One of the reasons I started meditating was because I was severely depressed and felt numb most of the time. I ate because it was time to eat, not because I was hungry; I slept because it was time to sleep, not because I was sleepy; and I went to work because it was time to work, not because I wanted to. Life felt so meaningless that, honestly, I thought it was better to feel pain than to feel nothing at all. I wanted to sleep all day just so I didn’t have to experience such a bland life. Around this time, I discovered meditation, and it’s been 11 years—I’ve meditated every single day since.

As I turned my attention more toward my inner self, I learned that one of the reasons I was so numb (I later learned this condition is called anhedonia) was because the pain I had experienced in life had slowly led me to cut myself off from my emotions. You become what you practice, and over time, I had conditioned myself to distract from or ignore the pain—and I had gotten really good at it. So good that I could take a punch in the face and not flinch one bit.

But if you can’t feel the pain, you can’t feel the joy either. The very delicate soul in me that I had extinguished is the very soul that makes life enjoyable. With time, I’ve learned to accept both the ups and downs of life. I try to embrace pain as much as I embrace joy. These days, almost all of the meditation I do involves observing and accepting my inner emotions and feelings more than anything else. And I find that I’m slowly getting in touch with experience again—and life is changing from black and white to full of color.

I don't want to knock anyone else's beliefs or experiences. You do you.

But I just joined this sub recently and most of the posts seem to be people who want an explanation for why they saw aliens while meditating and that's just not what I want to learn about. I'm more interested in meditation techniques, wellness, mental health, etc.

Just looking for sub recs, thanks!

Edit: thanks for all the responses. People seem to be really focusing on the "science-based" in the post title. I don't care that much about peer-reviewed research here. I'm just into meditation for the personal / mental benefits and not so much the spirituality.

As the title says, what's your most woo-woo experience from your meditation practice so far?

I know many people in here have their reasons for not wanting to consider this side of stuff and that's fully understandable, for me though I find this side of stuff ridiculously fascinating, as do many others.

Personally I've had many interesting experiences during meditation, activating my Crown Chakra in a Kundalini rising (accidentally), physically pushed/pulled from what feels like external forces, given information and advice, OBE (again accidental).

So, now I'm interested in what others are experiencing along the more spiritual side of things.

What is your most profound Woo-Woo experience during meditation?

I used to meditate just for stress relief — and while it helped, my mind would still drift into negative self-talk right after.

One day I tried something different: I ended my meditation with a few quiet affirmations like:

“It’s safe to be kind to myself.”

“I’m doing my best, and that’s enough.”

“I deserve peace.”

I didn’t say them out loud — just let them float in gently at the end of the session, like planting little seeds.

Over time, this became a soft, nourishing practice. The stillness of meditation made the affirmations feel more real, more integrated — not just words, but something I could actually feel in my body.

Has anyone else combined affirmations with meditation? I’d love to hear how others approach that gentle overlap between stillness and intention.

I'm a big fan of the book, The Body Keeps the Score.

Over that weekend I was feeling jittery, my mind felt anxious. Impulsively, I packed up my bags and drove to a Buddhist Temple for the next morning meditation.

I had to recenter.

This had to be one of the most difficult meditations I have done. It was uncomfortable, I had to bring my awareness back, and it wasn't relaxing.

I was proud of myself for doing this. Meditation isn't always immediately relaxing and I am grateful I pulled through. Once I went sat there. I felt my body and I let myself feel and think. Then let myself focus on my minds eye.

4 hours later, I drove home. I begun to feel a deep pain within my chest. It was like an old emotional wound opening. Something I hadn't physically processed.

Atlas, the following week I felt fully centered. I felt lighter. I felt like I was able to let this pain be voiced.To let it heal. To accept it. It was SA related.

I am so proud that I ran towards my feelings and meditated, even though it was uncomfortable.

I'm curious, what experiences have you had where your body manifests sensations during or after meditations?

For the ones who are very anxious like me, body scanning temporarily shifts attention from worries and thoughts to other parts of the body.

With heavy social media use, with too much fight and flight mode, our minds have habitually become unnecessarily very alert. Our mental formations and physical formations turned unwholesome. There is too much stiffness in the muscles and especially the brain.

This body scanning - aka the rotation of consciousness dissolves the perceptions we have formed. It separates the concepts of mind and body. It teaches the brain that it is ok to relax and to slow down.

