Meditation & Mindfulness

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I tried meditation/Zen for a while. My biggest problem was just meditating and not thinking. (I found the Zen concept from the book I read about identifying the thought and then discarding it particularly interesting.) In some ways, meditation reminded me a little of my prayers, when I was still a Christian. But, I soon began analyzing Zen and picking it to pieces philosophically. Due to a combination of things, part being busy and part philosophizing, I never made a solid habit of Zen. Although I look back and wonder if the mediation really did anything for me, I have lately considered taking it back up - just to give it a fair chance. If anyone's interested in it, I'd definitely recommend trying it. I mean, it can't hurt.

I do meditate on occasion, but I can't put a specific name/type to it--I've just experimented with a bunch of different methods.

Focusing on breathing and/or an image, mentally putting a barrier around myself to "screen out" any distractions, repeating a phrase over and over...all of these help, in various combinations. Sometimes, I can effectively do it while riding on the bus to work--only sometimes, though.

Conversely, there are times when I can't even get into the needed state in a quiet room. It all depends on how active my brain is being at the moment, and whether or not it is willing to "shut up" for a while.

The benefits are pretty obvious--I feel calmer, more centered, less worried about stuff. As someone else said, I need to keep at it more than I do.

In my recent past I was heavily focused on things like modern witchcraft and sometimes I do things that can be considered meditation, after a sort. While visualization and breathing exercises helped a bit - combined with my medication - I feel that things like initiation and physically moving myself through rituals helped me more.

What really helped was stuff like Wiccan circle dancing, crafting with intent and joining with people in common actions. It's really good and democratic and perfect for those of us who aren't coordinated enough for a formal dance or sport. Sometimes I would do "spells" in the Pagan sense where I visualized my problems as an entity, and banished it via techniques like the pentagram and hexagram.

Another thing that helped me was forming my wishes and desires into a 'sigil' and then either burning it or charging it through circle dancing, chanting, and other ritualized actions. It really seems to work at times and doesn't require adherence to a religion.

Here's a little science about breathing and how it calms you down: http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20 ... thing.html
This should be taught to all the autistics in the world.

IMO, Autists generally need "heartfulness," not mindfulness:

Heartfulness Inquiry

I started meditation at 17 (many years ago) then stopped my senior year in college. After too many years of not doing it I've returned to it and found that it is the best medicine EVER! I've tried a few medications, one of which put me in the hospital for 5 days and gave me permanent "side effects" that are, in a word, unpleasant. I quickly ran back to meditation through the books of Tich Nat Hanh, an incredible teacher and author, and now take NO medication. My nervous system, now permanently damaged, would not last long without meditation and I can honestly say that I can BARELY do it! On a scale of 1-10 I probably have to stretch to reach the 1 . Yoga is also a very therapeutic, fantastic thing to do for helping to learn that breath is body, body is breath and tension hides, unnecessarily, in many muscles. It helps to soothe the over-stimulated nervous system.