8 ms·

Cognitive mechanisms in meditation practice

94 points by irickt 11y ago

irickt 11y ago
Open access pdf: http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/pdf/S1364-6613(15)00152-7.pdf http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/pdf/S1364-6613...
dominotw 11y ago
Why do people do all these strange things? To make more money with "better brain" ?
- danharaj 11y ago
  Being thinking meat is a strange thing.
- fsloth 11y ago
  I feel more balanced after meditation. But I have no way how to otherwise quantify it. For example, I'm also more conscious about being irritated when I'm irritated and can avoid feeding thought patterns that would prolong this irritation. Placebo? Neurological changes? Observational bias? Beats me, but I see nothing harm in sitting down, breathing, and observing my thoughts.
  - nota_bene 11y ago
    > Neurological changes? Yes, see: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/eight-weeks-to-a-better-brain/ http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/eight-weeks-to...
- gerbilly 11y ago
  Because after a while some of us get totally fed up with living life the 'normal way': that is to say chasing one fragile form of happiness after another.
  - gammafactor 11y ago
    If it's peace you want, you really should look into Advaita Vedanta. Happiness/sadness is but another duality. There is no peace in duality. Once you understand (as you seem to) that one can find no lasting peace in ephemeral things (money, status, physical pleasures) it's a natural progression to throw all the dualities away and seek the source, Brahman, the ultimate reality, formless, changeless. Of course given the extent of most people's social conditioning these days, it's easier said than done but anyone can do it.
- bsuh 11y ago
  Every human being wants happiness. Whether it's money, cool gadgets, attractive significant others, knowledge, volunteer work, exercise, or meditation, the general goal is to feel happy.
  - fsloth 11y ago
    At least for me meditation has taught that happiness is kinda pointless and ephemeral. It happens, then it goes away. Like other feelings as well. I'm not living for higher goals, but I'm more content by the present, whatever the present may be.
    - nota_bene 11y ago
      > happiness is kinda pointless and ephemeral Ephemeral? Yes. Pointless? No: If you are happier, you'll make people around you happier. If everybody tries to achieve that, we'll have a much saner society. Thus, we should take it as our responsibility to achieve a good level of happiness as often as possible (obviously not by making others pay for it).
      - wpietri 11y ago
        I'm not sure we mean the same thing by the word "happiness", but like fsloth I'm not very interested in pursuing what I mean by it. I think there are other, better ways to get a saner society than to endlessly chase after transitory good feelings.
      - gammafactor 11y ago
        The idea here (that one gradually slips into with meditation or other mystical systems) is that there is no "You". Happy, sad, You, other people, all these "things" don't really exist, they're all illusions, mind constructs, artificial. Once you see the world for what it really is (a dream), all the masks fall away and you're free to go on with your "life" unencumbered by artificial thought creations that another artificial thought creation ("You") thought were real.
        11y ago
- nugga 11y ago
  Personal anecdote: meditation can get you to some incredible places. It takes daily sustained activity to really 'get' it. https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/code https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/code
- nabla9 11y ago
  Imagine what it would be if you had lived little bit intoxicated for whole of your life. Then you would start sobering up. You would notice more awareness, more focus, clarity and possibly well being. Rest of the world would seem less confusing. Questioning the assumption that your normal wakeful mental state is the ultimate 'being alive and conscious' what your brain can do might be the first step. If you persist, eventually you see meditation same way as brushing your teeth. It's important part of maintaining your mental hygiene.
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    Yes! I have been trying for ages to convince people that the "normal" "sober" wakeful and attentive mental state is not the ultimate ledger of human perception. Most people immediately discard this thought, their minds responding to a strawman argument which equates sobriety with intoxication. Meditation helps me deal with ADD and depression and increases my executive functioning immensely. I think it should be taught in schools to children-- the mere discipline meditation grants you is worth passing on.
    - explorer666 11y ago
      Why do so many people on HN say they have ADD?
      - jwdunne 11y ago
        Perhaps because they do. People with ADD pursue their interests obsessively. If one of those interests is programming, you'll find you way here. I did before I even uncovered ADD.
- blinkingled 11y ago
  It's not strange - how we live by default, that's strange. There's whole another original, normal way of dealing with life and situations. To a logical person the easiest take away is that control over your senses / thoughts / perception frees up a lot of your capabilities with which you can do more - whatever that is, money making, art, nothing. You do it while truly enjoying it. It's great if you can pull it off!
- benihana 11y ago
  To be happy. I don't do meditation (and in fact get kind of irritated that practitioners of it seem to imply the only way to get in more control of your brain is through meditation), but I practice CBT. The idea is to be in greater control of your conscious and subconscious processes by being more aware of what's going on in your brain. For example, I noticed that when people make suggestions on products I work on that have the potential to violate users' privacy, I tend to get defensive and argumentative over that point. Using CBT and practice, first I was able to identify the emotions that rush over me when that happened. Then, I was able to notice and acknowledge those emotions happening and finally I was able to control them and let them pass without influencing my behavior. The last step in the puzzle is finding out why that particular issue is so triggering to me. After becoming aware of these things, I'm a lot less anxious, my relationships are much stronger, my communication is better, and I'm just in a better mood and happier in general.
  - 7An2ieoW 11y ago
    So, how do you get started in CBT and establish the practice? Any resources?
