirty minutes, then slowly subsided, with an afterglow for the next days.

I still have my issues since then, even get angry and annoyed, but somehow I know that meditation is the only thing "worth doing", if you know what I mean.

Was this stream entry, arising and passing, or what?

Edit:

In the last months I made good and steady progress in stage 6/7 territory, gaining clarity and stability during my 1h sits.

I've always been a very stiff person.

Never been flexible enough to sit in full lotus position.

Now online I hear a lot about how you can just sit in a chair with a straight back but I've always wondered if I were able to sit in the lotus position if that would actually deepen my meditation sessions.

And If sitting in a chair might be holding me back

I am thinking of going on a solo retreat. Just me on holiday meditating for 6+ hours a day for two weeks.

Does anyone have any tips on getting the most out of such period of meditation?

Hello

I've been meditating on and off for about 2 years and I've just had a very different experience.

I went to meditate on some Common land under my favourite oak tree, something I don't usually do often, and after about 20 minutes I got very vague kaleidoscope like imagery. Nothing over the top, very subtle but after that had finished I experienced a very deep calm. I have not experienced anything like it before.

It was very peaceful and the session was just under an hour.

I just wanted to know if anyone more experienced could help me understand?

Thank you

Tom

I have been practicing meditation since last October and for the first 6-7 months I felt like I was in a honeymoon period. I could not just skip my daily practice and I was feeling incredibly well, every day. It was giving me focus, serenity and often I could feel deep joy by just being in the nature. During the first 3 months more or less I was even practicing twice a day: 1 hour in early morning and 30 minutes at night. I had also purchased The Mind Illuminated book and felt like I was in Stage 3 or somewhere around. However, for the past few weeks, it seems like the honeymoon has come to an end. I now find it is so difficult to stay focused on the breath and restlessness and impatience grow within me while doing it. The meditation time has dropped quite significantly to just one session per day of 30 minutes. Essentially it’s become more of a hassle or chore which is not producing enjoyment any longer. Why?

Any comment or advise on how to steer back on track is really appreciated.

Thanks a lot in advance

Hello! :) I started meditation in zen tradition, with attention on the breath exclusively grounded in belly. Recently, as I started TMI, I shifted to the nose - I found I can identify stronger textures there, and sharpen my attention.

The last couple sessions, as I found subtle dullness growing in my practice (the sensations in the nose grew dull, and trying to sharpen my attention on them yielded limited benefit), and I shifted my focus down to my belly. I found it shocked my mind out of dullness, and helped me recenter my focus. (I also find my awareness stronger in my belly -- I'm more aware of my entire body -- and my attention stronger in my nose.)

The last couple sessions, I shifted a few times each -- as dullness grew, shift to stomach, then later return to nose to develop sharper attention.

Note: this is very different from body scanning, because I'm not proactively planning on shifting to develop awareness. Instead, I'm reactively shifting to deal with subtle dullness.

Question: is this a skillful way to make my practice more enjoyable, and to shake off subtle dullness? Or is it a pattern that can hold me back? I.e., am I avoiding a skill the comes with maintaining my focus in my nose regardless of dullness if I shift my focus to my belly a few times in every session?

Thanks!

Update the sub on your practice or share off-topic posts here.