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Anything specific practices you recommend? I'm not interested in ayahuasca, but meditation has been on my list for a while now.

openfuture 9y ago
Nadishodana. My reasoning: The idea of energy in the body is a very general concept that many different traditions have discovered independently (prana and qi are examples). Most people scoff at the concept but if you progress far in yoga or martial arts the metaphor makes sense and from a western perspective cells need energy to do their thing and that energy requires oxygen, nutrition and blood flow or some means of travel. The better your bodily awareness the more you can feel if a part of your body is cut off from the flow of energy. Anyway to make a long story short nadishodana is a meditation practice designed to clean the "nadis" or energy channels in the body. Any psychadelic will greatly improve your bodily awareness to the point you will hallucinate vision of your energy flow. Ayahuasca especially helps with cleaning your body and breaking blocks in the energy flow, the more it has to clean the more you will need to change and the "trip" will be more hardcore. I base this line of reasoning on anecdotal experience with using microdoses of psychadelics along with meditation to treat swelling after exercise and from having tried Ayahuasca and DMT before.
- computerex 9y ago
  Are you accounting for confirmation bias in your anecdotal experiences? There is no "western" perspective, there is only reality and falsehoods. Whilst I am a proponent of meditation and mental health, I don't think prana or qi exist as real physical entities in the real world because their presence has not been detected in reproducible, controlled settings. There are many religions in the world, all of them false when scrutinized through the lens of science and reason. The whole concept of life energy is not grounded in reality based on the available evidence (or lack of evidence).
  - openfuture 9y ago
    When I say western perspective I'm talking about the words I'm using not some different world... i.e. "cells need nutrition" ... but in meditation I feel a lot of the progress is changing your understanding of what it means to breathe. I kept (unwillingly) redefining the word until it had essentially became synonymous with the concept of "running lines of energy" (to whichever body part I wish to breath into). Ultimately these words (prana, life energy, qi) are just metaphors to assist you with your own bodily awareness (so they are subjective) and maybe if you are some expert these metaphors can work for deciphering the body of someone else but trying to relate them to some object is not going to work. What I wish to say is that I don't consider these concepts to be objective truths in the same way I don't consider stories to be objective truths. However it does not impede my ability to learn from them. Objective science is great for physics and is constantly improving our understanding of the human body as a machine but as individuals living in these machines we must also conduct our own subjective science, experimenting with our behavior to find how best to care for our unique body, mind and soul (a dubious concept at best but I like the rhythm of naming all three).
    - computerex 9y ago
      There is no "subjective science". I am very passionate about science and have a problem with anyone trying to construe something that is not science as science. Science is evidence based reasoning. Anything else is not science, call it whatever you want.
eternauta3k 9y ago
Here is a basic concentration practice guide by John Yates Culadasa, a western teacher. http://dharmatreasure.org/wp-content/uploads/beginning-meditation-handout.pdf http://dharmatreasure.org/wp-content/uploads/beginning-medit...
Fnoord 9y ago
Shell out some money for a mindfulness course instead for a more professional, guided course instead of apps. We bought some CDs from our instructor (in our native language) as well and ripped them to MP3 residing on our mobile devices. So we don't have to resort to suboptimal apps, which have privacy implications. YMMV really.
curun1r 9y ago
I don't want to push you towards any specific practice, but I'd highly encourage you to find the time to do a full retreat that gets you away from your daily routine, computing devices and other distractions. The first retreat I did was almost 2 weeks and I felt palpable withdrawal symptoms until the end of the 4th day when I started to become more calm and able to focus on the meditation. Not everyone feels similar, but I'd recommend against anything one week or shorter because I feel it doesn't give you the time to get in the right headspace to experience the benefits of meditation. Shorter retreats can be beneficial to experienced meditators who practice on a regular basis and can make the most of a quick, intense period of meditation. But for beginners, it's not enough time to shake you free of your life and let you truly focus.
te_chris 9y ago
Install an app and start - Headspace is popular and easy to get going with. There are lots of different practices, sure, but it's a lot like jogging: you don't need to learn a lot of technique, just need to get up and do it.
- b222 9y ago
  Do you need an app to go to the toilet, too?
- fish_fan 9y ago
  I can’t tell if you’re joking with the app or not. If you’re good enough to meditate around the app, you don’t need any help from the app to start!
weavie 9y ago
'The Mind Illuminated' by Culadasa aka John Yates is an excellent guide. It takes you gently through 10 stages, from just beginning all the way up to Enlightenment (for some definition of Enlightenment). It thoroughly covers all bases without any mumbo jumbo. It does however require you to ramp up your practice to at least an hour daily if you want to make the most of it. Personally I found this a little daunting at first, but now that I 'get it' I am actually really motivated to put in the time and I am getting a lot out of it.
droro 9y ago
The Mindful Geek (http://a.co/egwKvoo http://a.co/egwKvoo) could be a good starting point for the HN crowd. I'm about halfway through it and I enjoy the no-frills explanations of various meditation techniques. In my experience, the most difficult part is keeping the practice in my daily routine. Just like with exercise, it's easier to absorb it into your lifestyle if you have a coach or a group of people with which you regularly train.
fc003153 9y ago
a lot of apps are helpful to get you started, but a general example of meditation is being comfortable in good posture while focusing on deep, slow, and calm breaths. The main goal of meditation is to think of absolutely nothing, and focus in the present.
- jdironman 9y ago
  I always have heard the goal of meditation is not to 'think of nothing' but if a thought enters your mind observe it and let it pass. By 'trying to not think of anything' you are actually thinking of doing just that.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    Correct, the way to deal with thoughts and emotions during mindfulness or meditation is non-judgmental acceptance, not with opposing, denying, fighting.

