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The effect of meditation on brain structure (2012)

472 points by idclip 7y ago

stochastic_monk 7y ago
[2013]
- Bootwizard 7y ago
  Does that really matter? People have been meditating for thousands of years so 6 years is a very recent study.
  - cbanek 7y ago
    It's just standard HN policy to let people know it's not exactly new (but still interesting), and many people, myself included, sometimes miss publish dates. So anything that isn't this year gets the year in the title.
    - stochastic_monk 7y ago
      Otherwise, I’m inclined to believe that this is new because this is “Hacker News”.
ericsoderstrom 7y ago
Any memory you form, skill you learn or experience you have will change the structure of the brain. Changing structure isn’t in itself a good thing.
- frereubu 7y ago
  They're not claiming otherwise. Last sentence of the abstract: "Our findings suggest that long-term meditators have structural differences in both gray and white matter." They also talk about where in the brain there are structural changes and what kind of changes they are. Your comment reads like a criticism of some kind, but it would only be valid if the article was just the title and nothing else.
  - ericsoderstrom 7y ago
    My comment wasn't meant as a criticism of the article. The authors are careful in the claims they make. My point is that they are for the most part uninteresting claims. And articles like this are shared predominately because "changing brain structure" is mistakenly read as "provably does something good for your brain."
- Barrin92 7y ago
  the abstract seems to point out (if I understood it correctly, I'm not a neuroscientist) that the relevant changes in the brain are usually associated with centers of the brain that regulate emotional control and prolonged attention, which I would definitely identify as positive if true, and in line with personal experience with mindfulness practise as a way to deal with anxiety and panic attacks.
  - surfsvammel 7y ago
    I mean. Many types of meditation is just that, practicing attention and self control. So would make sense that those skills would improve. After practicing meditation myself for a couple of years I have noticed no difference what-so-ever. But the act of meditation itself de-stress me (is that a word?)-—relaxing wouldn’t be the right word, because it is not relaxation. Anyway. I’m quite sure I could get the same stress relief by just sit to by down and reading a book.
    - dbtc 7y ago
      What sort of meditation have you been practicing? (I think it's useful to be specific, since there are so many different kinds, and also I am merely curious.)
      - surfsvammel 7y ago
        Mindfulness meditation
    - wolco 7y ago
      You need to alter your practice. You have reached a point where you are too comfortable.
      - surfsvammel 7y ago
        Why? You seem to imply that there is a progress or goal to meditation, or that there is one desirable, expected, outcome. I am not sure I agree to such a thing. Meditation is a different to different people. I am happy what meditation is to me, and I see no reason—nor do I want to—change it.
- guerrilla 7y ago
  Where did you see a value judgement in the study? Also, no, memory formation and general "experience" do not change the brain in this way. Memorizing something, for example, has completely different physical effects.
- amelius 7y ago
  Another example (sort of): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9989562 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9989562
SirensOfTitan 7y ago
One book I’d heavily recommend on meditation is Daniel Ingram’s amazing Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. He really cuts through the fluff and gets to the core of how meditation taken to mastery changes how things are perceived. It’s an absolute tome but so worth it.
- agota 7y ago
  Is it written from a Buddhist perspective or from a secular perspective?
  - abhinavsharma 7y ago
    Not sure about MCTB but TMI was written after this and is a well regarded secular resource https://deconstructingyourself.com/best-meditation-books-2019.html https://deconstructingyourself.com/best-meditation-books-201...
  - 098799 7y ago
    It's definitely using buddhist framework, but he's an empiricist to the bone. Mandatory SSC review: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-the-core-teachings-of-the-buddha/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-...
  - AlexCoventry 7y ago
    Both. He's an over-the-top modernist, but did quite a bit of practice in Burma with Buddhist monks there.
- maneesh 7y ago
  HIGHLY recommended. This summary got me started on a long journey - after 3 years of off and on meditation with apps, reading this article, and then MCTB made meditation one of the most exciting and important parts of my daily routine. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-the-core-teachings-of-the-buddha/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-... Also highly recommended: The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa
asperous 7y ago
Disclaimer I am not a medical scientist: but I'd like to understand more about how they found the participants. It strikes me that people who perform meditation might be different than whatever controls they were able to find. The fact they re-used participants from previous studies also strikes me as worrying. Preferably they would take participants at random and have half perform the meditation for (12 or 24 months) and look for changes. Using self-selection might be more difficult to prove causation.
- raziel2701 7y ago
  The book Altered Traits goes over a lot of the scientific results, I think it's two chapters of the book that cover this stuff. One of the studies they cover studied people who had never meditated, people with 10,000 hours and people with about 36,000 hours of meditation if I recall correctly. This last group is the one that exhibited altered traits, and it's not easy to find people with this many hours of practice, hence why they reuse the participants. All other participants exhibited some of the altered traits but only during intense meditation periods, the master meditators exhibited them all the time. The results from the book are/study are hard to interpret, something about sustaining gamma waves for long periods of time and having younger brains in those that practiced meditation a lot. They also recovered from pain faster, and wouldn't develop anxieties about it. Since these subjects are very interesting, it makes sense to study them again with different techniques or reproducing previous results.
  - 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
    > it's not easy to find people with this many hours of practice, hence why they reuse the participants [...]. Since these subjects are very interesting, it makes sense to study them again with different techniques or reproducing previous results. That's fine as far as it goes. It helps us confirm that a phenomenon can actually occur and perhaps tells us something about its general shape. But when studying a population of known outliers, it's not credible to assume how the results will or won't apply to a broader population. This isn't an abstract epistemological concern; scientific journals are absolutely packed with exciting preliminary findings that vanished into insignificance when somebody did a larger or more rigorous study (but nevertheless might be cherry-picked for a pop-science/self-help book based on the "revolutionary" findings).
Medicalidiot 7y ago
>Meditation training can enhance various cognitive processes, such as emotional regulation, executive control and attention, particularly sustained attention > Most of regions showing thicker cortical thickness in meditators are related with emotional processing Anecdotal experience: I started meditating years ago and what I've noticed is that my emotions are more ephemeral now. Instead of being angry or sad for minutes to hours it's seconds. Also, I feel like I'm able to connect more with what's going on right now instead of what was or what will be. There has been a significant amount of research already demonstrating the benefits of meditation and this adds to it.
- albertshin 7y ago
  I've just recently started practicing more with Headspace and have realized this is what I am being guided towards. I wonder has this affected the way you feel more positive emotions like happiness, joy? Or what about empathy?
  - mbrock 7y ago
    Maybe it’s not simply a reduction in duration but more like kind of a cleaner “soundstage” so to speak, where emotional “sounds” ring and decay in a simpler, purer, less distorted or overdriven way. Like taking away the kind of frazzledness you would associate with stress, inner city pressure, burnout etc—so it’s like going for a hike in some mountains, camping by a lake, waking up early and feeling like everything kind of flows more easily, or at least that would be the ideal when you imagine such a hike. If you stub your toe you scream but quickly come to your senses, so you don’t dwell unnecessarily, but it’s not like sitting around a campfire would be less joyful. A calm mind seems to be a good state for joy and empathy. Also it does seem reasonable to say that the default mood towards other people, without any “acute” emotions going on, is a peaceful, relaxed, curious affection—so maybe kind of cleaning up the emotional noise leaves you with a natural good mood.
    - albertshin 7y ago
      Appreciate the really detailed reply!
cbanek 7y ago
I think it's interesting that they say all the participants are right handed. I'm guessing left handed people (like me) would make it complicated to compare brain strcutures since the structures are cross-wired and therefore slightly different for left handed and right handed people? But not all structures are reversed. Kind of like the medical literature focusing on using males for test studies [1] it makes me wonder if left handed people would have some kind of different result in these types of brain studies. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4800017/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4800017/
- frereubu 7y ago
  If they were selected that way on purpose, they're probably just trying to control for confounding differences to try and make it easier to distinguish the signal from the noise in the statistics. Same reason that "there were no major differences in sex, age or years of education between meditation practitioners and control subjects." Edit: They say "handedness was measured by Annett Hand Preference Questionnaire" which suggests that this wasn't deliberate.
codr7 7y ago
