Hey everyone! Welcome to Day 12 of 21DMC!

After 11 days of meditation, I believe meditation is now turning into a personal friend to you. Today, I'd like you to share if one difficulty (if any) that you experience with meditation - be it cultivating it as a habit (e.g., erratic schedule, being too tired by the end of the day to meditate, not having the privacy to meditate, etc) or the meditation process itself (not knowing the best posture, too much mental clutter, etc). Then, write down how you plan to overcome this difficulty/difficulties - such that you can proceed with your 21DMC plan seamlessly for the next 9 days.

Group Progress Chart

Here's an update on the group progress so far:



To be included in the chart every day, simply fall into the group meditation threads that are posted in this very forum daily.

Share Your Meditation Experience For Day 12!

1. Were you able to complete your meditation practice today? Why/Why not?
2. If yes, how did your meditation go? What meditation did you do? Where did you meditate? How long did you meditate for?
3. Anything you want to share about the meditation itself?
4. Anything you have learned for yourself today? (whether related or non-related to meditation)

Look forward to reading your updates!

"If you want to get something you have never gotten before, you've to do something you've never done before."
Personal Excellence - For people passionate about achieving excellence in life

My biggest difficulty used to be starting. The 21DMC has solved that. Next was sitting position, and the 21DMC combined with some tips from yoga teacher has solved that too. By removing these two challenges i have run out of excuses not to sit! Now my biggest challenge is to keep the focus on the breathing. Easy to congitate on a subject but to push everything out of the mind and watch the breath is very very difficult. When it happens, even if ony for a few minutes the effect is wonderful. The "anti-dote" i have is to focus on some part of me physically and try to use that as temporary measure to quieten the mind.

The biggest difficulty I have is finding the time! The answer to this is recognizing how a great a priority it is and putting something else on the back burner when possible.

Today I meditated for about 30 minutes. I was more motivated than usual to do so, because I had a coaching session with a client and wanted to make sure I was taken care of and in a good state of mind. It's becoming more of a theme in my life "that the therapist/healer must survive." I realize that I have to take care of and nurture myself in order to be able to help others.

My meditation consisted of a PART prayer, some breathing without any specific thought, and some visualization of my sacred space and consulting with my higher self and supportive people in my life.

I learned today that this practice is a HUGE force in my life. Still letting it sink in...

Life Coach and Manifesting Artist
http://www.CoachingWithChristina.com
http://www.BotanicBoutique.com

day 12 : i meditated for 30 minutes. i think day by day i am improving. although mini distractions are omnipresent, i am able to back my stillness of mind.....
Now the next step in this pavement of growth is by the lamp-post of involving the graces of the early morning meditation to the day to day events of life such as getting irritated over minor issues or letting go of the major ones if holding on to them only makes it worse......so am stepping up to make one and one, two....
wish me the best
and the same to you

Meditation is the acknowledgement with the inner self

A difficulty I find with meditation is keeping my mind steady and trying to be an objective observer rather than a subjective mover. To overcome this I am going focus on the sounds I hear and my breathing, this would help me to zoom out and not be so attached to my thoughts.

I read recently to help reach a meditation state some people use binaural sounds - has anyone any comments on this?

Meditated for 15minutes today.

Day 12: 40 minutes

Well, when lying down, the biggest difficulty is not falling asleep. I solve that by doing it in a sitting position.

In a sitting position, the biggest difficulty is to avoid slouching forward. Still not sure how to avoid that. I've tried adjusting my office chair but so far it hasn't helped much.

Have a great meditation exercise today, everyone.

God morning!

I did 30 min in the morning today.

A difficulty with the meditation could be that I want my progress to move on faster and I know I can't speed a process up. So maybe patience. Which I am working on every day since I'm doing the meditation. I have to be better at settling with the current situation and embrace what that have to give before moving on to the next. And also understand that next step will come when I'm ready for it.
I have been working a lot on this with myself and I'm much better at it now. But I notice that I sometimes still wants things to go faster.

Enjoy your day everyone

11 minutes today details in my journal:http://personalexcellence.co/forums/thread-andria-yiasmin-s-21dmc-journal

The Amazons: http://higherpotential.wordpress.com/

Today I won't meditate for an hour because of this assignment I have, so I meditated for 23 minutes

"Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you." -Eckhart Tolle

Day 12: 19 minutes

Today I did the Chakra Meditation from Meditation Oasis. I really liked this one and could feel the energy in each of the areas as I focused on them. That surprised me a little as I'm quite out of practice with this sort of directed energy work.