    - kentt 11y ago
      I'd start with something like this: http://www.amazon.com/CBT-Toolbox-Workbook-Clients-Clinicians/dp/1936128306/ http://www.amazon.com/CBT-Toolbox-Workbook-Clients-Clinician... I started with Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, by Burns, and it's really good but an overwhelming amount of information. That being said, I do have an appreciation from mindfulness meditation as well as CBT. They complement each other very well. I'd recommend the audiobook Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World. It's a really easy way to get started and you'll definitely feel like your life has improved by the time the 8 weeks is up.
  - ncphillips 11y ago
    From what I've briefly read in this paper, it looks like they use the word "meditation" broadly enough that CBT would be included in it's definition.
  - 11y ago
hacker_9 11y ago
I started meditating about 2 years ago because I liked the idea of having better 'control of my mind' - at the time I thought it was a gimmick but to my surprise it actually works. To begin with I found that after 20-30mins of closing my eyes and trying to think of nothing, I always came out of the session feeling a lot calmer. Fast forward to today and I can now isolate thoughts and throw them away if they are garbage, which I'm not gonna lie is a pretty useful tool to have. The brain has a tendency to replay bad memories over and over again (recent embarrassing social situations, or even random events from years ago can suddenly pop up) and they can affect how you go about your day to day when you overthink them - you get overly nervous about a presentation you have to do later for example. But now I can stop the thought in it's tracks and just 'let it go', returning my attention to my work. Because you calm and slow your mind in meditation you are able to separate out how thoughts are formed and observe how they change your mood and how they make you react, which gives you more power over them in daily life.
- amelius 11y ago
  Very interesting. What timespan did you need to start seeing good results? Are you still improving after 2 years?
  - hacker_9 11y ago
    Not very long at all. You'll notice a positive feeling even after your first session. I have a lot of room to improve but there really is no end. Really you just learn more about yourself and how fast your brain is always working as it jumps between memories. You see how it focuses, and observe how certain thoughts drift in and set off a cascade of reactions and so on.
  - hosh 11y ago
    @amelius It's been in my experience "results" vary widely with a lot of people. Part of the reason is that calmness is not the ultimate aim of meditation, but rather, a side-effect. For some people, the practice of meditation will quickly surface up a lot of anxiety and existential issues. It won't feel calm at all. Having been lured into thinking calmness is the end-goal, meditation is written off as "not working", when in fact in this case, it worked all too well. Just some food for thought. I had written quite a bit more on different threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10156240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10156240
noahlt 11y ago
Anyone have recommendations for learning meditation in San Francisco?
- lostinbass 11y ago
  Spirit Rock up north has classes pretty regularly. I am actually a part-time meditation teacher in the East Bay if you want one-on-one lessons sometime. I'd also highly recommend the book Mindfulness in Plain English - this helped me down the road years ago and is available for free :)
- lincolnpark 11y ago
  Try MissionDharma on 15th st. Pretty secular. Howie is a great teacher.
siavosh 11y ago
One resource I've found to be a refreshing take on the nuts and bolts of insight meditation that I think may appeal to engineers is the free book by Daniel Ingram. http://integrateddaniel.info/book/ http://integrateddaniel.info/book/
ncphillips 11y ago
I thought this paper was fascinating! Here is my brief summary of this paper. This paper is discussing meditation in a fairly broad sense, which includes practices related to eastern religions (Buddhism, Hindu), abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), as well as modern practices found in a modern clinical setting (CBT). They propose a classification of meditation practices. At the top level, there are three types of meditation: (1) Attentive Meditation, (2) Constructive Meditation, and (3)Deconstructive Meditation. Attentive meditation has to do with controlling ones focus. These practices generally have the practitioner intentionally narrow or broaden their focus. Zen breath counting and body scanning meditation are examples of Attentive meditation. Constructive meditation practices aim to create and strengthen healthy habits, or commitments to certain values. This could involve imagining what it's like to be others, or imagining yourself as an embodiment of certain values. Constructive practices may also have the practitioner contemplate their own mortality, so that they can consider what is truly important in life. Christians praying to God for strength and thinking about their immortal soul are examples of Constructive meditation. Deconstructive meditation practices aim to foster insight into the perceptions, emotions, and cognition of the practitioner. Self-inquiry and contemplation on these objects themselves are often a part of this type of practice. CBT and other modern clinical techniques are examples of Deconstructive meditation. ------------------------------------ A couple other notes: * All three types of meditation seem to be useful in different ways. * It's uncertain to what extent do the effects of specific meditations rest on the frameworks, beliefs, and world views that underlie these practices.
mindfulgeek 11y ago
If you're curious about current scientific research around Meditation, check out the Advances in Meditation Research conference at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC (http://meditation2015.com/ http://meditation2015.com/) The one in 2013 had many great talks and interesting findings (like meditation causes "wakefulness" instead of helping you sleep).
geomark 11y ago
As someone who has done some meditation and spent some time as a Buddhist monk, I find this scientific treatment of the subject very interesting. When I was in the robe we meditated a lot under the guidance of senior monks who were very accomplished. Other forms of meditation were only mentioned in passing. I've heard many incomplete descriptions of the differences between various types of meditation and wondered if there was a good taxonomy somewhere.

