Doghead's Cosmic Bar

I would describe qigong as meditative movement, not as meditation, rather like the taiji form itself. For meditation, there are some qigong-like exercises, but as you said, you have to let go of them eventually or you remain too focused on the body. I think of them as "primers". *shrugs*

I took a "yoga chi kung" class at a community center a while back. It was interesting and I never went to sleep but I think I learned everything I could from that teacher. When he started teaching us falun dafa he learned off a video tape, I felt it was time to move on.

Lama Palden, who teaches the Yantra class, uses meditation at the begining and end of each class, which encourages "moving meditation" during the yoga. Lama Palden seems to be both more subtle and more powerful that my yoga chi kung instructor was, but then you probably learn more studying under the Dalai Lama and yantra masters than you do on a video tape. I will go back to Yantra when my schedule allows it.

Thanks for the advice Ulrike. I will have to go to both places and see what a class looks like. Maybe it will be a good change.

I may be off here but bev, If you are looking for more of an easy relaxation technique, i think i might have an answer.

I wish i knew the name of it, but i think its just a type of physical theropy where you lay down, relax and focus on muscles while listening to an auido tape instructions.

Its basic contract and relax exorcises that are quite effective.

I think you are going for something more indepth, but i thought i would just plugin another option.

Jazake- actually a lot of "still" meditation forms begin with exactly the process you are refering to. Its a method that makes one become so fully aware of the body that one can control it enough to completely relax it. Complete relaxation is the gateway to 'forgeting' the body which allows for higher states to be reached.

Odd that through focus is found forgeting...

As I see it, the point of meditating on specific aspects of the self as opposed to specific aspects of the rest of the Universe is to recognize that they are fundamentally equivocal - transitive/intransitive is an arbitrary (and ultimately illusory) distinction.
You are not breathing any more than you are breathed. You are not moving any more than you are moved. You are not thinking any more than you are thought.
So of course the process is exactly equivalent to meditating on aspects of the universe that we don't traditionally consider parts of our selves. You are not separated from the universe any more than you are separating yourself from it.

And, of course, I am not semanticizing any more than I am semanticized

(if anyone sees this while I am still on could you try to open a chat w/ me, I think my browser might be blocking- thx)

Psimagus-
absolutely, thus the "all" in the oft refrained "all is one". It is a deeply entrenched illusion that, due to an isolated singlular perspective, we believe the universe is somehow happening around or to us instead of seeing the process as indivisible from us- like a color blending/drift in a brushstroke. Perhaps I have had too much body-awareness throughout my life to the effect that meditation on the body is ineffectual if not almost a detriment.

thank you whoever just did that- it was blocking (I saw a flash)

Fixed now

Perhaps I have had too much body-awareness

Space and body are harder than time and mind, for me too at least. I find it much harder to stop grasping at the spatial illusion of location and the body's relation to it than temporal duration and mind. They're both equally self-referential, but they sneak up on you differently.
I can accept it intellectually, but I can't cast off the form as easily as I can the content. Perhaps that's because it seems so much less important - nature or technology will do it for me in a few decades at most, after all.

Boredom's easy, but as they say - pain in the knees is the taste of zazen

There are many forms of meditation. It can raise awareness of many things or free you from thought all together. According to http://www.cancer.org/docroot/ETO/content/ETO_5_3X_Meditation.asp?sitearea=ETO “Meditation is a mind-body process that uses concentration or reflection to relax the body and calm the mind.” This is probably the most common definition in our culture. I'm not saying any one here is wrong, it's just that there are so many teachings and traditions the words can get in the way.

Thanks for the suggestion, Jazak. You mentioned a good basic technique, though personally I find tapes to be annoying so I don’t use them. There are interesting techniques involving raising awareness of energy centers in you body, and self healing techniques such as visualizing different colored light into various parts of you body. I have tried these and found them to be worth experienceing, even though I never left my body or became enlightened.

Some people claim meditatin has health benefits here in the world as we think it is. There was a study (the source of which I forget) that had cancer patients who visualize their bodies healing (in addition to medical treatment) that seemed to show group improvement compared to a control group, but I understand recent studies show that it is easier to demonstrate meditation's effect on reducing anxiety and stress than on long term survival rates of cancer patients. There are also some interesting uses of virtual environments being tested (see http://www.smpp.northwestern.edu/vepo/) that may mimic some meditative experiences. Why sit around visualizing a blue light when you can go into a CAVE and see a blue light, and a mandala and a host of angels singing? Fortunatelly, I do not have cancer or any dread disease so the mind-body exploration is more a matter of personal growth and cultivating health for me.

I've done most of my meditation as a form of yoga, so I’ve had a balance of sitting meditations, moving meditations and meditations within various asanas (poses). I am at a point where I feel I should be doing more moving. Someday I would like to do something like the yoga in this video http://blogs.yogajournal.com/video/30/vid_play_content.html but I doubt I’ll ever get to be that good. Meanwhile, I’ll look at martial arts because it seems like a good way to build on my practice.

Hope you're going somewhere nice - holiday, is it? Don't hurry back - we'll learn to live with our disappointment somehow.

Bev: I came at it from the other side, mainly, as I started with the martial arts. I didn't get deeply into the meditative aspects until this summer, when I went to a camp where the practice was to spend half an hour (6:30 - 7: 00 am) in seated meditation. I had done some meditative exercises before, but I found the quiet, non-doing meditation at camp more beneficial overall. I still like the energy exercises, but they've become a much smaller part of my practice lately.

Meditation works very well as a technique to control chronic pain. I would say that constitutes a major physical benefit.