I forget what I was reading but meditation was mentioned, and I was wondering did anyone here partake... also wondered about the NHS position on it

http://www.nhsinform.co.uk/palliativeca ... relaxation

Love the final paragraph

So whether you meditate or not, what do you make of it?

I have tried it. Majority of the time, I don't "succeed" and get distracted. On the few times it has worked, I do feel calmer and everything seems to move at a slightly slower pace. It becomes easier to be aware of everything that's going on around you but it doesn't overwhelm.

I suspect it's like acupuncture - we don't know how/why it works but it's available on the NHS for chronic back pain.

I've tried mediation from time to time and when it's worked I find it very helpful to calm stress and clear the mind, but it isn't as simple or easy as I'd thought it would be. Focussing on your breathing and clearing your mind is something I found very difficult. It took a lot of practice and I haven't done it for a while but I'd like to get back into it again.

I've got a group of friends who are really into it and it's become a sort of cult thing with them, it seems to have taken over their lives.

I've a friend who is just back from an ashram in India.

Mark

I have been meditating for many years now, I used to get distracted and have trouble blanking my mind so I switched to mindfulness meditation which I do with a pen and paper by the side of me, I meditate with my eyes open and a candle as a focus point, as I meditate and new thoughts occur to me I follow the train of each one, thinking it through to it's conclusion and then make a note of the path of the page next to me, then I settle again and pick up the next thought and do the same. It has the same effect as clear minded meditation on me but without the frustration.

My mum started doing Transcendental Meditation in the early 1980s. This was clearly after the time the Beatles had discredited it, but still, she had been persuaded to do so by a friend. She got very secretive about it, and wouldn’t talk about it to me, my sister or my dad. She also started going to their retreat in Suffolk (IIRC that’s where it was), and was clearly not doing her any good. She’d come home in an absolutely foul temper and would take a week or so to get over it. What they did there was anyone’s guess, but the fact that she kept going back was cause for concern (we also have no idea how much this was costing her at the time). Certainly some kind of major cluster-mindfcuk was being deployed to the poor saps who attended these weekends. Again, much secrecy on her return. Thankfully, she eventually stopped.

I was doing sociology A levels at 6th form college at the time, we got onto the notion of Cults, and there were a few people in that group that had seen similar stuff. We (as a group) decided that it fitted the definitions quite well: recruitment, secrecy, retreats, etc.. The TM people slowly morphed into the Natural Law Party and kept on about their “yogic flying”.

So, for me, meditation goes in the same box as crystal healing, reiki, homeopathy and other spurious new-age nonsense. If you want to interest me in such things, you need to strip away the unnecessary decorations: mysticism, secrecy, pseudo religious puff, and other spurious BS that surrounds it. If it works, and can be done without that paraphernalia then it follows that there is a system or mechanism in the brain that can be accessed and switched on, or there is a simple method that can be taught freely. Strip away everything from it until you get to this bit and you may find me interested.

Right now, it’s akin to chewing on willow bark for your headache. As you know, someone worked out what the active ingredient for that was, and was able to isolate it. So you take aspirin instead, losing the dubious benefits of sucking a piece of tree. If my doctor ever suggested I took up meditation, I would ask him exactly this.

I think taking time to "chill out" is probably a good idea for many people.

I saw a documentary once where a woman had surgery with no anaesthetic, choosing to meditate instead. It seamed to work for her. I'd prefer halothane.

Paulzolo - have a read of herbert benson's stuff.