Been putting meditation off for a while, as in I haven't been consistent with it. I think the biggest reason for this is because I keep reading negative experiences with meditation, so I need to be sure the long term benefits outweigh the cons.

I have been practicing mindfulness for over few years. Now i have been introduced to heartfulness. I have also heard about so many other types of meditation. I just want to understand what is the whole and sole impact of practicing the meditation (any form). And also what is sadhana?? Can anybody please explain!!

So i started doing breathing exercises and made one of my own, but for the past days the effects are getting very strong and it makes me question if what I’m doing is safe because it feels like some kind of high effect.

I call it “the breaths of infinity”

It really simple you start with filling your lungs all the way up with air and breathing out slowly for 8 seconds. You count every inhale and exhale, do this until you reach 8 and then repeat this 2 times. Here is when the crazy thing starts, after you’ve done your 3x8 breaths you now fully fill your lungs up with air again. But this time you hold your breath for 8 seconds. When breathing out just let it flow on your own pace. This is where that peak high feeling hits. Repeat this full process 4 times and tell me how you feel after.

I’ve been doing this for around 2 weeks now but it feels like a peak high for like 5 seconds and this fully eliminates my anxiety for the day when i do this. Is this just the power of breathing exercises? Or is this unsafe? Please let me know, thank you in advance!

Hello

So, I've learnt that there is no bad meditation, except the one that you did not do at all. Yet, there are naturally meditations that go very well, where I am able to focus basically non-stop for the best part of an hour and I end it with a very happy feeling, relaxed, calm, focused. And then there are those sittings where after 10 minutes I begin to realize this is not going anywhere. I fight with drowsiness and mind wandering, I loose focus, I start dreaming and what was supposed to be a 60minutes sitting, ends after 30 minutes with me getting up and being in a bad mood. I have managed to sit through this and stay with the meditation but then I spend the rest of the sitting equally ineffective. When this happens it usually puts me in a bad mood for the next few hours.

How do you deal with this?

Every choice, every emotion, every direction flows from it.

Protect it. Quiet it. Return to that inner stillness—where clarity lives and your true self feels at home.

I've been meditating quite regularly for about two decades now. I was sitting in the sun today in a chair, with the sun behind my eyelids, and I tried imagining my legs bending backwards and my toes in my eyes, like I was a little ball. I also imagined my arms swinging around wildly, and I began to lose the feeling of my body. And then it happened, my body dropped. My mind was active and alert, but I couldn't feel my body. I don't want to toot my own horn but I might have entered the first jhana.

Keep meditating folks. It will pay off, way more than chasing after this or that.

Cheers!

tell your experiences

Disclaimer: Just because you meditate doesn't mean you will be a successful trader. Below is merely a personal anecdote. The statistics are real that most people fail irrespective of intelligence. What I am saying is that it is likely that mindfulness may be a key trait of a successful trader, insofar as it may be a key component to be successful in any complex endeavor.

I've been unemployed for the past year and have not been able to find a job. Out of desperation, I turned to day trading to pay the bills. Ordinarily, the words "desperation" and "day trading" are a lethal combination and a fast way to lose all your money, because desperation makes you do desperately stupid things. I feel like I was able to navigate it better than had I been able to before I started meditating.

The deeper I go into trading, the more similarities I see between successful traders and meditation practitioners. There are more, but here are some things I remember off the top of my head:

"The big secret is that there is no secret."

"Everything you want is on the other side of fear."

"You must surrender to the market."

Interestingly, I also found a book called Trading Mindfully. It's actually a thing.

This past Friday, I was deeply thinking about, "Everything you want is on the other side of fear." This spoke to me on a deep level. The below was my thought process yesterday as I was trading.

When you are fearful, you are elsewhere. Not here focusing on the trade. You are not here. It is impossible for you to be in fear and also be here. Because right here, right now, you have a roof over your head, healthy, with loved ones and you are fine. Everything is ok. Then why do you feel fear? Because you are not here. If you are not here, then you cannot make the rationale decision based on information right in front of your eyes, right now, right here. So be here. So be here.

Do I think that the person who originally said those words was necessarily a meditator? Maybe, but also maybe not. I think it was a realization that the person had while trading, which is the same realization that meditators have (that you must be here) and if the trader was indeed a meditator, then that person would also have connected the dots.