The real benefit of meditation from my perspective is proving to yourself that you're not the voices in your head. I mean, you can't be; since you're obviously capable of observing them from the outside while they go on with their business. What takes practice is staying aware and not feeding them energy by identifying. Once the spell is broken, the conserved energy and improved focus and control changes everything. The mind is indeed a wonderful servant but a terrible master.
- qwerty456127 7y ago
  The next step is to realize that despite you are not the voices in your head, the voices are in fact you and not something independent. Approximately like you are not your hand but your hand is you. Therefore you have power over them and can do whatever you want, at least within your head. It takes some training (especially to become able to exercise this in extreme circumstances, with your amygdalae stressed and with your levels of trytophan, dopa, gaba etc depleted) but you literally can feel whatever you choose to at any given moment.
  - ilrwbwrkhv 7y ago
    can you share some more resources on this? sounds very interesting.
    - TrainedMonkey 7y ago
      That is basic premise of the "The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself". That is where I learned of the concept.
      - scotch_drinker 7y ago
        +1 for this book as a starting point for removing yourself from the tyranny of your emotions.
        thepinkelefant 7y ago
thegabez 7y ago
Anyone else feel like meditation puts them back into the headspace they were when a child pre-k ish. Most notably right before I fell asleep as a child I remember being so relaxed and calm. I'm not sure when I lost that feeling but meditation brings it back for some fleeting moments.
thoughtpalette 7y ago
There's a new show based on the Netflix "Explained" series that's "The Mind". They have a great episode on meditation and go into studies involving monks, etc. Highly recommend if you're curious about meditation.
- abhinavsharma 7y ago
  +1. This episode is a great 20 minute primer on mindfulness meditation https://www.netflix.com/watch/81062191 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81062191
abhinavsharma 7y ago
Some resources on meditation that the HN community might find helpful, generally ones with a scientific, skeptical and secular perspective. Apps Meditation is somewhat inherently incompatible with the late stage venture funded scale based defensibility model of doing business. You actually become less dependent on paid resources as you advance in the skill. For this reason I think the mainstream apps like Calm and Headspace really help in the beginning but plateau you at a level you will continue paying at. That said, don't let this stop you from using what works for you. - My favorite for getting started was 10% Happier. The format is an interview between a skeptic and a usually well trained meditation teacher, usually a founder of the IMS, which started the whole Buddhism in the West movement. Same business model as Calm and Headspace so some of the same problems. [1] - Once past a threshold, most meditators use Insight Timer. They are a much leaner operation and the business model is designed to avoid the pitfalls of having to scale to recoup heavy investment. Books This list. Everything in here is generally high signal/noise ratio, and very little that you have to take on faith. https://deconstructingyourself.com/best-meditation-books-2019.html https://deconstructingyourself.com/best-meditation-books-201... Tools I found that wiring myself up to a low-price EEG and looking at the raw data over a few months was a good way to convince myself all of this works. I use Muse but not their own app, someone out there built an app to chart the raw data called Muse Monitor that's much better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX-4rpCegjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX-4rpCegjk Places (mostly aware of US only) Insight Meditation Society (MA) and Spirit Rock (CA) are mindfulness meditation centers that are a good place to start. If you want something lower-priced Dhamma.org is a much-lower-price (both are donation based but the suggested range varies), worldwide set of spaces but the teachers are less adapted to a western context. [1] https://www.tenpercent.com/ https://www.tenpercent.com/ [2] https://insighttimer.com/blog/something-magical-is-happening-in-the-meditation-space/ https://insighttimer.com/blog/something-magical-is-happening...
- egypturnash 7y ago
  “Once past a threshold, most meditators use Insight Timer” What is this threshold? I’ve been meditating regularly for this whole year and I just use the standard iOS timer with one of the gentler alarms.
hanniabu 7y ago
Anybody have any links for legit on meditating? All I ever find are bogus nonsensical ones that say you need to light candles and get into some funky position and whatnot.
- evil-olive 7y ago
  Why Buddhism is True [0, 1] does an excellent job of covering the modern neuroscience that overlaps much of Buddhist teaching, such as the hedonic treadmill [2], while ignoring the more new-agey / spiritual / not-evidence-based aspects often associated with Buddhism and other eastern religions, such as reincarnation, "auras", etc. When I started my meditation practice, the guided meditations in the Calm app [3] helped me a lot. 0: https://amazon.com/Why-Buddhism-True-Philosophy-Enlightenment/dp/1439195455 https://amazon.com/Why-Buddhism-True-Philosophy-Enlightenmen... 1: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=541610511 https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill 3: https://www.calm.com/ https://www.calm.com/
- ta1234567890 7y ago
  Try the app HeadSpace. Super easy to use and very clear instructions. No candles or funky positions. Also, I would say, the most important thing about meditation is not the technique but the habit. There must be over a hundred or a thousand different meditation techniques, but if you don't practice them regularly, they are all worthless. The most simple one for my taste: sit down (whichever way you want, ideally in a quite place where you won't get disturbed), close your eyes and count your breath from 1 to 10; once you reach 10, start over from 1. If you get lost (I know, sounds impossible, but it happens a lot), start over from 1.
  - wallace_f 7y ago
    >count your breath from 1 to 10; once you reach 10, start over from 1 Thank you for this. I have been trying to count to 10 without any other thoughts entering my mind. Some reflections: 1. I can't get to 10. I always start thinking of something and my minf wanders on about that. 2. How desperate, addicted my mind, body has become for constant stimulation and gratification. It always wants to make the pain insidd myself go away 3. How extremely tired and burned out my mind is. Unfortunately I have particularly hard traumas and hate in my life to deal with, which might make my experience unique. But after just 20 minutes of trying this it has helped me. I have tried meditation before but this method made it a new experience for me. Maybe this last part sounds unusual, but I just focus on letting the oxygen absorb into my brain without using it back up. And also trying to get outside of my mind -- to kind of transcend it and get into third person. I know I am explaining nothing more than feelings and psychological phenomena, but in there is some kind of truths that I dont know how better to describe at the momdent.
logicprog 7y ago
I don't want to come off the wrong way here, and if meditation helps you absolutely totally complete YES THATS GREAT! I'm all for self improvement. But when everyone lists all the benefits of it, I'm not sure I understand how it would benefit me in particular. Let me explain. Here on this page, so far as I can tell, the benefits of meditation are: - focused on the now. Less worried about past/future - less long-term, reason-clouding emotions - more immediate focus - less "head voices" I'll start from the first one in explaining my question. I'm very focused on the now already, it's as simple as that. I've had a lot of people in my life, with all kinds of different experiences with me, notice that I'm very calm and very unstressed. This is, simply, because I go through what's happening right now, deal with it, and move on. I don't dwell on what happened in the past unless there's something really important to be learned there, and I don't worry about the future beyond keeping my options open (try not to burn Bridges, etc). This has been a way of life for me, and it's already very calming and rewarding without the need for wasting huge chunks of my day. My emotions are always extremely short. I can get angry and sad and what have you, but to this day, I've never once in my life been any one emotion for more than five minutes. Of course, I've still acted on some of them, for instance if someone betrays me I won't be mad at them at all in five minutes, but I'll still be wary. I've never been able to stay in any one particular emotional mode, even if I try to psyche myself into it. I just get bored. As for focus, for as long as I can remember I've been able to put myself in a hyper-focus mode where all other thoughts, about anything else (including bodily functions) just go away; where external distractions such as noise just don't even register anymore. The longest I've been able to do this is eight hours, where I sat down to work on something and didn't speak or eat or go to the bathroom until I was done, in a noisy crowded room, completely unbothered. This is something people seem to describe as a superpower you gain after meditation but I've never meditated once in my life. As far as the "voices in the head" thing goes, I hear this from people a lot, where they describe their internal experience as if they have someone else second guessing them or pointing things out, like a Freudian super-ego given its own internal dialogue. In all honesty, I've never experienced this. I don't really understand what people are talking about when they describe this. So I guess my question is, why should I, specifically, meditate? It sounds cool, I'd be willing to try. Are there any other benefits? Also; what the heck are the head voices people talk about?
- 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cryptozeus 7y ago
Meditation is great but lately I have been thinking that it is a great fix for the side effects of the original issue. If you have stress in your life then meditation can help reduce that but it will by no means fix the original issue.
- V3ritas1337 7y ago
  Meditation is not just to do with stress, but it gives you the tools to deal with situations with more control, it's something worth doing even if you're not stressed. It could be helpful treating mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD; ironically your goal during meditation should be to have no goal.
- joncrane 7y ago
