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'Mindful people' feel less pain
- ericand 8y agoIf I understand correctly, they say that meditation deactivates default mode and this has a positive impact on pain tolerance. Interestingly, there is lots of discussion on the importance and value of default mode for creativity and other things. Are these at odds or have I misunderstood?
- thedirt0115 8y agoI had never heard of "default mode" before this. Do you have any suggested reading on the topic, especially around creativity?
- xanthopan 8y agoMaybe only tangentially related, but Michael Pollan's recent book about psychedelics "How To Change Your Mind" goes in-depth on this. There's something about being able to quiet the "default mode network" that lends the mind to transcendental/creative thought. The same effect can be achieved through meditation or breathwork.
- pfd1986 8y agoAlso moral tribes, by Joshua Greene. These 2 were the best books I read this year.
- prostoalex 8y agoThis provides a good context https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment
- cpncrunch 8y agoI think it's more to do with removing the emotional rumination aspect of the default mode network, which is associated with anxiety, depression and pain.
- mcculley 8y agoMindfulness meditation taught me something that Haruki Murakami describes well about running: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
- nickthemagicman 8y agoJust curious what the difference is? Suffering is your reaction to the pain? Like if you're stoic you acknowledge the pain but continue on with out suffering?
- kalid 8y agoHere’s the best analogy I’ve heard. Imagine you wake up and your back is sore. Getting out of bed is a struggle, everything aches and you must move slowly. Without other knowledge, you may get worried, anxious, feel distressed. If you remember you had a workout yesterday, you may actually enjoy the feeling. It reminds you of the effort you put in, the future progress you’ll make as muscles are repaired. The physical sensation is exactly the same.
- mcculley 8y agoI like that example, but it breaks down. I have experienced plenty of pain in the muscles of my back in the form of both delayed onset muscle soreness that follows a good workout and the spasms of pain associated with a torn muscle. The former is pleasant. The latter is not.
- kalid 8y agoIs it necessary for the realization you've torn a muscle to be unpleasant? (It's that realization you're reacting to, not the pain.) Ultimately, we're making a prediction: my life is guaranteed to be worse off because my muscle was recently torn. Is this true? https://sivers.org/horses https://sivers.org/horses
- mcculley 8y ago
- nabla9 8y agoI think Marvin Minsky had it right in his book The Emotion Machine (2006): From Chapter III. From Pain to Suffering >Why does the sensation called pain sometimes lead to what we call suffering? How could such a simple event distort all your other thoughts so much? This chapter proposes a theory of this: if a pain is intense and persistent enough, it will stir up a certain set of resources, and then these, in turn, arouse some more. Then, if this process continues to grow, your mind becomes a victim of the kind of spreading, large-scale “cascade” that overcomes the rest of the mind, as we depicted in §1-7: Then he quotes Daniel Dennett: > “If you can make yourself study your pains (even quite intense pains) you will find, as it were, no room left to mind them: (they stop hurting). However studying a pain (e.g., a headache) gets boring pretty fast, and as soon as you stop studying them, they come back and hurt, which, oddly enough, is sometimes less boring than being bored by them and so, to some degree, preferable." The whole chapter is online: http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/E3/eb3.html http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/E3/eb3.html
- kstrauser 8y agoI think so, too (even though I haven't read it). That jibes with my own experiences in meditating. Part of the process is going through a quick scan of your body and just noticing how your different parts feel: "huh, there's tenseness in my jaw", "there's a headache", "there's soreness in my leg" etc. It's amazing how quickly you can turn that from "my head hurts" to "there's pain in my head", which is a subtle but important distinction. You can't choose not to experience the pain sensation, but up to a point you can decide to simply note it and not react to it as pain.
- agumonkey 8y agoI also think that un-explained pain feels worse to one's mind. The fact that you used part of your brain to sense it changes that. I very often turn pain into a 'what are you telling me?', as if it was a form of communication. Half the time, the emotional grief vanishes.
- kstrauser 8y ago
- trukterious 8y agoMy experience is that stopping and paying attention to a stubbed toe makes it more bearable than yelling and hopping around the room.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoIf not for yourself, for your roommates and cat.
- gmoore 8y agohttps://sciencebasedmedicine.org/is-mindfulness-meditation-science-based/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/is-mindfulness-meditation-s...
- m3mpp 8y agoPain is also linked to fear, so more mindfulness, less fear and less pain. Some people, while physically training can inflict extreme pains on their bodies, but without any fear whatsoever, so they're ok, even enjoying it for some, "working hard!"
