Do you pray or meditate

I pray everyday, some at set times like upon waking, before eating and before going to bed and others anytime during the day, when I really need to connect with God, ask a question, cry out for help or thank Him so ya...

 

Every day. No set time. No set length of time. Just letting it flow.

 

I pray everyday. I do it before I go to bed and whenever I feel like I need to talk to God by thanking Him and for help whenever I feel like I don't have anybody.

 

Sometimes I pray. I don't meditate though.

 

I meditate to help ease mental health issues. I do it more at times when my anxiety levels too high and I am struggling to cope. During better spells I do it much less frequently.

 

I meditate after I have had panic attacks. It helps me to calm down and grounds me so it helps me from having more later. I'm an atheist, but I have my own set of practises that I use when I meditate.

 

I never pray and used to mediate. I had found a trial of a really good mediation app, but it's too expensive and I haven't found another way to mediate that I enjoy. So I haven't mediated in a long time, but would probably help me.

 

I'm not religious anymore, and I never could get into meditating.
However, I do like to sometimes sit in nature or listen to music and just let it move me. Stop thinking about anything, just be consumed by the beauty of nature or music.
This is as close I get to doing anything like that.

 

Yep helpful in lonely times...

 

I pray everyday. In the morning I say some hymns and make sweetened water as an offering to the Gods.
And I say a pray of thanks for blessing me with a nice and healthy day.

 

I meditate, albeit not as often as I used to--frankly I think my life is just less chaotic than it used to be.

I actually once spent a month in a Tibetan monastery in Bodhgaya taking a vipassana meditation course. It was really interesting. Initially I had a bit of a hard time because one of my knees would hurt quite badly even when I sat in half lotus which made it difficult to maintain focus. One of the monks suggested that rather than focusing on my breathing I should focus on the pain, try to feel nothing but the pain, think about nothing but the pain. I wasn't quite sure how all that would go down but I gave it a shot and, just like he said it would, my mind wanted so desperately to wander, to not maintain focus, that the pain went away. It was amazing. We did walking meditations and as the course went on we did multiple progressively longer seated meditations each day. It was strange because it felt like such hard work, corralling your mind and continually drawing it back but apparently on some level it was deeply restful--by the end of the course most of us had pretty much stopped sleeping entirely.

It was a really amazing experience.

 

Wow that sounds amazing especially the not needing sleep part ...

 

I don't pray because I don't believe in a god, but I do meditate sometimes. It definitely helps to calm myself down because I'm easily stressed out haha.

 

I've tried them both, especially praying when I was a child

Praying/meditating never worked for me

Plus there are much more fun ways to relax or reach a gnostic state

Of course you should do pretty much whatever works for you

 

I meditate. I don't really believe in a singular god entity.

 

I do believe in the power of intercessory prayer so sometimes I pray but to what, I don't know, despite being a "spiritual seeker" for the better part of my adult life (could be the journey is more important than the destination, as they say). I think I have a deep desire to believe in something but so far have not been able to maintain a consistent understanding of what/who or how that entity might work. I definitely don't believe in an "anthropomorphic" (human-like) god.

I try to do a non-intensive meditation every day for five minutes which helps with focusing/concentrating.

I have a small amount of Zen training as well as experience with other meditation forms and I don't recommend Zen-style or vipassana (intensive inward-focused) meditation to anyone as it can trigger mental illness in susceptible individuals and crisis in people who've experienced trauma.

Meditation is often billed as a "route to happiness". It's not. It's a route to reality and sometimes reality is deeply ugly and painful.

 

I pray, but I don't do it as much as I should.

 

I've done both a couple times before. I kind of wish I meditated more.