  Well it can't hurt. Making me better at dealing with stress is a win. Giving me enough space so that I can recognize the source of the stress is the next win. Having the space to determine the best next course of action is the next win after that. This usually involves consulting with others. Finally, having that little oomph to put in the work to make the change is the big tipping point. But it's totally worth it even if all you get the the first win.
doubleunplussed 7y ago
For anyone looking for a meditation app, Sam Harris's "Waking up" app may frame things in a way more palatable to the average HN reader. No woo, attempts to explain what's actually going on, clear demarcation between helpful cues vs facts vs opinions. Other guided meditation instructors blur these things a bit more liberally, and that can be distracting for some people (including me).
dartdartdart 7y ago
What's HN favorite guide get started with meditation?
- jakeogh 7y ago
  Novice here, yoga was my intro.
- avtar 7y ago
  The Mind Illuminated is a fairly comprehensive one.
  - nprateem 7y ago
    I must say I struggled with this. It seemed like it should have been a good book, but I got lost in its various stages and its volume. I've posted my favourite meditation book elsewhere. It just cuts straight through to the core, but perhaps it just seems that way given my own experience. YMMV.
- maneesh 7y ago
  The Mind Illuminated as a tactical guide, and Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha as a map of the overall path
crispinb 7y ago
The title is, to put it mildly, overblown. It's a comparative study of two small meditating & non-meditating populations, with no attempt to investigate causality. As usual with studies of this type, there's a disclaimer to that effect in the Discussion, essentially contradicting the paragraphs it follows. What's more, it's not even a study of 'meditation' per se, but of one little-known practice: > The recruited meditation practitioners were individuals trained with BWV, a meditation practice that combines ancient Eastern philosophy with modern scientific methods to elevate human awareness So at most this shows some small brain structure differences between two non-randomly-selected populations. Despite a heroic attempt (figure 3) it doesn't even find a dose response of note.
- themodelplumber 7y ago
  Oh no. Is it a BWV promotion attempt of some sort? Or calculated to prop up the commercial promotion of the activity? That would be disappointing...
  - crispinb 7y ago
    There's nothing in the 'Conflict of Interest' section to suggest that. Getting a cohort of experienced meditators together is not the easiest so perhaps they're just using what (who) they have. I know nothing about BMV but an antecedent paper they cite contrasts it with mindfulness, the most commonly-studied form of meditation, and it mentions that BMV involves movement, so it at least seems to be an atypical practice.
  - monkeycantype 7y ago
    The authors are associated with the Korea Institute of Brain Science. (Hover over their names in the paper) Ilchi Lee is the president of the institute and the owner of 'Brain Wave Vibration' http://www.brainkibs.org/About/Greeting.asp http://www.brainkibs.org/About/Greeting.asp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_%26_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_%26_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilchi_Lee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilchi_Lee
    - 7y ago
shekharshan 7y ago
I don’t know whether the meditators used in this study were training under Buddhist methods or something else. Buddhist teaching focuses on three aspects: sila (morality, but not in Abrahimic sense), samadhi (concentration), and panna (wisdom). Each of these form a feedback loop into each other. Meditation is just one third of that. Meditation without morality and wisdom can turn you into a psychopath. You cannot understand or study meditation without understanding morality and wisdom.
- crispinb 7y ago
  > I don’t know whether the meditators used in this study were training under Buddhist methods or something else "Methods"
- maneesh 7y ago
  In Buddhist teachings, both samadhi and panna (related to vipassana) are forms of meditation. Samadhi is concentration meditation, to get single-pointed focus on the meditation-object. (often the breath) Panna/Vipassana is insight meditation. You focus on all of the different sensations coming in rapid-fire, like noting 'thought, breath, sound, sound, thought, sound, pressure' as they arise -- like frames of a movie or video game. The Buddha and teachers today often recommend concentration meditation, in order to reach a state of focus, followed by insight meditation, as the natural progression towards stream entry / nirvana.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Aside: >sila (morality, but not in Abrahimic sense) // Would you care to expand on that, specifically the "not in [the] Abrahimic sense" part. I'm not particularly familiar with Buddhist teaching of what morality is but it sounds from wikipedia as if there is a large overlap in form to Abrahamic teaching. What would you say are the main differences?
  - shekharshan 7y ago
    Different as in the reason for morality. Why is morality important? It is not because a soul will be judged for violating 'thou shall' commandments. It is explained more in terms of Karma, the intentions your mind generates (karma) will be the forerunner to future states of your mind. Think of it in terms of causality in the context of plasticity of your mind. Your mind becomes conditioned by intentions it generates. The intention for greed will lead to a more greedy future state of the mind. Here is a short explanation of 'sila' (morality) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VBbQvM4CBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VBbQvM4CBY
loblollyboy 7y ago
There were only forty something controls and forty something meditators, and if you look at the variance within each group it is way more than the "increase" of the average due to meditation AND some of the brain regions are thicker on average in the non-meditators group. I haven't taken bio since highschool, but it seems like you can't draw a conclusion from this. Am I missing something here? Also, this is something I've always wondered, and I guess the only way to get a real answer would be to try meditating. But as a distance runner, I have always wondered if that is a form of meditation. It seems like I have all of the effects described by meditators, and in this study, they described a form of meditation which was movement and paying attention to the physical sensations - which is basically most sports. Any endurance athlete meditators out there who can explain the difference?
- geomark 7y ago
  I think a big difference is that in sports, although you are aware of internal processes, a large amount of your attention is on external things, as it must be so you don't run off a cliff, for example. When meditating you turn your attention inwards, perhaps at first observing bodily sensations, but continuing inward until the body fades away and only mental processes are observed and there is no attention given to the external senses.
  - collyw 7y ago
    But you are often focused on the present moment, not thinking about the future or the past - which is one thing that most mindfulness training seems to teach.
- evil-olive 7y ago
  > But as a distance runner, I have always wondered if that is a form of meditation. The way I think about this is that there's an important difference between meditation (as a noun) vs. meditative (as an adjective). Meditation, when you're doing it, is the only thing you're doing, or at least attempting to do. I've gone on multiple-day camping trips on my motorcycle, when it's just me and my bike out in the middle of nowhere. I find that very meditative, in what I imagine is similar to what you feel with long-distance running. There's a part of my brain engaged with controlling my body and four limbs, but also a part of my brain that's not really engaged at all and is free to wander. That's meditative, but that's not meditation. If I closed my eyes for a few minutes while riding my motorcycle, my happiness would decrease significantly. This isn't to say that one is better than the other. You could meditate and never do any meditative activities, or you could do meditative activities without ever once meditating. The best option, as usual, is probably a moderate mix of both of them.
bane 7y ago
Not a brain surgeon here...some of the comments appear to just assume that whatever this means it must be good. Is it? Or are long term meditators doing irreparable brain damage to themselves? My gut feeling is that meditation will strengthen portions of the brain that control impulses and emotions, but I don't know enough about the brain anatomy referenced here to understand what's going on.
- taneq 7y ago
  You'll see this on HN every time meditation comes up. Apparently a fair proportion of posters here are convinced that meditation is self-evidently and infallibly beneficial.
  - emptysongglass 7y ago
    Rather than driving by with some shade, you could see for yourself. It is self-evidently beneficial but that requires putting the "self" in the self-evidently. This casual scorn does nothing good for anyone least of all you.
    - taneq 7y ago
      I feel like you're making my point here.
insanitywanted 7y ago
TLDR?
- esquire_900 7y ago
  "Our findings suggest that long-term meditators have structural differences in both gray and white matter."
natmaka 7y ago
As the study points it out ("cross-sectional/longitudinal design") there may be a fundamental flaw in any conclusion one may draw from it: which part of any difference between observed populations is a "cause" (leading the subject to meditate), and which is an effect of it? To illustrate the point let's say (as a maybe slightly contrived hypothesis) that meditation is interesting for you, or maybe even that you can only tolerate practicing it seriously, _iff_ (if and only if) your brain has the adequate structure, or is predisposed to evolve towards it.
tasty_freeze 7y ago
I've often read of the benefits of meditation, and I don't doubt many find it helpful. But do the benefits apply to people who are naturally calm and not tense? An often a cited benefit is feeling calm and being able to let go of tension and anxiety, and having a clarity of thought. But I rarely feel tense/anxious so the investment of time has never been attractive to me.
- nprateem 7y ago
