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Alternatively: meditation turns out to be harder than popularizers tend to let on
by qntty 8y ago
Alternatively: meditation turns out to be harder than popularizers tend to let on
- agumonkey 8y agoIt's also probably impossible to assess whether someone is or not meditating.
- eeZah7Ux 8y agoA lot of research has shown permanent changes in neural activation patterns in long-time, committed meditators.
- loup-vaillant 8y agoYou can still ask people different things and see how it turns out. If you can't assess whether they were meditating or not, just record whether you asked them to.
- gowld 8y agoIt's a bit easier to assess whether you yourself are getting into the meditative state when you try. (Still, that's made difficulty by not knowing what "experts" mean when they describe a meditative state.)
- the-pigeon 8y agoI thought there was particular brain wave patterns associated with it. Which if so you could certainly measure them.
- agumonkey 8y agogood point, i forgot about that
- proverbialbunny 8y agoThere was a study where they wrote some software with a bar on it representing brain activity in the area of the brain that decreases when meditating. They then told people to try to get the bar to go down. This worked, and showed that meditation can one day be made easy, and is a valuable tool that can be studied in a clear way.
- mping 8y agoTrue, but you can assess its side effects.
- vageli 8y agoWhat, exactly, are the side effects you allude to?
- mping 8y agoDepends on the particular techniques and quality of instructor, ranging from a calm state of mind during meditation, less worry, increased sense of happiness, increased sense of spiritual development, increased focus, decreased afflictions, etc. Basically, when you practice meditation of type X, you should ask what are the benefits. If you practice as told, and get the benefits, you know for yourself it's working. Similarly, if you're working remote I can't really tell if you are programming or on facebook, but at the end some task must be accomplished.
- smhost 8y agoOne side effect ironically being that you don't buy into this whole cultural fixation on mindfulness.
- always_good 8y agoThough you also have to balance that with people saying "if it didn't work, then you weren't doing it right."
- jacquesm 8y agoThat's a bit like the dousing rod instruction manual: Walk with dousing rod until it twitches down, then start digging. If you don't reach water: dig deeper until you do.
- itronitron 8y agoor until you reach turtles
- hinkley 8y agoIf the turtles are not on the protected species list, move the turtle aside and keep digging.
- jm__87 8y agoJust fyi, if meditation feels difficult or frustrating, it may mean you are meditating for the wrong reason. Your objective when meditating should be to observe your own experience as objectively as you can. This includes things like your chosen object of meditation (e.g. following the breath), whatever thoughts, feelings, itches, pains may arise. If you are failing at this, you won't be aware you are failing at it, but if you are aware your attention has drifted elsewhere aside from your goal of sitting and observing, you are now observing again and succeeding at meditation. So you can actually only ever be aware of succeeding at meditation :). If you are meditating with the goal of relaxing your mind, for example, you can easily fail at that, and will likely fail at it more often than not given how much the mind can wander. Meditating with that goal in mind can be extremely frustrating. So a useful thing to know is that intentions matter a lot when meditating.