94 points by irickt 11y ago

Open access pdf: http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/pdf/S1364-6613(15)00152-7.pdf http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/pdf/S1364-6613...

dominotw 11y ago

Why do people do all these strange things? To make more money with "better brain" ?

danharaj 11y ago
Being thinking meat is a strange thing.
fsloth 11y ago
I feel more balanced after meditation. But I have no way how to otherwise quantify it. For example, I'm also more conscious about being irritated when I'm irritated and can avoid feeding thought patterns that would prolong this irritation. Placebo? Neurological changes? Observational bias? Beats me, but I see nothing harm in sitting down, breathing, and observing my thoughts.
- nota_bene 11y ago
  > Neurological changes? Yes, see: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/eight-weeks-to-a-better-brain/ http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/eight-weeks-to...
gerbilly 11y ago
Because after a while some of us get totally fed up with living life the 'normal way': that is to say chasing one fragile form of happiness after another.
- gammafactor 11y ago
  If it's peace you want, you really should look into Advaita Vedanta. Happiness/sadness is but another duality. There is no peace in duality. Once you understand (as you seem to) that one can find no lasting peace in ephemeral things (money, status, physical pleasures) it's a natural progression to throw all the dualities away and seek the source, Brahman, the ultimate reality, formless, changeless. Of course given the extent of most people's social conditioning these days, it's easier said than done but anyone can do it.
bsuh 11y ago
Every human being wants happiness. Whether it's money, cool gadgets, attractive significant others, knowledge, volunteer work, exercise, or meditation, the general goal is to feel happy.
- fsloth 11y ago
  At least for me meditation has taught that happiness is kinda pointless and ephemeral. It happens, then it goes away. Like other feelings as well. I'm not living for higher goals, but I'm more content by the present, whatever the present may be.
  - nota_bene 11y ago
    > happiness is kinda pointless and ephemeral Ephemeral? Yes. Pointless? No: If you are happier, you'll make people around you happier. If everybody tries to achieve that, we'll have a much saner society. Thus, we should take it as our responsibility to achieve a good level of happiness as often as possible (obviously not by making others pay for it).
    - wpietri 11y ago
      I'm not sure we mean the same thing by the word "happiness", but like fsloth I'm not very interested in pursuing what I mean by it. I think there are other, better ways to get a saner society than to endlessly chase after transitory good feelings.
    - gammafactor 11y ago
      The idea here (that one gradually slips into with meditation or other mystical systems) is that there is no "You". Happy, sad, You, other people, all these "things" don't really exist, they're all illusions, mind constructs, artificial. Once you see the world for what it really is (a dream), all the masks fall away and you're free to go on with your "life" unencumbered by artificial thought creations that another artificial thought creation ("You") thought were real.
      - 11y ago
nugga 11y ago
Personal anecdote: meditation can get you to some incredible places. It takes daily sustained activity to really 'get' it. https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/code https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/code
nabla9 11y ago
Imagine what it would be if you had lived little bit intoxicated for whole of your life. Then you would start sobering up. You would notice more awareness, more focus, clarity and possibly well being. Rest of the world would seem less confusing. Questioning the assumption that your normal wakeful mental state is the ultimate 'being alive and conscious' what your brain can do might be the first step. If you persist, eventually you see meditation same way as brushing your teeth. It's important part of maintaining your mental hygiene.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Yes! I have been trying for ages to convince people that the "normal" "sober" wakeful and attentive mental state is not the ultimate ledger of human perception. Most people immediately discard this thought, their minds responding to a strawman argument which equates sobriety with intoxication. Meditation helps me deal with ADD and depression and increases my executive functioning immensely. I think it should be taught in schools to children-- the mere discipline meditation grants you is worth passing on.