  "Just relax". For me, this was the single most useless piece of meditative advice I ever heard, and everyone parrots it. I thought I was relaxed. But then periodically over time I'd discover "oh, my neck has just relaxed", "oh, my breathing diaphragm has relaxed", etc. Then I'd fight to recreate the relaxation in another session and had literally no idea how to relax before meditating to counter the stresses of daily life. I tried body scans, alternately tensing and relaxing muscle groups - nothing worked for me. Having recently been able to become truly, deeply relaxed by actually learning how to breathe correctly (right into the pelvic floor) it's miles away from just not feeling obviously tense in my daily life. My breathing rate drops to a crawl (I inhale, hold without strain for around 2 minutes then exhale and naturally hold air outside for a minute or two). The whole body tingles with relaxation. The effects are truly noticable. > But do the benefits apply to people who are naturally calm and not tense? As a Type B personality myself, I would say "definitely".
visarga 7y ago
What I would like to see in a study is the effect of meditation practice. Are meditators living longer, accomplishing more, being happier? I have seen many long term meditators and been one for 20 years and am not convinced they are more fit for life. Instead of developing their lives and careers they developed their practice and missed out on opportunities. Most of them are alone at 45-50 y.o. with a lousy job, living frugally. What was the benefit? If meditation was such an advantage then societies where this is a traditional practice should be more developed and happier, but this doesn't strike me as being true. Being too detached and contemplative can have downsides. Is hacking your brain to feel ecstatic useful for life, or just a shortcut to rewards, like drugs?
- starpilot 7y ago
  Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
igammarays 7y ago
Better emotional regulation may be a clear positive, but it’s not without it’s isolated effects. I, for one, found it more difficult casually socialize due to my calmer demeanour and non-engagement in risky behaviours like late nighters or excessive drinking. I’m not just saying that being “too responsible” can affect your social life, but it can also affect your ability to connect with “common folks” due to your (perceived?) existence on another plane of being.
- idclip 7y ago
  I have a similar issue. I am tackelling it by combinimg daoism practice and reading with vipassana to work on socializing and intimacy.
- mordechai9000 7y ago
  I dislike the idea that not engaging in risky drinking somehow cripples your social life. I think there are opportunities for much more healthy and meaningful socialization when it isn't centered around alcohol and late nights on the bar scene. And you can meet a wider range of people, and engage in varied and interesting activities. I suppose you are less likely to find casual hookups, but there's an app for that now, anyway.
nicodds 7y ago
It seems like the story of the chicken or the egg: do these differences come from meditation or are they the reason that push people towards meditation?
SZJX 7y ago
Can anybody actually explain what the result implies? > Meditators, compared with controls, showed significantly greater cortical thickness in the anterior regions of the brain, located in frontal and temporal areas, including the medial prefrontal cortex, superior frontal cortex, temporal pole and the middle and interior temporal cortices. Significantly thinner cortical thickness was found in the posterior regions of the brain, located in the parietal and occipital areas, including the postcentral cortex, inferior parietal cortex, middle occipital cortex and posterior cingulate cortex. Moreover, in the region adjacent to the medial prefrontal cortex, both higher fractional anisotropy values and greater cortical thickness were observed. I don't think a non-professional could have any idea what this passage actually means, without knowing what each above-mentioned brain area is actually responsible for. Apparently some areas got thicker while some others got thinner. Is it unconditionally a good thing?
- jkp56 7y ago
  I think this is like making an observation that a serious runner has bigger leg muscles. That's a correct observation, albeit useless.
- jumpi 7y ago
  can't explain, but I can point to the discussion section of that paper, where that sentence is expanded and some of the mentioned cortexes (cortices? I don't know) are associated with presumed body/mental functions.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Variously I've heard those who work on brains (physically and mentally) say that locating function in a particular area is akin to Phrenology and has no place in modern scientific understanding of the brain. As an outsider that seemed wrong as brain functions are always described in pop science as being located strongly, but presumably the individual brain's adaptations make this something that can't be generalised too broadly?
    - en-us 7y ago
ninkendo 7y ago
Are there any apps out there that can help get me into meditation, which don’t require any of my personal information? I almost tried headspace, but the first thing it did was make me create an account, so I deleted it. I’m willing to pay money, but I don’t want a continuing relationship with a meditation app. Edit: and I just tried calm, and same thing. Doesn’t let you do anything until you create an account with them. Why does a meditation app need an account? Why does it need to be some VC funded growth hacking startup nonsense? Can’t I just buy a thing and use it?
- caltrain 7y ago
  What you are asking for is a timer. Not an app. https://www.amazon.com/Uigos-Digital-Kitchen-Magnetic-Backing/dp/B01L8XF7AK https://www.amazon.com/Uigos-Digital-Kitchen-Magnetic-Backin...
  - ninkendo 7y ago
    I mean sure, but I was hoping for something that could guide me through it for the first few sessions at least. I suppose I could just listen to a guided meditation album, but why is it so rare for there to be an app that doesn’t need you to sign up and give them your personal information?
    - qwerty456127 7y ago
      > I mean sure, but I was hoping for something that could guide me through it for the first few sessions at least. Try Muse. It's a hardware EEG headset + 2 apps: one for pure EEG monitoring and recording and one for guided meditations. Seeing an objective confirmation of the fact you actually are doing something and progress helps a lot. Being able to influence the plot on the screen with your will alone is an awesome experience too. > why is it so rare for there to be an app that doesn’t need you to sign up and give them your personal information? That's sad indeed. If you are afraid somebody can misuse this data - just go to YouTube. There are enough of great buddhist teachers (e.g. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche) who explain everything and guide you through meditations there.
exdkv 7y ago
My personal issue with meditation is inability to be non-judjemental. I am not aware of the variety of meditation techniques, the only few that I've tried were simple body scan and focusing on breath. The common advice from all of the guides that I've followed so far was 'concentrate on a thing (breath or body scan or whatever) and if your focus has switched to some arbitraty not-connected thing, just recognize that and move your focus back, not blaming or judging yourself for losing focus'. This last 'not blaming or judging' is a real problem for me. I just cannot stop thinking of myself like 'hey, you've failed to keep focus again, shame on you'. As a result, to the end of the session I feel even more nervous, distracted and generally worse that it was before the session. This used to be different for me a number of years ago, when I've just started trying to meditate. I remember that my first attempts really allowed me to relax and stay away from the daily stress. But this first streak lasted not more than a month, and the latter ones worked worse with every other try. Have anyone ever felt the same? What would be a good solution for this problem?
- awgm 7y ago
  Find a good teacher
kolektivc 7y ago
There is a new technique out there, with a different approach, but in the end you will have to decide what works best for yourself. TRANScendent MEDITATION: NLP, Hypnosis & Mindfulness method course How to quickly stay longer into meditation state, practically use mindfulness and get results with your meditation today! Explore and try techniques that you feel aligned with on some level. I try many of them and I finally make my own technique that is working great for me, and apparently for more than 600 students since May 2019 ENROLL NOW 30 Day money-back guarantee https://www.udemy.com/meditation-nlp-hypnosis-mindfulness-meditation-course-meditation/ https://www.udemy.com/meditation-nlp-hypnosis-mindfulness-me... You will learn: How to instantly have higher meditative states of mind and experience benefits during the course Quickly enter meditation state and improve your mood whenever you desire Stay in a perfect state of mind with NLP techniques and natural control and quality of your visualizations Practically use the knowledge in everyday life situations and have tangible results today Save time with this one-time process and solutions for most common problems in meditation practices Self-exploration beyond your conscious limits and better relationship with your subconscious mind Course lessons: Lesson 1 Common problems in meditation and Transcendent Meditation solutions Lesson 2 TRANScendent meditation questions Lesson 3 TRANScendent meditation loop Lesson 4 Demonstration of Transcendent Meditation process Lesson 5 Doing the Transcendent Meditation process individually or with partner Lesson 6 Most powerful Affirmations creation with Transcendent Meditation Lesson 7 Using NLP Submodalities for a better quality of your meditation visualizations Lesson 8 NLP Stabilization of your inner world during meditation Lesson 9 Application of Benign attention in meditation practice Lesson 10 Grounding and exiting meditation state the way it makes you productive Lesson 11 Starting points of meditation process for self-exploration beyond your known limits Lesson 12 Practically use meditation and mindfulness to improve every day of your life. Lesson 13 NLP Behavior secrets of peak performers Lesson 14 Conclusion Lesson 15 BONUS Technique + Guided meditation Mp3 ENROLL NOW 30 Day money-back guarantee https://www.udemy.com/meditation-nlp-hypnosis-mindfulness-meditation-course-meditation/ https://www.udemy.com/meditation-nlp-hypnosis-mindfulness-me... Get more: CLARITY, AWARENESS, and FOCUS Have more: ENERGY, MOTIVATION, and ENTHUSIASM Increase your: PROBLEM SOLVING, CREATIVITY and IMAGINATION Improve your: WELL BEING, CALMNESS, and SELF-LOVING Check it out, it just could be what you are looking for TRANScendent MEDITATION: NLP, Hypnosis & Mindfulness method: Have results with your meditation today ENROLL NOW 30 Day money-back guarantee https://www.udemy.com/meditation-nlp-hypnosis-mindfulness-meditation-course-meditation/ https://www.udemy.com/meditation-nlp-hypnosis-mindfulness-me... Stay curious and have fun!

