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.
Conversation
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.
2
9
10. Breathe through your nose.
1
8
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
2
1
27
12. Seriously, go do some basic cardio. Running is free, yo, just like meditation.
1
12
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
1
15
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
1
1
9
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
2
17
Replying to
what - my impression was to start with concentration and that that could take you (nearly) all the way
2
3
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.
2
3
(I only do it occasionally-accidentally, and feel fine with that.)