How I meditate

I found the most benefit in the meditation where you do
1. body relaxing for about 5 min’s,
2. then you concentrate on your breathing for 5 min’s
3. then you imagine any thoughts that come into your mind as a little cloud and follow it to its root, you do that for as long as you want (I recorded one that I had guided online, I used it for the local group but I lost it when my harddrive died).

Before you start make sure you have good posture; you don’t have to have your legs crossed, but I find that position appealing with a pillow, if I don’t have a pillow then I sit in a chair because it blocks my circulation, Buddha had his right hand cupped in his left hand with his thumbs touching to form a bridge, Make sure your back is straight but not tight or ridged, head only slightly forward.

1. So what you do is go to the major areas from your head to your toe (Your inner dialogue should sound something like this: "Concentrate on your face, relax your face, release the tension in the muscles around your cheeks, then with each breath you feel your neck becoming more relaxed, with each exhale your shoulders are more relaxed" do that till you get to your toes, then move on to the next section).
2. Here you focus on the physical pressure of the air going in and out of your nose, you don’t want to think about breathing, you want your body to control it unconsciously and you just focus on the slight rubbing of air in your nostrils. Sometimes a thought will pop in (this is hard for most beginners) and as soon as you can, gently push the thought away and resume focusing on the air.
3. Once your brain pallet is "clean" (that’s what I like to call it, it’s not being constantly barraged by everything) you’ll notice fewer thoughts will float in, at this point I’ll grab one (preferably a happy one) and then follow why I thought about that, if another thought comes in, I will push it away and regain focus on the original thought.

I usually go through 1-3 and then cycle 2-3 for a while, when I’m stressed, I’ll just do 1 and then stay on 2 for as long as I can, not even attempting 3.