472 points by idclip 7y ago

stochastic_monk 7y ago

[2013]

Bootwizard 7y ago
Does that really matter? People have been meditating for thousands of years so 6 years is a very recent study.
- cbanek 7y ago
  It's just standard HN policy to let people know it's not exactly new (but still interesting), and many people, myself included, sometimes miss publish dates. So anything that isn't this year gets the year in the title.
  - stochastic_monk 7y ago
    Otherwise, I’m inclined to believe that this is new because this is “Hacker News”.

ericsoderstrom 7y ago

Any memory you form, skill you learn or experience you have will change the structure of the brain. Changing structure isn’t in itself a good thing.

frereubu 7y ago
They're not claiming otherwise. Last sentence of the abstract: "Our findings suggest that long-term meditators have structural differences in both gray and white matter." They also talk about where in the brain there are structural changes and what kind of changes they are. Your comment reads like a criticism of some kind, but it would only be valid if the article was just the title and nothing else.
- ericsoderstrom 7y ago
  My comment wasn't meant as a criticism of the article. The authors are careful in the claims they make. My point is that they are for the most part uninteresting claims. And articles like this are shared predominately because "changing brain structure" is mistakenly read as "provably does something good for your brain."
Barrin92 7y ago
the abstract seems to point out (if I understood it correctly, I'm not a neuroscientist) that the relevant changes in the brain are usually associated with centers of the brain that regulate emotional control and prolonged attention, which I would definitely identify as positive if true, and in line with personal experience with mindfulness practise as a way to deal with anxiety and panic attacks.
- surfsvammel 7y ago
  I mean. Many types of meditation is just that, practicing attention and self control. So would make sense that those skills would improve. After practicing meditation myself for a couple of years I have noticed no difference what-so-ever. But the act of meditation itself de-stress me (is that a word?)-—relaxing wouldn’t be the right word, because it is not relaxation. Anyway. I’m quite sure I could get the same stress relief by just sit to by down and reading a book.
  - dbtc 7y ago
    What sort of meditation have you been practicing? (I think it's useful to be specific, since there are so many different kinds, and also I am merely curious.)
    - surfsvammel 7y ago
      Mindfulness meditation
  - wolco 7y ago
    You need to alter your practice. You have reached a point where you are too comfortable.
    - surfsvammel 7y ago
      Why? You seem to imply that there is a progress or goal to meditation, or that there is one desirable, expected, outcome. I am not sure I agree to such a thing. Meditation is a different to different people. I am happy what meditation is to me, and I see no reason—nor do I want to—change it.
guerrilla 7y ago
Where did you see a value judgement in the study? Also, no, memory formation and general "experience" do not change the brain in this way. Memorizing something, for example, has completely different physical effects.
amelius 7y ago
Another example (sort of): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9989562 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9989562

SirensOfTitan 7y ago

One book I’d heavily recommend on meditation is Daniel Ingram’s amazing Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. He really cuts through the fluff and gets to the core of how meditation taken to mastery changes how things are perceived. It’s an absolute tome but so worth it.

agota 7y ago
Is it written from a Buddhist perspective or from a secular perspective?
- abhinavsharma 7y ago
  Not sure about MCTB but TMI was written after this and is a well regarded secular resource https://deconstructingyourself.com/best-meditation-books-2019.html https://deconstructingyourself.com/best-meditation-books-201...
- 098799 7y ago
  It's definitely using buddhist framework, but he's an empiricist to the bone. Mandatory SSC review: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-the-core-teachings-of-the-buddha/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-...
- AlexCoventry 7y ago
  Both. He's an over-the-top modernist, but did quite a bit of practice in Burma with Buddhist monks there.
maneesh 7y ago
HIGHLY recommended. This summary got me started on a long journey - after 3 years of off and on meditation with apps, reading this article, and then MCTB made meditation one of the most exciting and important parts of my daily routine. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-the-core-teachings-of-the-buddha/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-... Also highly recommended: The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa

asperous 7y ago

Disclaimer I am not a medical scientist: but I'd like to understand more about how they found the participants. It strikes me that people who perform meditation might be different than whatever controls they were able to find. The fact they re-used participants from previous studies also strikes me as worrying. Preferably they would take participants at random and have half perform the meditation for (12 or 24 months) and look for changes. Using self-selection might be more difficult to prove causation.