  - explorer666 11y ago
    Why do so many people on HN say they have ADD?
    - jwdunne 11y ago
      Perhaps because they do. People with ADD pursue their interests obsessively. If one of those interests is programming, you'll find you way here. I did before I even uncovered ADD.
blinkingled 11y ago
It's not strange - how we live by default, that's strange. There's whole another original, normal way of dealing with life and situations. To a logical person the easiest take away is that control over your senses / thoughts / perception frees up a lot of your capabilities with which you can do more - whatever that is, money making, art, nothing. You do it while truly enjoying it. It's great if you can pull it off!
benihana 11y ago
To be happy. I don't do meditation (and in fact get kind of irritated that practitioners of it seem to imply the only way to get in more control of your brain is through meditation), but I practice CBT. The idea is to be in greater control of your conscious and subconscious processes by being more aware of what's going on in your brain. For example, I noticed that when people make suggestions on products I work on that have the potential to violate users' privacy, I tend to get defensive and argumentative over that point. Using CBT and practice, first I was able to identify the emotions that rush over me when that happened. Then, I was able to notice and acknowledge those emotions happening and finally I was able to control them and let them pass without influencing my behavior. The last step in the puzzle is finding out why that particular issue is so triggering to me. After becoming aware of these things, I'm a lot less anxious, my relationships are much stronger, my communication is better, and I'm just in a better mood and happier in general.
- 7An2ieoW 11y ago
  So, how do you get started in CBT and establish the practice? Any resources?
  - kentt 11y ago
    I'd start with something like this: http://www.amazon.com/CBT-Toolbox-Workbook-Clients-Clinicians/dp/1936128306/ http://www.amazon.com/CBT-Toolbox-Workbook-Clients-Clinician... I started with Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, by Burns, and it's really good but an overwhelming amount of information. That being said, I do have an appreciation from mindfulness meditation as well as CBT. They complement each other very well. I'd recommend the audiobook Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World. It's a really easy way to get started and you'll definitely feel like your life has improved by the time the 8 weeks is up.
- ncphillips 11y ago
  From what I've briefly read in this paper, it looks like they use the word "meditation" broadly enough that CBT would be included in it's definition.
- 11y ago

hacker_9 11y ago

I started meditating about 2 years ago because I liked the idea of having better 'control of my mind' - at the time I thought it was a gimmick but to my surprise it actually works. To begin with I found that after 20-30mins of closing my eyes and trying to think of nothing, I always came out of the session feeling a lot calmer. Fast forward to today and I can now isolate thoughts and throw them away if they are garbage, which I'm not gonna lie is a pretty useful tool to have. The brain has a tendency to replay bad memories over and over again (recent embarrassing social situations, or even random events from years ago can suddenly pop up) and they can affect how you go about your day to day when you overthink them - you get overly nervous about a presentation you have to do later for example. But now I can stop the thought in it's tracks and just 'let it go', returning my attention to my work. Because you calm and slow your mind in meditation you are able to separate out how thoughts are formed and observe how they change your mood and how they make you react, which gives you more power over them in daily life.