For me, the most difficult thing about meditation is just getting started. I am easily distracted into other things (reading blogs, facebook, etc). I find I can overcome this best by making meditation the first thing I do each day.

Today I did body awareness meditation from Meditation Oasis. In fact - I didn't really complete it - I stopped it near the end, because the leading voice felt very distracting and intrusive (every time I approached the same depth as I'm getting in my non guided meditations, the voice started again and kicked my mind to start processing verbal text again). Then I continued in complete silence afterwards for 5 -8 more minutes and after it did a short 5 minutes Silva method session.
That makes around 25 minutes all together for day 12, though very fragmented ones.
As for hardships - the most difficult is to get started. Once I'm sitting on the pillow, it's easy. So challenge helps a lot with this issue. Another is the thing, that I described above with guided meditations. Most of the time they just seem too fast or not at the right pace. The solution here, if I want to do something similar is - first listen to the track completely and then meditate in my own pace, following guidelines.

(10-19-2011 08:56 AM)zoom6628 Wrote:  My biggest difficulty used to be starting. The 21DMC has solved that. Next was sitting position, and the 21DMC combined with some tips from yoga teacher has solved that too. By removing these two challenges i have run out of excuses not to sit! Now my biggest challenge is to keep the focus on the breathing. Easy to congitate on a subject but to push everything out of the mind and watch the breath is very very difficult. When it happens, even if ony for a few minutes the effect is wonderful. The "anti-dote" i have is to focus on some part of me physically and try to use that as temporary measure to quieten the mind.

Forget to mention my Day12 was 15 minutes.

My biggest difficulty is in "fitting" meditation in to my erratic schedule. I work varying shifts, starting as early as 6 am or ending as late as 11 pm. My days off are not predictable and are mostly taken up with school work. So I've been trying to shoehorn meditation in when I can. But this hasn't been working so well and makes meditation feel more like an obligation than the good habit I want to develop.
I've decided to set aside time each evening, the time will vary depending on my work hours, but I will do it right before bedtime. That should provide some consistency and better help to develop the habit.

Day 12: 30 mins
Originally, my main difficulty was getting started -setting aside the time for meditation; with a hectic schedule, meditation was often the first thing that was given up. This problem was solved by having this challenge and the followups. Then , it was keeping still and focussing. With the daily practice, this is also no longer an issue. I can meditate for longer periods without any effort. The main difficulty now is having longer periods of meditation without being disturbed (my kids, family, dogs etc).

Day 12: Time 19 minutes
My greatest difficulty is that of time. When the house is quiet and others in the family are away that is when I have work to do. When my household chores are done and I have time that is when the rest of the family is around.
Sometimes the only free time I get is at night and by then I am tired.
I hope to work out a solution to this.

Just did 10 minutes of meditation during my lunch break. I went to the Atrium in our building which is really beautiful and sat down near the water fountain. I read for a bit from Creative Visualization and just breathed sending my dog loving healing energy. Very peaceful and relaxing.

Life Coach and Manifesting Artist
http://www.CoachingWithChristina.com
http://www.BotanicBoutique.com

I feel sleepy in the end and I fell asleep once. I will try to fix that by making time to meditate earlier in the day

Day 12.

Meditated about 10 mins in the morning. It went well, did not use any music, when I woke up, I just position myself in a comfortable position and closed my eyes.

One difficult thing in meditating for me is the focus, sometimes, I can get out of focus easily, and that is one thing I want to improve, and I know that I could not force myself, so I am taking one step at a time, if I feel like distracted, I will focus on my breathing and just go from there.

Today I meditated for 10 minutes in the morning and 20 at night, so that´s a total of 30 min

For me the hardest things about meditation are first, finding the appropiate time (some days I don´t get home until late at night and by that time I´m too tired to meditate). I solved it by meditating every morning.
The second hardest thing is dealing with all the thoughts that pop up. Without realizing it I find myself thinking about something that happened the last day or something I have to do. And when that happens I have to start over again.
And finally, my last problem is the meditating position. The most comfortable is lying down, but I usually fall asleep, so I sit, which is not as confi, but I guess I just have to get used to it.

Hey all!

Today I did 15 minutes of meditation for the challenge and one minute just like that in the middle of my facebooking and reading blogs. I also did some deep breathing in the car today but I didn't time that.

For me the biggest challenge is just doing it. I put it off from morning onwards (it's night time where I am right now). Every time I do it I feel awesome though so that helps! That one little minute today - made me look forward to later!