raziel2701 7y ago
The book Altered Traits goes over a lot of the scientific results, I think it's two chapters of the book that cover this stuff. One of the studies they cover studied people who had never meditated, people with 10,000 hours and people with about 36,000 hours of meditation if I recall correctly. This last group is the one that exhibited altered traits, and it's not easy to find people with this many hours of practice, hence why they reuse the participants. All other participants exhibited some of the altered traits but only during intense meditation periods, the master meditators exhibited them all the time. The results from the book are/study are hard to interpret, something about sustaining gamma waves for long periods of time and having younger brains in those that practiced meditation a lot. They also recovered from pain faster, and wouldn't develop anxieties about it. Since these subjects are very interesting, it makes sense to study them again with different techniques or reproducing previous results.
- 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
  > it's not easy to find people with this many hours of practice, hence why they reuse the participants [...]. Since these subjects are very interesting, it makes sense to study them again with different techniques or reproducing previous results. That's fine as far as it goes. It helps us confirm that a phenomenon can actually occur and perhaps tells us something about its general shape. But when studying a population of known outliers, it's not credible to assume how the results will or won't apply to a broader population. This isn't an abstract epistemological concern; scientific journals are absolutely packed with exciting preliminary findings that vanished into insignificance when somebody did a larger or more rigorous study (but nevertheless might be cherry-picked for a pop-science/self-help book based on the "revolutionary" findings).

Medicalidiot 7y ago

>Meditation training can enhance various cognitive processes, such as emotional regulation, executive control and attention, particularly sustained attention > Most of regions showing thicker cortical thickness in meditators are related with emotional processing Anecdotal experience: I started meditating years ago and what I've noticed is that my emotions are more ephemeral now. Instead of being angry or sad for minutes to hours it's seconds. Also, I feel like I'm able to connect more with what's going on right now instead of what was or what will be. There has been a significant amount of research already demonstrating the benefits of meditation and this adds to it.

albertshin 7y ago
I've just recently started practicing more with Headspace and have realized this is what I am being guided towards. I wonder has this affected the way you feel more positive emotions like happiness, joy? Or what about empathy?
- mbrock 7y ago
  Maybe it’s not simply a reduction in duration but more like kind of a cleaner “soundstage” so to speak, where emotional “sounds” ring and decay in a simpler, purer, less distorted or overdriven way. Like taking away the kind of frazzledness you would associate with stress, inner city pressure, burnout etc—so it’s like going for a hike in some mountains, camping by a lake, waking up early and feeling like everything kind of flows more easily, or at least that would be the ideal when you imagine such a hike. If you stub your toe you scream but quickly come to your senses, so you don’t dwell unnecessarily, but it’s not like sitting around a campfire would be less joyful. A calm mind seems to be a good state for joy and empathy. Also it does seem reasonable to say that the default mood towards other people, without any “acute” emotions going on, is a peaceful, relaxed, curious affection—so maybe kind of cleaning up the emotional noise leaves you with a natural good mood.
  - albertshin 7y ago
    Appreciate the really detailed reply!

cbanek 7y ago

I think it's interesting that they say all the participants are right handed. I'm guessing left handed people (like me) would make it complicated to compare brain strcutures since the structures are cross-wired and therefore slightly different for left handed and right handed people? But not all structures are reversed. Kind of like the medical literature focusing on using males for test studies [1] it makes me wonder if left handed people would have some kind of different result in these types of brain studies. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4800017/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4800017/

frereubu 7y ago
If they were selected that way on purpose, they're probably just trying to control for confounding differences to try and make it easier to distinguish the signal from the noise in the statistics. Same reason that "there were no major differences in sex, age or years of education between meditation practitioners and control subjects." Edit: They say "handedness was measured by Annett Hand Preference Questionnaire" which suggests that this wasn't deliberate.

codr7 7y ago

The real benefit of meditation from my perspective is proving to yourself that you're not the voices in your head. I mean, you can't be; since you're obviously capable of observing them from the outside while they go on with their business. What takes practice is staying aware and not feeding them energy by identifying. Once the spell is broken, the conserved energy and improved focus and control changes everything. The mind is indeed a wonderful servant but a terrible master.

qwerty456127 7y ago
The next step is to realize that despite you are not the voices in your head, the voices are in fact you and not something independent. Approximately like you are not your hand but your hand is you. Therefore you have power over them and can do whatever you want, at least within your head. It takes some training (especially to become able to exercise this in extreme circumstances, with your amygdalae stressed and with your levels of trytophan, dopa, gaba etc depleted) but you literally can feel whatever you choose to at any given moment.
- ilrwbwrkhv 7y ago
  can you share some more resources on this? sounds very interesting.
  - TrainedMonkey 7y ago
    That is basic premise of the "The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself". That is where I learned of the concept.
    - scotch_drinker 7y ago
      +1 for this book as a starting point for removing yourself from the tyranny of your emotions.
      - thepinkelefant 7y ago

thegabez 7y ago

Anyone else feel like meditation puts them back into the headspace they were when a child pre-k ish. Most notably right before I fell asleep as a child I remember being so relaxed and calm. I'm not sure when I lost that feeling but meditation brings it back for some fleeting moments.

thoughtpalette 7y ago

There's a new show based on the Netflix "Explained" series that's "The Mind". They have a great episode on meditation and go into studies involving monks, etc. Highly recommend if you're curious about meditation.

abhinavsharma 7y ago
+1. This episode is a great 20 minute primer on mindfulness meditation https://www.netflix.com/watch/81062191 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81062191

abhinavsharma 7y ago

Some resources on meditation that the HN community might find helpful, generally ones with a scientific, skeptical and secular perspective. Apps Meditation is somewhat inherently incompatible with the late stage venture funded scale based defensibility model of doing business. You actually become less dependent on paid resources as you advance in the skill. For this reason I think the mainstream apps like Calm and Headspace really help in the beginning but plateau you at a level you will continue paying at. That said, don't let this stop you from using what works for you. - My favorite for getting started was 10% Happier. The format is an interview between a skeptic and a usually well trained meditation teacher, usually a founder of the IMS, which started the whole Buddhism in the West movement. Same business model as Calm and Headspace so some of the same problems. [1] - Once past a threshold, most meditators use Insight Timer. They are a much leaner operation and the business model is designed to avoid the pitfalls of having to scale to recoup heavy investment. Books This list. Everything in here is generally high signal/noise ratio, and very little that you have to take on faith. https://deconstructingyourself.com/best-meditation-books-2019.html https://deconstructingyourself.com/best-meditation-books-201... Tools I found that wiring myself up to a low-price EEG and looking at the raw data over a few months was a good way to convince myself all of this works. I use Muse but not their own app, someone out there built an app to chart the raw data called Muse Monitor that's much better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX-4rpCegjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX-4rpCegjk Places (mostly aware of US only) Insight Meditation Society (MA) and Spirit Rock (CA) are mindfulness meditation centers that are a good place to start. If you want something lower-priced Dhamma.org is a much-lower-price (both are donation based but the suggested range varies), worldwide set of spaces but the teachers are less adapted to a western context. [1] https://www.tenpercent.com/ https://www.tenpercent.com/ [2] https://insighttimer.com/blog/something-magical-is-happening-in-the-meditation-space/ https://insighttimer.com/blog/something-magical-is-happening...

egypturnash 7y ago
“Once past a threshold, most meditators use Insight Timer” What is this threshold? I’ve been meditating regularly for this whole year and I just use the standard iOS timer with one of the gentler alarms.

hanniabu 7y ago

Anybody have any links for legit on meditating? All I ever find are bogus nonsensical ones that say you need to light candles and get into some funky position and whatnot.

