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Anyone do meditation regularly and find it helpful for stress reduction? If so, do you have any particularly favorite resources for learning more about it?

yes. I've been practicing for 19 years now. I really like the app "headspace". As far as meditation apps go it's the only one I've seen that actually teaches meditation technique. There's no music, no white noise, just instruction and silence. It's well worth purchasing. If you're looking for a book, I really liked "the joy of living". It's also a good instruction manual and the author puts the concepts into easy to understand language and ideas. It doesn't have any hippy-dippy stuff in it. No new age bullshit. Just practice.

CannonballRun wrote:Anyone do meditation regularly and find it helpful for stress reduction? If so, do you have any particularly favorite resources for learning more about it?

Mindfulness in Plain English is a good book to start with. It's available for free (by author) on the net somewhere. I've been doing simple breath meditation for about 7 years now, highly recommend it.

I'd be interested in learning more about this myself...I've experimented here and there but nothing regular and don't really know where to start. Anyone know anything about Transcendental Meditation?

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I am gonna look into the resources. It's a topic I've been interested in for a while.

This works for me in the evenings, and has some science behind it:

http://www.relaxationresponse.org/steps/

I use an HRV app that has a guided breathing piece. I play that on my drive home from work, because I will run someone off the road otherwise.

I don't really do too much meditation per say, but I regularly incorporate four count breathing (e.g. "tactical" breathing) to get to sleep, reduce stress, or just calm down when needed. Inhale for a 4 count, hold for a 4 count, exhale for a 4 count, hold for a 4 count, repeat as long as necessary.

I've been meditating the last month or so, so I't probably too early for me to make firm conclusions, but I feel like it's been beneficial. I started with the Headspace app and used the first 10 free days. I didn't feel like paying for it after that, so I've been using an app called "Insight Timer." It's free, it's got a bunch of guided meditations with varying degrees of quality, and a timer you can set that logs your total meditation time over weeks, months, forever, and let's you know how many days in a row you've meditated.

I do it in the morning now for 10-15 minutes. The biggest benefit so far is probably that I sometimes can find myself observing my own reactions to things in a sort of detached way, which is definitely helpful in difficult situations. A good book on the subject is "10% Happier" by Dan Harris. It's sort a memoir of a journalist who gets into meditation. He's very skeptical of most of the weirder claims on the subject, and goes into a lot of the science behind it.

Sorntel wrote:I'd be interested in learning more about this myself...I've experimented here and there but nothing regular and don't really know where to start. Anyone know anything about Transcendental Meditation?

Be careful with TM. I know people who have said they find it beneficial. But TM is often expensive to get into (like thousands of dollars expensive) and you can find several mediation techniques online for free or for very little cost. I can't tell you that it is or isn't worth it. But it seems excessive to me.