Want to Learn to Meditate...

I've wanted to learn meditation for a while now. One, because I tend to have a lot of stress. Right now I've got so much going on around me (or so it feels). I'm tied down with school work both in and outside of my major, I feel like I don't have time for myself, and I feel terrible living with my family. Not that I don't love them. But when they ask for me to tell them what I'm feeling like, I do. I explain to them why I feel the way I do...and they don't believe me. So I figure meditation could help me calm down. And two, because I think it can help me learn a lot about myself.

So I've tried looking up different techniques and I've tried some, but I have a lot of pent up energy sometimes. Also, I always have so many thoughts in my head and there's always too many people around. I just can't sit down in quiet and take that time for myself.

So I'm wondering if anyone has any tips for people (like me) who maybe can't stay still too long, or always have too many thoughts in their mind that can't or aren't easily cleared away.

Hey Sombra,

Welcome to the group!

Sometimes the best way to meditate is to do a technique that is similar to automatic writing, where you just drag a pencil along a piece of paper not paying attention until you begin to write.

Basically you still need to find the quiet and relaxing place, but you don't concentrate on clearing your mind, you basically just relax and let all the thoughts come to you, it's more of a letting go of your control over your mind, and letting your thoughts permeate yourself. Once you do it for awhile the thoughts end up having a theme and more often than not you end up finding the root cause of your problem, which will help you to deal with it so that next time you do this, you'll have less cluttered thought patterns. Once everything in your subconscious is clear (half the time these racing thoughts are from the subconscious, which people have barely enough time to listen to) then you'll find the inner peace that meditation is meant to achieve.

I hope that helps for now!

Oh..I am wondering if you have tried Tai Chi? Since you have so much energy, perhaps a moving meditation is good for you or a yoga..with breathing. Just paying attention to your breathing is a form of meditation...when other thoughts come, push them away or let them drift away. Walk in nature and connect too

blessings..Kim

Valkyrie: I think I'll try this. I've tried automatic writing (keyword is "tried" but I'm usually thinking about what I write before I write some things; other things do come a bit automatically).

Dragonfly: No, I haven't tried Tai Chi. I'm not very familiar with it either. But focusing on breathing is something I can try so I'll try that as well.

Thanks for the advice. I see if anything works for me.