- ryandrake 8y ago> "Mindfulness is related to being aware of the present moment without too much emotional reaction or judgment," said the study's lead author, Fadel Zeidan I've always thought of the word "mindfulness" as one of those vague, new-age nonsense terms, like "psionic body energy" and "ethereal consciousness". Even given the above quoted definition, I still have no idea what it means. Does anyone know what is an example of mindfulness, or an example of the opposite? I don't know anyone, besides maybe Alzheimer's sufferers, who is actually unaware of the present time. EDIT: Thanks everyone for the many replies. I think the variety of different answers speaks volumes about this topic.
- vitro 8y agoWhat do you see now? What is the position of your head, your shoulders? How your breathing goes? What do you smell? What sound you hear? What are you thinking right now? Do you sometimes eat while watching a movie, actually not tasting the food fully? Or when in a rush ignoring all what and whom you meet on the way to the target, not happy where you are at the moment? Are you aware of the reasons why you take certain decisions? Is it really your decision, or is it just because of some inner monologue that you are not aware of? Do you sometimes step in a dog shit on the pavement?
- gagege 8y agoSounds like stoicism to me.
- RickS 8y agoI find Sam Harris to be helpful here. He's an athiest intellectual and speaks a language closer to HN than hippies. https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-one/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-one/ ctrl-F "mindfulness" if you don't want to read the whole thing, though I'd suggest it. Even better, this is also available as a reading on spotify. He's got a really soothing, compelling voice. Worth a shot.
- justboxing 8y agoThank you for this. I found the most precise and concise definition of mindfulness on this page. > MINDFULNESS > It is always now. This might sound trite, but it is the truth. It’s not quite true as a matter of neurology, because our minds are built upon layers of inputs whose timing we know must be different. [11] But it is true as a matter of conscious experience. The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world. Source: https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-one/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-one/
- throwanem 8y agoAmazing. There's actually worse popular science reporting out there than what Popular Science puts out.
- cpncrunch 8y agoIn what way?
- qubax 8y agoOr people who feel less pain gravitate toward being "mindful". Not that we can get an objective definition of "mindful" and "pain". Also we have no objective way of measuring either.
- desmondw 8y agoThe concept of being more pain-free is dangerous to take at face value. Being 'pain-free' through mindfulness comes from a deep understanding of any given pain, which comes from feeling it fully and coming to terms with that feeling. Which, is itself very painful.
- yawgmoth 8y agoIf anyone is interested in developing mindfulness, I like Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
- ollerac 8y agoI've been listening to his Guided Mindfulness Meditations a few times a week. The body scan has been a phenomenal way of for me to relax into the difficult emotions and feelings I sometimes experience. Highly recommended.
- FPGAhacker 8y agoI can’t stay awake through it. Which is okay. I often don’t sleep well so I’m chronically deprived.
- daniel_iversen 8y agoDon’t lie down while meditating and don’t meditate in your bedroom. Also try not to have your head resting on anything while meditating. Lastly, apparently with certain kinds of meditation if you do fall asleep that’s ok too - it’s your body ridding itself of fatigue - you probably need more sleep :)
- cryptozeus 8y agothanks for reminder, already have the book on kindle and totally forgot about it
- amingilani 8y agoI've definitely felt this. I'm more 'mindful' as the article says.. in the sense that I can step outside my emotions and control them. As in, if I'm getting angry, I can step outside the anger and evaluate whether it's necessary or helpful at the moment or not. If it isn't, I stop it. Otherwise, I let the anger creep into my voice to make the other person more receptive to the urgency of the situation. It works similarly for other emotions: like, fear, shame, jealousy, frustration or even sadness... which is why I don't often cry at funerals. I don't know if that makes me a sociopath or not, but it definitely makes me more rational. That said, I also seem to feel a lot less pain than my wife who tends to panic easier. If I stub my toe, cut my finger or even accidentally grab a falling soldering iron from the wrong end, I can disassociate from the pain, or at least give it a back seat. The hand is mine, but the pain feels like someone else's. As such, I get a lot more cuts and bruises than my wife. I've even had instances where I had bleeding cuts on my hand that I kept thinking were itches.. I kept confusing the blood for mysterious coppery liquid oozing out of the device I was repairing. Turns out I'd nicked my fingers prying it open.. explained how the liquid kept coming back after I wiped it.