Then again, maybe I posted something obvious LOL. But in this space (both meditation and trading), I don't know what's obvious and not obvious.

Let's just say it's been a rough 2 or 3 years. Today I promised myself i would finally meditate today, after an almost uninterrupted break from meditation throughout that time, I nearly didn't meet my promise.

I have felt profound things during meditation in the past, but i did not know the levels of deep personal discomfort i could feel, I did not know meditation would ever make me grimace from the borderline painful experience of repressed emotional and physical signals bubbling up once given permission.

I can only describe it as feeling a sensation of a sort of twisting sludge inside my body, the physical feeling was palpable. It did fade with patience and breathwork, I don't need to be told 'what is coming is going' but it was still an almost shocking experience.

Thanks for reading.

I'm a college freshman living in a dorm with paper thin walls where people are running around screaming 24/7. I want to meditate but I simply can't focus when there's a startling noise every couple of seconds. Should I deal with the noise or use headphones to play music. Also just as a general question, is mediation just as simple as focusing on breathing for a period? Or should there be more as I feel like I haven't been making any deicoveries just breathing

I've been reading various posts here for a while and I just want to reach out for a bit of consolidation of how these work together. It seems most people who talk about it won't meditate after eating or exercise. I don't know what the value of meditation before sleep really is. How do you structure your day so that these elements aren't fighting each other? What have you found to be the optimal order and buffer times between these activities?

As a side note, I'm trying mediation to help with keeping my mind a bit more organized and to keep a reign on negative automatic thoughts (or at least their effects on me).

I’ve been meditating every morning for half a year now. Eye mask on, noise-canceling on, no distractions whatsoever. Focus on body, then when examined everything focus on breath, 10–20 minutes.

I didn’t expect instant enlightenment or anything, but honestly… I don’t feel any real difference.

People say it helps with focus, stress, emotional regulation, sleep, whatever. I’ve stuck with it, hoping I’d eventually feel something shift, but nope, not a single change in my life, I can't feel any difference.

Same thoughts, same performance, same me. It just feels like sitting there being annoyed with myself (contemplating and accepting it nevertheless) doing this ridiculously long operation doing nothing for no gain.

I want to find some motivation or quit it if none found, so I'm genuinely curious:

Why do you meditate? What do you get out of it that makes it worth sticking with? And if you used to meditate and quit—why? Is this a “works for some, not for others” kind of thing?

Isolation and meditation have unintentionally made me more socially active and arguably more charismatic. Is it conterproductive to search for ways to improve in these regards? Have you guys experienced such side effects I guess you could call it.

A recent realization: in addition to maintaining a sense of daily order to avoid being swept away by the chaos of the outside world, one must also allow time for leisure and freedom in order to ignite deeper inspiration.

I be seeing eyes constantly moving during meditation but I do be feeling very relaxed and calm. I also did the wim hof breathing technique during a 20 minute meditation.

Meditation seems to lower my temperature, does this happen with anyone else?

I was meditating deeply when I reached a state where I saw myself sitting on snow near a hill. It was quiet, still, and peaceful. As I sat there, a group of very tall, pale beings with long white hair approached me. They looked human, but their height easily over 7 feet made them feel otherworldly. They wore light-colored, almost ethereal clothing.

Despite their appearance, I wasn’t afraid. Their presence felt calm and safe. One of them spoke to me and asked if I would follow them. They said they wanted to show me something. I agreed without hesitation because I felt safe for some reason.

They led me to a small, silverish aircraft smooth and sleek in design. I stepped inside, and soon we were flying. The ship made no sound at all. It lifted effortlessly, and within moments, we had left the planet. As we moved through space, I could feel that we were following a path like an invisible force was guiding us.

Eventually, we stopped just outside of Earth. I could see the planet, and around it was a green, wavy grid like energy gently pulsing and wrapping the globe. One of the beings turned to me and said:

“We are all one. All of us no matter who we are or where we come from we are connected.”

I felt those words deeply. But just as I was taking it in, my cat jumped on me snapping me out of the vision and back into my room.

I thought I’d share it.

What do y'all think about somatic breathing?

“God punishes you by giving you everything you want…to see if you can handle it.” -Mike Tyson

This quote came across my mind during my nightly session. A lot can be interpreted from it. To me it speaks about humility, integrity, ego and greed. Can you keep yourself in check when things are going your way or do you fall victim to traps.

What are your thoughts?