Meditation

Thanks... need more of this in my life. Lets hope this year is a good one

Does anyone here use binaural beats for sleep? I tried them recently for sleep relaxation. The sound is a bit jarring at first but I find they zone you out and shut the chitter chatter up in the same way that mindfulness does. Important thing for me was I noticed they’re very effective at drowning out background noise (i.e. my shithead neighbours) even at a low volume.

Basic explanation:

https://youtu.be/zvTYxjpP6H4

Beginner’s version:

https://youtu.be/jUpr0aSYu6A

That guy has uploaded a whole load of different length sessions and some 1.5hr, 1hr and 30min cycles that you can mix and match to make up to however long you want.

Didn't work for me. What does work amazingly well is white noise. An old analogue portable radio tuned out. We were using it for our baby then I carried on as I work shifts. It helps drown out noise but also puts me into a really deep nice sleep. Took me a week or so to get into it.

I didn’t initially get on with white noise as I found it a bit ‘loud’, if that makes sense. But I’m not ruling it out, I’ve been experimenting and there are all sorts of variations of white noise to try on YouTube.

Suffering from acute Tinnitus 24/7 pink noise is best for me. There are some fairly decent apps. I've tried the binaural beats videos for things like 20 min power nap. Found they work quite well.

https://youtu.be/Ujn4vlj6OF8

Yes makes perfect sense. Now I am used to it I can have it on very loud and it sends me straight to sleep. (And also blocks out noisy neighbours wtc) Chromadoze is a decent free app where you can try different variants.

Is Headspace the best app for getting in to meditation? Or are there free resources that others can recommend for getting started with regular meditation?

Waking up, by Sam Harris, is really really good. There’s a free trial, and it used to be that if you weren’t able to pay you could drop him a line and they’d give you a freebie subscription.

are there free resources that others can recommend for getting started with regular meditation?

There is an excellent free implementation of Jon Kabat-Zinn's 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course that includes guided meditations based on insight meditation at Palouse Mindfulness:
https://palousemindfulness.com

(edit: I just noticed that @cookiemonster also recommended this course earlier in the thread).

Great, thanks both, I'll look into those

Came back a few weeks ago, from a week here:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/travel/article/2024/jul/25/mindfulness-retreat-devon-sharpham-estate

Can not recommend it highly enough, has been an incredible experience for me