evil-olive 7y ago
Why Buddhism is True [0, 1] does an excellent job of covering the modern neuroscience that overlaps much of Buddhist teaching, such as the hedonic treadmill [2], while ignoring the more new-agey / spiritual / not-evidence-based aspects often associated with Buddhism and other eastern religions, such as reincarnation, "auras", etc. When I started my meditation practice, the guided meditations in the Calm app [3] helped me a lot. 0: https://amazon.com/Why-Buddhism-True-Philosophy-Enlightenment/dp/1439195455 https://amazon.com/Why-Buddhism-True-Philosophy-Enlightenmen... 1: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=541610511 https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill 3: https://www.calm.com/ https://www.calm.com/
ta1234567890 7y ago
Try the app HeadSpace. Super easy to use and very clear instructions. No candles or funky positions. Also, I would say, the most important thing about meditation is not the technique but the habit. There must be over a hundred or a thousand different meditation techniques, but if you don't practice them regularly, they are all worthless. The most simple one for my taste: sit down (whichever way you want, ideally in a quite place where you won't get disturbed), close your eyes and count your breath from 1 to 10; once you reach 10, start over from 1. If you get lost (I know, sounds impossible, but it happens a lot), start over from 1.
- wallace_f 7y ago
  >count your breath from 1 to 10; once you reach 10, start over from 1 Thank you for this. I have been trying to count to 10 without any other thoughts entering my mind. Some reflections: 1. I can't get to 10. I always start thinking of something and my minf wanders on about that. 2. How desperate, addicted my mind, body has become for constant stimulation and gratification. It always wants to make the pain insidd myself go away 3. How extremely tired and burned out my mind is. Unfortunately I have particularly hard traumas and hate in my life to deal with, which might make my experience unique. But after just 20 minutes of trying this it has helped me. I have tried meditation before but this method made it a new experience for me. Maybe this last part sounds unusual, but I just focus on letting the oxygen absorb into my brain without using it back up. And also trying to get outside of my mind -- to kind of transcend it and get into third person. I know I am explaining nothing more than feelings and psychological phenomena, but in there is some kind of truths that I dont know how better to describe at the momdent.

logicprog 7y ago

I don't want to come off the wrong way here, and if meditation helps you absolutely totally complete YES THATS GREAT! I'm all for self improvement. But when everyone lists all the benefits of it, I'm not sure I understand how it would benefit me in particular. Let me explain. Here on this page, so far as I can tell, the benefits of meditation are: - focused on the now. Less worried about past/future - less long-term, reason-clouding emotions - more immediate focus - less "head voices" I'll start from the first one in explaining my question. I'm very focused on the now already, it's as simple as that. I've had a lot of people in my life, with all kinds of different experiences with me, notice that I'm very calm and very unstressed. This is, simply, because I go through what's happening right now, deal with it, and move on. I don't dwell on what happened in the past unless there's something really important to be learned there, and I don't worry about the future beyond keeping my options open (try not to burn Bridges, etc). This has been a way of life for me, and it's already very calming and rewarding without the need for wasting huge chunks of my day. My emotions are always extremely short. I can get angry and sad and what have you, but to this day, I've never once in my life been any one emotion for more than five minutes. Of course, I've still acted on some of them, for instance if someone betrays me I won't be mad at them at all in five minutes, but I'll still be wary. I've never been able to stay in any one particular emotional mode, even if I try to psyche myself into it. I just get bored. As for focus, for as long as I can remember I've been able to put myself in a hyper-focus mode where all other thoughts, about anything else (including bodily functions) just go away; where external distractions such as noise just don't even register anymore. The longest I've been able to do this is eight hours, where I sat down to work on something and didn't speak or eat or go to the bathroom until I was done, in a noisy crowded room, completely unbothered. This is something people seem to describe as a superpower you gain after meditation but I've never meditated once in my life. As far as the "voices in the head" thing goes, I hear this from people a lot, where they describe their internal experience as if they have someone else second guessing them or pointing things out, like a Freudian super-ego given its own internal dialogue. In all honesty, I've never experienced this. I don't really understand what people are talking about when they describe this. So I guess my question is, why should I, specifically, meditate? It sounds cool, I'd be willing to try. Are there any other benefits? Also; what the heck are the head voices people talk about?

7y ago

deleted 7y ago

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cryptozeus 7y ago

Meditation is great but lately I have been thinking that it is a great fix for the side effects of the original issue. If you have stress in your life then meditation can help reduce that but it will by no means fix the original issue.

V3ritas1337 7y ago
Meditation is not just to do with stress, but it gives you the tools to deal with situations with more control, it's something worth doing even if you're not stressed. It could be helpful treating mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD; ironically your goal during meditation should be to have no goal.
joncrane 7y ago
Well it can't hurt. Making me better at dealing with stress is a win. Giving me enough space so that I can recognize the source of the stress is the next win. Having the space to determine the best next course of action is the next win after that. This usually involves consulting with others. Finally, having that little oomph to put in the work to make the change is the big tipping point. But it's totally worth it even if all you get the the first win.

doubleunplussed 7y ago

For anyone looking for a meditation app, Sam Harris's "Waking up" app may frame things in a way more palatable to the average HN reader. No woo, attempts to explain what's actually going on, clear demarcation between helpful cues vs facts vs opinions. Other guided meditation instructors blur these things a bit more liberally, and that can be distracting for some people (including me).

dartdartdart 7y ago

What's HN favorite guide get started with meditation?

jakeogh 7y ago
Novice here, yoga was my intro.
avtar 7y ago
The Mind Illuminated is a fairly comprehensive one.
- nprateem 7y ago
  I must say I struggled with this. It seemed like it should have been a good book, but I got lost in its various stages and its volume. I've posted my favourite meditation book elsewhere. It just cuts straight through to the core, but perhaps it just seems that way given my own experience. YMMV.
maneesh 7y ago
The Mind Illuminated as a tactical guide, and Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha as a map of the overall path

crispinb 7y ago

The title is, to put it mildly, overblown. It's a comparative study of two small meditating & non-meditating populations, with no attempt to investigate causality. As usual with studies of this type, there's a disclaimer to that effect in the Discussion, essentially contradicting the paragraphs it follows. What's more, it's not even a study of 'meditation' per se, but of one little-known practice: > The recruited meditation practitioners were individuals trained with BWV, a meditation practice that combines ancient Eastern philosophy with modern scientific methods to elevate human awareness So at most this shows some small brain structure differences between two non-randomly-selected populations. Despite a heroic attempt (figure 3) it doesn't even find a dose response of note.

themodelplumber 7y ago
Oh no. Is it a BWV promotion attempt of some sort? Or calculated to prop up the commercial promotion of the activity? That would be disappointing...
- crispinb 7y ago
  There's nothing in the 'Conflict of Interest' section to suggest that. Getting a cohort of experienced meditators together is not the easiest so perhaps they're just using what (who) they have. I know nothing about BMV but an antecedent paper they cite contrasts it with mindfulness, the most commonly-studied form of meditation, and it mentions that BMV involves movement, so it at least seems to be an atypical practice.
- monkeycantype 7y ago
  The authors are associated with the Korea Institute of Brain Science. (Hover over their names in the paper) Ilchi Lee is the president of the institute and the owner of 'Brain Wave Vibration' http://www.brainkibs.org/About/Greeting.asp http://www.brainkibs.org/About/Greeting.asp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_%26_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_%26_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilchi_Lee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilchi_Lee
  - 7y ago

shekharshan 7y ago

I don’t know whether the meditators used in this study were training under Buddhist methods or something else. Buddhist teaching focuses on three aspects: sila (morality, but not in Abrahimic sense), samadhi (concentration), and panna (wisdom). Each of these form a feedback loop into each other. Meditation is just one third of that. Meditation without morality and wisdom can turn you into a psychopath. You cannot understand or study meditation without understanding morality and wisdom.

