Meditation Tips

I need help concentrating when I meditate, I keep thinking about random stuff like cartoons or "i'm hungry", and stuff like that.

Random thoughts are okay to have just try not to follow them in tangents, but it is good to focus on something physical whether it's your breathing or a place on yourself, or maybe hold an object to focus on (:

Ben Skypro wrote: I need help concentrating when I meditate, I keep thinking about random stuff like cartoons or "i'm hungry", and stuff like that.

That's a perfectly natural thing to happen, especially if your just starting out on meditation. The biggest thing is to continue practicing on a regular basis and being able to tune that stuff out will slowly last longer, and how often thoughts come in will happen less and less. Even some of us who do it for years have those moments still pop in from time to time.

As far as some suggested tips:

-Make sure you are as relaxed as you can be, stretches and things followed by breathing exercises even before you start the meditation can help with that.
-If one of those thoughts do come along, acknowledge the thought. realize that now isn't the time and let it flow right back out as fast as it came right in. Keep going. The ease of it coming in can be the ease of it going out.
-Sometimes some guided meditations can help, theres a number of them listed in the health and fitness section I believe

Ben Skypro wrote: I need help concentrating when I meditate, I keep thinking about random stuff like cartoons or "i'm hungry", and stuff like that.

I like to let those thoughts take an active part in my meditation. They become a stream of golden light which surrounding and flows around me as I meditate. Anything that crops up from the flows, I can send back to them with a casual wave of my hand and a deep breath. If things like physical sensations become a problem, I try to visualize myself inside a box or sphere that separates my essential self from my physical self; I tell myself that my body's needs are my body's problems, and that my mind/spirit are busy working on something else right now.

The issue is thinking you need to be concentrating.

When we concentrate, we narrow our attention. The narrower the attention, the less aware we become, and thus the more we fall into following our random thoughts down the rabbit hole.

Instead of "concentrating" go the other way, into taking yourself out of the tunnel of focus, and into an open space of observation. The space could be a visualization of the sky with clouds, and each cloud a thought floating by, or it can be a movie theater with the screen presenting each thought and you observing it, or any other metaphor that has the same effect. The point is to position the occurrence of thoughts into a separate area from your immediate area of mental processing. You are the watcher, and the thoughts are the watched. Keep it separated and let them go by. Not concentrating, just observing.

I discovered listening to this helps me meditate... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE6RYpe9IT0

Oh my gosh, this happens when I meditate, too! I'm not the only one!

For me using incense and a gong (or AUM if I cant find one) helps ground myself in the Now. Sometimes playing with a string of beads or an elastic helps keep my senses busy as I allow myself to go out of my mind and become part of the Now.

But I do sometimes hear my fridge calling out to me when I'm trying my hardest to ingore it. lol! Again, with all things Patience, practice, and discipline.

Hoping you all the best in your meditation sessions.

What helps me most with this is first focusing on my breathing. Feeling it come in through my nose, down my throat, filling my lungs and out again. Second, I imagine a huge white board, and what's written on it are my thoughts. I take this in for a moment, don't focus on one thought but instead see them all. When I'm ready I imagine those words being erased, and relax into the calming white. This allows me more room in my head to think and understand.