amelius 11y ago
Very interesting. What timespan did you need to start seeing good results? Are you still improving after 2 years?
- hacker_9 11y ago
  Not very long at all. You'll notice a positive feeling even after your first session. I have a lot of room to improve but there really is no end. Really you just learn more about yourself and how fast your brain is always working as it jumps between memories. You see how it focuses, and observe how certain thoughts drift in and set off a cascade of reactions and so on.
- hosh 11y ago
  @amelius It's been in my experience "results" vary widely with a lot of people. Part of the reason is that calmness is not the ultimate aim of meditation, but rather, a side-effect. For some people, the practice of meditation will quickly surface up a lot of anxiety and existential issues. It won't feel calm at all. Having been lured into thinking calmness is the end-goal, meditation is written off as "not working", when in fact in this case, it worked all too well. Just some food for thought. I had written quite a bit more on different threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10156240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10156240

noahlt 11y ago

Anyone have recommendations for learning meditation in San Francisco?

lostinbass 11y ago
Spirit Rock up north has classes pretty regularly. I am actually a part-time meditation teacher in the East Bay if you want one-on-one lessons sometime. I'd also highly recommend the book Mindfulness in Plain English - this helped me down the road years ago and is available for free :)
lincolnpark 11y ago
Try MissionDharma on 15th st. Pretty secular. Howie is a great teacher.

siavosh 11y ago

One resource I've found to be a refreshing take on the nuts and bolts of insight meditation that I think may appeal to engineers is the free book by Daniel Ingram. http://integrateddaniel.info/book/ http://integrateddaniel.info/book/

ncphillips 11y ago

I thought this paper was fascinating! Here is my brief summary of this paper. This paper is discussing meditation in a fairly broad sense, which includes practices related to eastern religions (Buddhism, Hindu), abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), as well as modern practices found in a modern clinical setting (CBT). They propose a classification of meditation practices. At the top level, there are three types of meditation: (1) Attentive Meditation, (2) Constructive Meditation, and (3)Deconstructive Meditation. Attentive meditation has to do with controlling ones focus. These practices generally have the practitioner intentionally narrow or broaden their focus. Zen breath counting and body scanning meditation are examples of Attentive meditation. Constructive meditation practices aim to create and strengthen healthy habits, or commitments to certain values. This could involve imagining what it's like to be others, or imagining yourself as an embodiment of certain values. Constructive practices may also have the practitioner contemplate their own mortality, so that they can consider what is truly important in life. Christians praying to God for strength and thinking about their immortal soul are examples of Constructive meditation. Deconstructive meditation practices aim to foster insight into the perceptions, emotions, and cognition of the practitioner. Self-inquiry and contemplation on these objects themselves are often a part of this type of practice. CBT and other modern clinical techniques are examples of Deconstructive meditation. ------------------------------------ A couple other notes: * All three types of meditation seem to be useful in different ways. * It's uncertain to what extent do the effects of specific meditations rest on the frameworks, beliefs, and world views that underlie these practices.

mindfulgeek 11y ago

If you're curious about current scientific research around Meditation, check out the Advances in Meditation Research conference at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC (http://meditation2015.com/ http://meditation2015.com/) The one in 2013 had many great talks and interesting findings (like meditation causes "wakefulness" instead of helping you sleep).

geomark 11y ago

As someone who has done some meditation and spent some time as a Buddhist monk, I find this scientific treatment of the subject very interesting. When I was in the robe we meditated a lot under the guidance of senior monks who were very accomplished. Other forms of meditation were only mentioned in passing. I've heard many incomplete descriptions of the differences between various types of meditation and wondered if there was a good taxonomy somewhere.