- jdkoeck 8y agoAre you sure you're just "more rational"? None of that seems mindful. It sounds like you're bordering dissociative disorder.
- finnthehuman 8y agoYou've taken someone's mastery of a life skill we expect of all adults (emotional self-control) and are pointing to the closest pathological condition you can find even though it's mile and miles away from what the parent poster describes.
- jdkoeck 8y agoParent poster is confusing his own blood with “mysterious coppery liquid”, even after wiping it several times off his fingers. That’s not a good sign.
- codr4 8y agoI've done more Yoga than most and suffered from chronic pain after a climbing accident for a long time. The reaction to pain makes a big difference, and it's very difficult to react in a sane way when your ego is left running the show while you're out time traveling.
- QuadrupleA 8y agoDidn't realize that neuroscience has investigated mindfulness directly like this. Very cool. I've long found that practice useful, to focus as directly on pain as I can; it becomes manageable, even sort of interesting in a way. The alternatives, like attempting to escape via addictions / distractions, don't usually turn out well.
- arkanciscan 8y agoWhy is their definition of "mindful" (being aware of the present moment without too much emotional reaction or judgment) different from the dictionary (conscious or aware of something)? Is it because this article is hogwash?
- miguelmota 8y agoUnhappiness comes from reality not meeting expectations. Have no expectations and always be happy. Worrying about events outside of your control is pointless. Everyone needs some stoicism in their lives. Indifference is a power
- ironmagma 8y agoThat's easy to say, and very difficult for people in certain circumstances. With chronic illness and chronic pain, life can be very, very unbearable. We do have a built-in expectation of being able to, for instance, exist without being brought back to the world of pain every 3-5 minutes at random intervals. Not every expectation is willed into existence.
- miguelmota 8y agoAgree that in situations where you're experiencing chronic pain is much difficult but having a stoic mindset can reduce the domino effects of pain. Anxiety is the difference between reality and expectations, and worrying about whether it's going to get worse or last forever is only going to make it worse. A stoic realizes that physical pain is sensory based and this pain is an automatic response from the body. The pain they bear with but don't react negatively and pessimistic about possible outcomes imagined by the mind. Celebrating the few moments of feeling no pain is way more effective than stressing over all the time when it does hurt. Easier said than done of course
- ianai 8y agoAs a chronic migraine sufferer, I do have an ability to compartmentalize the pain, but only to an extent. There are also very hard constraints on my comfort. If I’m in pain there are any number of things that a pain free person could on average do that would spike the pain above the “freak out” point. Stoicism is definitely something I practice, and migraines easily surpass that. Some I get are known as “suicide migraines”. In short, the monks pain ended with his life within moments, but chronic pain by definition lasts longer.
- sridca 8y agoThey may experience the same intensity of physical pain, but _feel_ less of it, which makes sense as mindfulness meditation trains one to emotionally dissociate from anything painful (affectively or physically).
- davesque 8y agoIt's interesting that I had to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the skeptical comments.
- ehnto 8y agoAnecdata, but I have a condition that led to a childhood and young adulthood of chronic pain. I noticed my way of handling pain I am aware is going to happen is vastly different to other scenarios. If I know it's going to happen, I feel it but feel no need to react. It just happens, and I can keep thinking and operating as if nothing is going wrong. But I still react to unexpected bumps even if they don't actually hurt that much (or at all). I just thought it was nifty that my body can tell the difference and is happy to bypass the reactive part of pain when it wouldn't help.
- yters 8y agoSo if the suffering of others bothers us, all we need to do is remind ourselves it is their fault they are letting the pain get to them, and go on about our business. Hurrah!
- muterad_murilax 8y agoAs do psychopaths.
- picsao 8y agoOf othets
- Mikhail_Edoshin 8y agoIn certain practices pain is treated as a message and your best response is to attentively listen to it, without judgement and even without a desire to end it. This, naturally, changes the way one experiences pain.
- whack 8y agoI don't know how much I really believe this. Could this be a case of false correlation, as opposed to causation? Most medical advice for dealing with pain tells you to distract yourself from the pain, and certainly not to focus on it. Whereas mindfulness exhorts us to focus on our immediate circumstances, and not distract ourselves with more abstract thoughts. These 2 approaches to pain-management seem very contradictory. https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/qa/what-are-some-ways-to-distract-yourself-from-chronic-pain https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/qa/what-are-some-ways-... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15745617 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15745617