I curious to hear about the experiences other members have had practicing serious meditation.  Has anyone done this?  Mainly I'm thinking along the lines of the Buddhist practices, of which there are several major schools of thought and specific disciplines.

I was going through a very abusive divorce with a mentally ill woman as well as exploring my own gender issues. Actually I'm still dealing with the abusive woman, and it's 7 years post separation! Anyway, I realized that I was operating on knee-jerk, runaway emotions and felt like I was going to die of stress and pure depression if that didn't stop. So I began to meditate daily, and kept it up solidly for the first year.  It completely changed my life.

I recall the first time I noticed really obvious results - my ex had just played yet another abusive hand and I was discussing it with a friend, and I suddenly became aware of how I was feeling deep inside (sick, angry) as well as how I actually wanted to feel. I stopped the conversation and refocused on the beauty in my life, which is the root benefit of meditation - experiencing mindfulness in day to day living. Every moment of awareness reinforces the benefit of meditation.

Taking this to the transitioning experience, I've found that even on days where people very rudely "clocked" me and I felt insecure and uncomfortable, I have been able to realize the deeper, truer blessings in my life that have followed my transition. Regardless of the challenges of being trans, I celebrate the decision to transition and live authentically in my own life as a woman. I don't believe that would have been possible without meditation and deep introspection.

I recommend you try out Insight Meditation app if this is new for you, there are a great many guided meditations within the app to help you get started and stay with your practice.

Good luck!

Mia

Interestingly, I've just returned from a 3 night Yoga and Mindfulness retreat. It was a secular retreat, and I'd never done either Yoga or Meditation before, but found both totally fantastic and very beneficial. It was the first time I've ever lived full-time for so long, in a mostly female group of all very accepting people, simply wonderful 😁.

I'm glad to hear it helped you. 

I had committed to a regular practice of meditation about 15 years ago after some time spent in Nepal and subsequently extensively studying mostly the Zen and Various Tibetan variants of Buddhism.  I developed the practice with a good friend, also a student of Buddhism, and pursued mainly the Zen discipline.  It was difficult to do properly without becoming involved with a supervised practice in a Zendo and ultimately after several years of mostly daily practice I abandoned it.  The pressures of life and schedules were the excuse I gave for stopping however the fact of the mater is  I was afraid to continue.  I had had several bona fide Sartori experiences, the often discussed flash of insight and consciousness expansion, which were terrifying in the absence of the guidance of a Roshi.  I felt like I was playing with fire, very dangerous fire, something akin to a nuclear fireball.

The question of meditation has come up in my therapy.  I see a PhD. therapist who is experienced in Freudian and Jungian based therapies as well as psychoanalysis and has personally participated in meditation disciplines.  He has  advised me to consider resuming my meditation practice, although this time with proper supervision.  The questions posed by my ->-bleeped-<- seem sometimes analogous to the Zen Koan, an insoluble puzzle for insight meditation.

At the time I meditated regularly in the past, I did not spend much effort on my gender situation.  Mainly, I was learning the discipline and coming to know my own psyche and consciousness, learned to control my emotional state, learned to step back and examine  the forces driving my actions and reactions.  I'm comfortable with  the basics and ready to get to work on some of the life questions at hand.

I have been meditating for a very long whiles...decades.  It started when I began studying a very traditional form of martial art under a Buddhist Sensei.  I was 5 and it changed my life.  Without my practice, I doubt I would have survived my teenage years.  It allowed me to focus in on what is real and through meditation I was able to filter out the unreal.

I practice Yoga and identify as a practitioner of Zen, but not so much a Buddhist.  I do not really follow a singular 'religion'.  I do not really look at meditation through a religious lens anyway.

Quote from: kaitylynn on October 16, 2016, 07:22:37 PM
I have been meditating for a very long whiles...decades.  It started when I began studying a very traditional form of martial art under a Buddhist Sensei.  I was 5 and it changed my life.  Without my practice, I doubt I would have survived my teenage years.  It allowed me to focus in on what is real and through meditation I was able to filter out the unreal.

I actually learned a lot about mindfulness from practicing martial arts - Aikido - long ago, I'm embarrassed to say that I forgot that! There are absolute "universal truths" that can be uncovered through martial arts and meditation, which explains the serenity and peace to be found near a sensei or any serious practitioner.

Now I want to return to martial arts!!

Mia

Mia, I agree.  I, too,  am not a Buddhist per se.  Really the Zen tradition is really  a psychological construct not really a religion. It is because of this that I ended up following the Zen methods.

Steph

I learned to calm the "monkey mind."

I chant mantras from time to time. I don´t know if that´s what you were looking for.

I have meditated in the past (in silence) but it is impossible where I live because there are always sounds and distractions around. That´s why I changed my practice. The mantras help sometimes and sometimes they don´t - it depends - but they do help move energy around.

I'm a person who relied on tons of distractions and diversions, many of them requiring my brain to be elsewhere in order to turn down the GD noise. "Post Transition" I still have an over-active mind. Back in the day it would be called Naval Gazing. I call it What If'ing things to death. I guess that is a part of why my therapist is always complementing me on how "insightful" and "in touch" I am. If I felt that way I wouldn't be there 

She recommended Mindful Meditation, championed or pioneered by Jon Kabat-Zin(sp). There is a lot out there on it as it it well recognized in the medical world. Some hospitals even run classes on it. Plenty of stuff on-line to help get started. There is also likely available in your local library video shelf a "Great Courses" course on Mindful Meditation.

I found it to help. I wish I could get deeper into it but my life situation does not offer me much free time between work and caring for a disabled wife. You need to set aside a decent block of quality time free from distractions to really do any sort of meditations. For me it only comes close to obtaining when my head hits a pillow.

As far as the general definition of meditation goes, I probably do it all the time, non-religiously.

I have a manner of concentrating thought for a purpose, which is apparently what enables me to turn in 90% grade essays 7 hours before they're due... or get things done in a burst of very focused activity. Same goes for discussions and debates. I tend to be extremely focused internally much of the time, or end up frequently doing a precision manual task while listening to some debate or documentary and taking both in at once, which I'd never have been able to do as a kid because I had a flea's attention span back then.

But it has a cost - doing that as often as I do for whatever reason means I literally need to take time out to just lay on the couch or something and do absolutely nothing, not even think. Intellectual discussion and debates and stuff drain the hell out of me and I tend to need to recharge after experiencing company, because I focus so intensely on people, topics, etc.

Mediation and non-meditation, one after the other.

I sit for half an hour every morning with the occasional visits to one of our local Zen centers. I thank my practice in getting me to my transition. Over the years of practice, I realized that I wasn't just a crossdresser and in fact I was a trans woman.

Have others experience the Sartori "flash" of insight or expansion of consciousness? 

My girlfriend is big into spirit guide sort of stuff and believes in it, mainly with animal spirits

Ive tried it before and its mostly relaxing and mostly what gets you to imagine images and worldspaces in your mind.

If any of the spiritual stuff was remotely true though mine I figured out through meditation would be a river otter, lol

Quote from: November Fox on October 29, 2016, 08:22:10 AM
I chant mantras from time to time. I don´t know if that´s what you were looking for.

I have meditated in the past (in silence) but it is impossible where I live because there are always sounds and distractions around. That´s why I changed my practice. The mantras help sometimes and sometimes they don´t - it depends - but they do help move energy around.

There's a meditation practice where you just focus in on different sounds in your environment (including your breathing) rather than using any kind of mantra.