I'm trying to go to sleep so I'll keep this short, but HOW do you actually learn to meditate? I hear all this talk of it in left wing spaces, I know Breht from RevLeft is biiiig on it and some other non leftists I follow also advocate for it as a method of consciousness exploration so I've been thinking I should start doing something like it.
Are there good resources out there for this that aren't neolib corporate happiness woo? I've been freaking the fuck out lately about how we all gonn' die and climate change and The Fash (which must be bashed, or so I've been told) and I gotta try....something to get me to chill the fuck out. I may genuinely start a psychiatric medication soon but I'm really trying to get my life back on the rails, I really found a lot of the last two years traumatic for a variety of reasons so I'm trying to integrate additional healthy habits as well as getting back onto old ones that fell off
Also bonus points for lectures/podcasts on Eastern philosophy in general
Focus on your breathing. Breath in, feel it, breath out. Just get used to breathing. Now do this with thoughts. Dont think, just let your mind have thoughts. Let them come, let them linger, let them go. Focus on your breathing. Let your breath be your anchor and let your mind stray as it will, coming back to your breath as you find it holding onto thoughts, and just getting used to centring your breath and acknowledging your thoughts and letting go of them in kind.
That's as far as ive got with meditation tbh. For sleep I kinda 'scan' my body head to toe, slowly relaxing each area as the scan goes down. Was explained to me as a bucket with a hole in it, with water/stress flowing out the hole.