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Comment by faizshah | Hacker News Reader

I have tried to get started on meditation/mindfulness several times but I have never been able to stick with it. Any suggestions on a good way of getting started with it?

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Assuming you're not making a joke regarding procrastination --- a way that worked for me was to take a mindfulness class that met regularly for a few months. The contents of the class was largely meaningless to me, but having it on my schedule every week and then attending the class, saying hello to the instructor and then spending at least 45minutes meditating helped get me started.

Good luck.

For me the headspace app worked wonders. It’s really only ten minutes a day to get started. Ten minutes, a comfortable rest and no interruptions. You don’t need more.

You can always go to other programs later.

Headspace app has worked well for me too. I have been using it for more than 3 months, meditating for 20 mins every day and I feel calmer throughout the day.

At the start of this year, I got a subscription. I got through it for a few months and then stopped using it again.

Now I procrastinate picking it up again.

Headspace has been great for me as well. It has helped me in quite a few ways, including helping to reduce anxiety.

This, headspace app should be a good beginner starting point.

I can thoroughly recommended the book "The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness", by John Yates.

Seconded!

Routines are powerful automatic habit-makers and slice through the cognitive dissonance of starting/continuing an uncomfortable activity e.g. exercising first thing in the morning instead of being able to convince yourself you're too tired to do it after work from having dreaded it all day.

Try doing it first thing in the morning so it becomes automatic and you experience some benefits from it that will then naturally remind you to keep it up cause it's positively benefiting your life (positive feedback loop).

For me it's the self-awareness/calmness to handle any tough situation and quiet my brain's anxiety/impulsive thinking that keeps me practicing mindfulness/mediation daily, wish you luck!

See if there's a Shambhala centre (https://shambhala.org/) or another place that has beginners group meditation sessions near you.

The sessions will likely be longer than what you’re used to. But there's less chances for you to bail out and you might grow to have a deeper appreciation for it so you can stick with it.

10 minutes a day is all you really need to get started. There is basically no way one can reasonably convince themselves that they don’t have 10 minutes to spare per day.

Well, procrastination can be pretty irrational, especially when combined with strong emotions.

That’s included in what I said. Knowing that the “I don’t have the time” narrative is nonsense can help with motivation.

I absolutely love Sam Harris’ “waking up” app.

I haven’t been perfect with it, but I have stuck with it more than anything else I’ve tried to date.

I've used several meditation apps including Headspace, Calm and Ten Percent Happier and found Harris' Waking Up to be by far the best. It separates itself from the others in that it speaks to the epistemological question of what it means to be a person.

Meditation is much more than simply clearing your mind or practicing letting go of your thoughts, although those are certainly benefits. It's about completely re-orienting yourself with respect to your relationship with the world and, most importantly, other people.

This is the only meditation all I've been able to reasonably stick to using.

I have done sessions on Focusmate [0] every day for about 3 weeks so far. I personally do other work, but a lot of people I match with use the sessions to meditate. I've found it to be a surprisingly effective anti-procrastination tool.

[0] - https://www.focusmate.com

The Waking Up app from Sam Harris is quite good: https://wakingup.com/

I've been struggling to do this for years. Previously, the longest I ever made it was 15 days with the Insight Timer app. Its shows you how many days in a row you did and it's very encouraging.

What actually got me to do it for longer, and without any willpower, was pirating Sam Harris' Waking Up course.

This is because I already had the muscle memory for going through audiobooks and podcasts on my phone, so I'd just open up VLC every night and instead of a book I'd listen to a guided mindfulness meditation. I did 150 days in a row.

The course is 50 days and I just started over when I was done because I liked it so much.

If I actually got his app, I don't think I would have been as successful, I think it was really the muscle memory in my thumb that opens VLC every evening to listen to some relaxing audio that got me through it.

The course itself is highly recommended: I've been meditating for years but with different methods. With Sam's guidance I made more progress in a few weeks than I've made in years.

Also worth mentioning, if you can't afford it, you can email him and he'll let you have it for free.

Transcendental Meditation works well for me

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