You always suggest meditation but I never did it and I’m not entirely sure where to even start. Any suggestions, sites, guides/tutorials, anything? Most of what I found is just “go, meditate” and I really don’t grasp how.

seriousotherkin:

I’ve explained basic meditation before, but in the context of talking to individual people about their own journey and introspection, so what I’m gonna do now is just walk you through the basics of meditation. 

Meditation is not sitting and thinking about things, that’s contemplation. 

Meditation and reaching the meditative state revolves primarily about the ability to control and quiet the mind. Being able to quiet the mind and control it allows you to direct it at a specific thing, a specific experience, and this is an incredibly valuable tool. 

Meditation is useful to a lot of people, for a lot of reasons, and I’d recommend it to anyone, regardless of whether they’re otherkin or not. 

That being said, meditation comes in more than one form.
What I’ll teach you I learned from a Buddhist.  

I use basic meditation as a part of gathering myself in preparation for things that are emotionally draining, that are physically strenuous, or otherwise demanding or difficult. 
It allows me to approach the task at hand in a more calm and controlled manner. Whether it’s a difficult phone call or ritual magic or anything spanning the great divide between the two or more. 

I also use basic meditation for the wind-down afterwards. For it’s calming and relaxing effect. As a part of grounding out pent up energy or emotion. As a part of letting go of stress. As a part of calming my mind so that I can sleep. 

And I use meditation as it’s own thing. 
A few minutes here and there throughout the day to keep the ability up, to keep the familiarity and ease, to catch a little rest, to make my life a little easier even.

It’s a fantastic tool. 

It’s a learned skill however so any and all instructions that suggest you go meditate for an hour without pointing out that it’ll take several days, even months, to train your mind to the point where you can maintain an hours worth of a meditative state, is failing to teach you the basics. 

The easiest way to reach a meditative state is to draw all of your attention, all of that which is to experience a thing, to a single thing. To focus all of your attention on a singular thing. 

Some people use a sound, some people use an object, but the most common focus is breath.

You can’t leave your breath at home, or forget it somewhere, it is always with you because wherever you go, there you are. 
You can easily expand upon breath to include more of your body, and beyond that, more of you self.

If you have your cellphone with you, you can set a timer that pings when it’s time to pull yourself out of a meditative state, and there are apps that help you keep track of your progress of learning/training, but this is in no way necessary. You might even find that apps have too constricting a pattern for progressing that do not align with your natural progression as you practice the skill. 

Okay so.

How do you actually meditate then, using your breath as focus?

1. Get comfortable, but preferably sitting up, you shouldn’t fall asleep during meditation. You can meditate to prepare for sleep, but you shouldn’t fall asleep while meditating. I suggest closing your eyes, excluding that sense from the equation makes the meditation simpler, and resting your hands on your lap, so that you can relax your arms fully. 

2. Take a few breaths where you inhale fully, filling your lungs as much as can, then consciously breathe out fully. Just one or two, just to get the impulse to control your breath over and done with. Then release control, allow your body to set it’s own breathing rate. 

3. Feel yourself breathe. This is what will translate to a meditative state. 
Fill your mind with your breath. 
Feel your body expand as you inhale. 
Feel your body shrink down as you exhale. 
Feel the air rush through your nostrils and/or mouth, whichever feels most natural. 
Feel the cooling of the skin as you inhale.
Feel the warming of the skin as you exhale. 
Feel the skin of your body travel over your ribs in rhythm with your breath. 
Feel the fabric of your clothes travel over your skin in rhythm with your breath. 
Feel every tiny aspect of your breath as your body breathes and fill your mind with this experience. 

4. Thoughts will come to you. This is normal. 
Do not force them away, do not fight your own mind. 
Acknowledge them, but let them go. 
A common approach to these thoughts is to tell yourself, mentally, “Not right now, I will deal with this later, after, when we’re done with our meditation for today.” and then to let go of the thought and bring your mind back to your breath. 

5. It will be difficult to hold onto the experience of fully experiencing your own breath to begin with. It will even be difficult to gather all these sensations up and fill your mind with them at all. 
This is normal. 
Our minds need to learn the skill if we want to be able to do it. 
We need to train the skill if we want to be able to do it reliably and/or for longer than a moment at a time. 

6. Because of 4 and 5, do not plan to go for an hour on the first go, this is impossible. 
Don’t even plan for 20 minutes. 
Start small. 3-5 minutes for the first few days. 
When 3-5 minutes comes easily enough, expand to 5-10 minutes. 
From there the 10-15 minutes. 
From there to 15-30. 
You don’t need to use those exact increments, adding one minute at a time is fine. Pace yourself, give yourself time to learn, this shouldn’t feel forced and you shouldn’t resent meditation as a boring practice. 

7. When you’re ready, you can expand the experience to include your heartbeat and more. 
How your heart beats in your chest. 
How the pulse can be felt throughout your body, from the subtle sound it makes in your ears, to the pulse in the tips of your very fingers and toes. 
The feel of gravity, your own weight pulling your body down into it’s seat.
The feel of your skin, the whole of your body, your entire physical self. 
During this part you may become acutely aware of every ache and pain in your physical form and holding onto the sensation without shifting around, breaking your concentration, might be very difficult, especially if you, like me, are dealing with chronic pain problems. This is normal.
To get through this issue, to overcome and maintain concentration through this stage can be very difficult and you might actually end up meditating for shorter periods of time at a time for a while as you learn to deal with this. It’s okay, it’s normal, don’t stress, it gets easier with practice. 

8.When you’ve trained your body and mind to accept meditation as a part of your routine, as a thing that you do, then, when you’re ready, you can start directing your focus deeper inwards and reach for subtler sensations and thoughts, things that belong to the subconscious. 
You can even start constructing thing to experience. 
This is what guided meditations are often used for, telling you what you should imagine and construct for the sake of experiencing. 
This is highly personal and what you prefer, or what you choose, is yours. 
It’s during this stage where I become more acutely aware of the mismatch between my physical body and who and what I am. 
It’s during this stage where I am able to regress and dig up memories, both recent and older. 
It’s during this stage where I previously constructed a mental box around myself as a part of overcoming or learning to control my own claustrophobia. 
What you find can be very individual. 
What happens, what you do, what you find, is quite important to write down, to have as notes, as logs, for later comparisons to other internal things, as well as external things. 

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How fast you progress from one step to the next can depend on how you feel from one day to the next.
How fast you learn or train and gain in ability is individual. 

I have been working with meditation in my toolbox for almost 20 years and I have days where I just struggle to reach a meditative state at all. 

I have mental disorders that make the practice sometimes very challenging. Primarily anxiety range issues, ADD, and mood disorders can make this difficult, but it’s not impossible and it’s worth doing even if only for a minute if you’re able to at all.