openfuture 9y ago

Nadishodana. My reasoning: The idea of energy in the body is a very general concept that many different traditions have discovered independently (prana and qi are examples). Most people scoff at the concept but if you progress far in yoga or martial arts the metaphor makes sense and from a western perspective cells need energy to do their thing and that energy requires oxygen, nutrition and blood flow or some means of travel. The better your bodily awareness the more you can feel if a part of your body is cut off from the flow of energy. Anyway to make a long story short nadishodana is a meditation practice designed to clean the "nadis" or energy channels in the body. Any psychadelic will greatly improve your bodily awareness to the point you will hallucinate vision of your energy flow. Ayahuasca especially helps with cleaning your body and breaking blocks in the energy flow, the more it has to clean the more you will need to change and the "trip" will be more hardcore. I base this line of reasoning on anecdotal experience with using microdoses of psychadelics along with meditation to treat swelling after exercise and from having tried Ayahuasca and DMT before.

computerex 9y ago
Are you accounting for confirmation bias in your anecdotal experiences? There is no "western" perspective, there is only reality and falsehoods. Whilst I am a proponent of meditation and mental health, I don't think prana or qi exist as real physical entities in the real world because their presence has not been detected in reproducible, controlled settings. There are many religions in the world, all of them false when scrutinized through the lens of science and reason. The whole concept of life energy is not grounded in reality based on the available evidence (or lack of evidence).
- openfuture 9y ago
  When I say western perspective I'm talking about the words I'm using not some different world... i.e. "cells need nutrition" ... but in meditation I feel a lot of the progress is changing your understanding of what it means to breathe. I kept (unwillingly) redefining the word until it had essentially became synonymous with the concept of "running lines of energy" (to whichever body part I wish to breath into). Ultimately these words (prana, life energy, qi) are just metaphors to assist you with your own bodily awareness (so they are subjective) and maybe if you are some expert these metaphors can work for deciphering the body of someone else but trying to relate them to some object is not going to work. What I wish to say is that I don't consider these concepts to be objective truths in the same way I don't consider stories to be objective truths. However it does not impede my ability to learn from them. Objective science is great for physics and is constantly improving our understanding of the human body as a machine but as individuals living in these machines we must also conduct our own subjective science, experimenting with our behavior to find how best to care for our unique body, mind and soul (a dubious concept at best but I like the rhythm of naming all three).
  - computerex 9y ago
    There is no "subjective science". I am very passionate about science and have a problem with anyone trying to construe something that is not science as science. Science is evidence based reasoning. Anything else is not science, call it whatever you want.

eternauta3k 9y ago

Here is a basic concentration practice guide by John Yates Culadasa, a western teacher. http://dharmatreasure.org/wp-content/uploads/beginning-meditation-handout.pdf http://dharmatreasure.org/wp-content/uploads/beginning-medit...

Fnoord 9y ago

Shell out some money for a mindfulness course instead for a more professional, guided course instead of apps. We bought some CDs from our instructor (in our native language) as well and ripped them to MP3 residing on our mobile devices. So we don't have to resort to suboptimal apps, which have privacy implications. YMMV really.

curun1r 9y ago

I don't want to push you towards any specific practice, but I'd highly encourage you to find the time to do a full retreat that gets you away from your daily routine, computing devices and other distractions. The first retreat I did was almost 2 weeks and I felt palpable withdrawal symptoms until the end of the 4th day when I started to become more calm and able to focus on the meditation. Not everyone feels similar, but I'd recommend against anything one week or shorter because I feel it doesn't give you the time to get in the right headspace to experience the benefits of meditation. Shorter retreats can be beneficial to experienced meditators who practice on a regular basis and can make the most of a quick, intense period of meditation. But for beginners, it's not enough time to shake you free of your life and let you truly focus.

te_chris 9y ago

Install an app and start - Headspace is popular and easy to get going with. There are lots of different practices, sure, but it's a lot like jogging: you don't need to learn a lot of technique, just need to get up and do it.

b222 9y ago
Do you need an app to go to the toilet, too?
fish_fan 9y ago
I can’t tell if you’re joking with the app or not. If you’re good enough to meditate around the app, you don’t need any help from the app to start!

weavie 9y ago

'The Mind Illuminated' by Culadasa aka John Yates is an excellent guide. It takes you gently through 10 stages, from just beginning all the way up to Enlightenment (for some definition of Enlightenment). It thoroughly covers all bases without any mumbo jumbo. It does however require you to ramp up your practice to at least an hour daily if you want to make the most of it. Personally I found this a little daunting at first, but now that I 'get it' I am actually really motivated to put in the time and I am getting a lot out of it.

droro 9y ago

The Mindful Geek (http://a.co/egwKvoo http://a.co/egwKvoo) could be a good starting point for the HN crowd. I'm about halfway through it and I enjoy the no-frills explanations of various meditation techniques. In my experience, the most difficult part is keeping the practice in my daily routine. Just like with exercise, it's easier to absorb it into your lifestyle if you have a coach or a group of people with which you regularly train.

fc003153 9y ago

a lot of apps are helpful to get you started, but a general example of meditation is being comfortable in good posture while focusing on deep, slow, and calm breaths. The main goal of meditation is to think of absolutely nothing, and focus in the present.

jdironman 9y ago
I always have heard the goal of meditation is not to 'think of nothing' but if a thought enters your mind observe it and let it pass. By 'trying to not think of anything' you are actually thinking of doing just that.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  Correct, the way to deal with thoughts and emotions during mindfulness or meditation is non-judgmental acceptance, not with opposing, denying, fighting.