7. Smile. Smiling releases chemicals that make you feel good. It’s okay to fake it until you make it.
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8. Breathe slowly. You can learn to breathe far, far more slowly than you are probably used to. Breathing slowly will slow down your thinking and bring you into your body.
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9. Breathe into your abdomen rather than your chest. Once you’ve filled your abdominal area with oxygen you can optionally breathe into your chest as well. Chest-first/chest-only breathing is bad.
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10. Breathe through your nose.
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11. Okay this might be heretical but here goes: if you're looking to stress less / be 10% happier, you're probably going to get more bang from your buck from exercising, sleeping well, and eating right. Take care of your body
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12. Seriously, go do some basic cardio. Running is free, yo, just like meditation.
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13. To make it more fun: experiment with practicing meditation immediately before exercising. Experiment with practicing immediately after exercising. Notice if either ordering affects/improves your qualitative experience of either activity
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14. Practice using a gratitude journal for a time (1-3+ months). It will help you learn to feel good emotionally in your body, a skill that will come in handy later. Again, this will probably get you more bang for your buck early on than vanilla mindfulness practice
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15. Odds are, whether you're brand new or an old hat, you’re not doing nearly enough compassion practice. Learn + consistently do loving kindness / compassion practice or similar techniques. Again, these techniques have more power early on than e.g. following the breath
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Replying to
what - my impression was to start with concentration and that that could take you (nearly) all the way
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This is an actual Contentious Topic. Metta vs. not is more of a path fork than a tuning dial.
If you're going to do it, do a lot of it.
(I only do it occasionally-accidentally, and feel fine with that.)
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uhhhh that's so interesting. i. hm. i started with concentration ~7 years ago. recently experimented with open awareness for the first time but it seemed to just land me into metta
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I usually experience metta as a natural by-product of being relatively more perceptually intensive.
When there is clear throughput, there is also great appreciation.
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