I managed to get a minor meditation injury doing this task. (Left wrist, from holding my hand in an upward receptive posture for too long.)

Originally, I was having trouble figuring out how to be sure that I'd document myself every 30 minutes without watching a clock. By hooking up to some continuous physiological sensors, I figured there'd be automatic documentation of the entire time period. (Interestingly, these sensors, for pulse/heart rate variability and galvanic skin response, are both components of a polygraph test.)

Meditation has always sounded interesting, but I had never tried it before. This task seemed like a great chance to see how well I could do at making my monkey mind settle down. I have concluded that for a novice, it is not very effective to try and meditate for a five hour stretch. I tried to concentrate on circular breathing and clear my mind, but the physiological data clearly shows that I was doing better during hour 1 than hour 5. In addition to having trouble keeping my mind in the moment, I was also having trouble just sitting still on the floor for so long. I actually had to get up about once an hour just to stretch. (It just seemed like one should meditate while sitting on the floor rather than a chair.)

In any case, my intrusive thoughts ran to a few main topics. In order of time share, these were: SF0, work, Harry Potter, friends/social events, and food. In general, when I lost the moment, I tended to think more about the future than the past. I started at noon and watched the light change from bright and sunny to nearly dark. I noticed traffic noise from cars and passing planes. I didn't achieve enlightenment---guess to get there, you probably have to meditate more than once.

For the curious, the physiological sensors are from a (really unusual) computer game called Journey to Wild Divine. You can buy the sensor graphing software and just collect physiological data instead of actually playing the game. In the video clip, I show all 5 hours of data but mostly discuss the heart rate variability, since that is more affected by meditative breathing than the skin response.