crispinb 7y ago
> I don’t know whether the meditators used in this study were training under Buddhist methods or something else "Methods"
maneesh 7y ago
In Buddhist teachings, both samadhi and panna (related to vipassana) are forms of meditation. Samadhi is concentration meditation, to get single-pointed focus on the meditation-object. (often the breath) Panna/Vipassana is insight meditation. You focus on all of the different sensations coming in rapid-fire, like noting 'thought, breath, sound, sound, thought, sound, pressure' as they arise -- like frames of a movie or video game. The Buddha and teachers today often recommend concentration meditation, in order to reach a state of focus, followed by insight meditation, as the natural progression towards stream entry / nirvana.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Aside: >sila (morality, but not in Abrahimic sense) // Would you care to expand on that, specifically the "not in [the] Abrahimic sense" part. I'm not particularly familiar with Buddhist teaching of what morality is but it sounds from wikipedia as if there is a large overlap in form to Abrahamic teaching. What would you say are the main differences?
- shekharshan 7y ago
  Different as in the reason for morality. Why is morality important? It is not because a soul will be judged for violating 'thou shall' commandments. It is explained more in terms of Karma, the intentions your mind generates (karma) will be the forerunner to future states of your mind. Think of it in terms of causality in the context of plasticity of your mind. Your mind becomes conditioned by intentions it generates. The intention for greed will lead to a more greedy future state of the mind. Here is a short explanation of 'sila' (morality) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VBbQvM4CBY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VBbQvM4CBY

loblollyboy 7y ago

There were only forty something controls and forty something meditators, and if you look at the variance within each group it is way more than the "increase" of the average due to meditation AND some of the brain regions are thicker on average in the non-meditators group. I haven't taken bio since highschool, but it seems like you can't draw a conclusion from this. Am I missing something here? Also, this is something I've always wondered, and I guess the only way to get a real answer would be to try meditating. But as a distance runner, I have always wondered if that is a form of meditation. It seems like I have all of the effects described by meditators, and in this study, they described a form of meditation which was movement and paying attention to the physical sensations - which is basically most sports. Any endurance athlete meditators out there who can explain the difference?

geomark 7y ago
I think a big difference is that in sports, although you are aware of internal processes, a large amount of your attention is on external things, as it must be so you don't run off a cliff, for example. When meditating you turn your attention inwards, perhaps at first observing bodily sensations, but continuing inward until the body fades away and only mental processes are observed and there is no attention given to the external senses.
- collyw 7y ago
  But you are often focused on the present moment, not thinking about the future or the past - which is one thing that most mindfulness training seems to teach.
evil-olive 7y ago
> But as a distance runner, I have always wondered if that is a form of meditation. The way I think about this is that there's an important difference between meditation (as a noun) vs. meditative (as an adjective). Meditation, when you're doing it, is the only thing you're doing, or at least attempting to do. I've gone on multiple-day camping trips on my motorcycle, when it's just me and my bike out in the middle of nowhere. I find that very meditative, in what I imagine is similar to what you feel with long-distance running. There's a part of my brain engaged with controlling my body and four limbs, but also a part of my brain that's not really engaged at all and is free to wander. That's meditative, but that's not meditation. If I closed my eyes for a few minutes while riding my motorcycle, my happiness would decrease significantly. This isn't to say that one is better than the other. You could meditate and never do any meditative activities, or you could do meditative activities without ever once meditating. The best option, as usual, is probably a moderate mix of both of them.

bane 7y ago

Not a brain surgeon here...some of the comments appear to just assume that whatever this means it must be good. Is it? Or are long term meditators doing irreparable brain damage to themselves? My gut feeling is that meditation will strengthen portions of the brain that control impulses and emotions, but I don't know enough about the brain anatomy referenced here to understand what's going on.

taneq 7y ago
You'll see this on HN every time meditation comes up. Apparently a fair proportion of posters here are convinced that meditation is self-evidently and infallibly beneficial.
- emptysongglass 7y ago
  Rather than driving by with some shade, you could see for yourself. It is self-evidently beneficial but that requires putting the "self" in the self-evidently. This casual scorn does nothing good for anyone least of all you.
  - taneq 7y ago
    I feel like you're making my point here.

insanitywanted 7y ago

TLDR?

esquire_900 7y ago
"Our findings suggest that long-term meditators have structural differences in both gray and white matter."

natmaka 7y ago

As the study points it out ("cross-sectional/longitudinal design") there may be a fundamental flaw in any conclusion one may draw from it: which part of any difference between observed populations is a "cause" (leading the subject to meditate), and which is an effect of it? To illustrate the point let's say (as a maybe slightly contrived hypothesis) that meditation is interesting for you, or maybe even that you can only tolerate practicing it seriously, _iff_ (if and only if) your brain has the adequate structure, or is predisposed to evolve towards it.

tasty_freeze 7y ago

I've often read of the benefits of meditation, and I don't doubt many find it helpful. But do the benefits apply to people who are naturally calm and not tense? An often a cited benefit is feeling calm and being able to let go of tension and anxiety, and having a clarity of thought. But I rarely feel tense/anxious so the investment of time has never been attractive to me.

nprateem 7y ago
"Just relax". For me, this was the single most useless piece of meditative advice I ever heard, and everyone parrots it. I thought I was relaxed. But then periodically over time I'd discover "oh, my neck has just relaxed", "oh, my breathing diaphragm has relaxed", etc. Then I'd fight to recreate the relaxation in another session and had literally no idea how to relax before meditating to counter the stresses of daily life. I tried body scans, alternately tensing and relaxing muscle groups - nothing worked for me. Having recently been able to become truly, deeply relaxed by actually learning how to breathe correctly (right into the pelvic floor) it's miles away from just not feeling obviously tense in my daily life. My breathing rate drops to a crawl (I inhale, hold without strain for around 2 minutes then exhale and naturally hold air outside for a minute or two). The whole body tingles with relaxation. The effects are truly noticable. > But do the benefits apply to people who are naturally calm and not tense? As a Type B personality myself, I would say "definitely".

visarga 7y ago

What I would like to see in a study is the effect of meditation practice. Are meditators living longer, accomplishing more, being happier? I have seen many long term meditators and been one for 20 years and am not convinced they are more fit for life. Instead of developing their lives and careers they developed their practice and missed out on opportunities. Most of them are alone at 45-50 y.o. with a lousy job, living frugally. What was the benefit? If meditation was such an advantage then societies where this is a traditional practice should be more developed and happier, but this doesn't strike me as being true. Being too detached and contemplative can have downsides. Is hacking your brain to feel ecstatic useful for life, or just a shortcut to rewards, like drugs?

starpilot 7y ago
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

igammarays 7y ago

Better emotional regulation may be a clear positive, but it’s not without it’s isolated effects. I, for one, found it more difficult casually socialize due to my calmer demeanour and non-engagement in risky behaviours like late nighters or excessive drinking. I’m not just saying that being “too responsible” can affect your social life, but it can also affect your ability to connect with “common folks” due to your (perceived?) existence on another plane of being.

idclip 7y ago
I have a similar issue. I am tackelling it by combinimg daoism practice and reading with vipassana to work on socializing and intimacy.
mordechai9000 7y ago
I dislike the idea that not engaging in risky drinking somehow cripples your social life. I think there are opportunities for much more healthy and meaningful socialization when it isn't centered around alcohol and late nights on the bar scene. And you can meet a wider range of people, and engage in varied and interesting activities. I suppose you are less likely to find casual hookups, but there's an app for that now, anyway.

nicodds 7y ago

It seems like the story of the chicken or the egg: do these differences come from meditation or are they the reason that push people towards meditation?

SZJX 7y ago

Can anybody actually explain what the result implies? > Meditators, compared with controls, showed significantly greater cortical thickness in the anterior regions of the brain, located in frontal and temporal areas, including the medial prefrontal cortex, superior frontal cortex, temporal pole and the middle and interior temporal cortices. Significantly thinner cortical thickness was found in the posterior regions of the brain, located in the parietal and occipital areas, including the postcentral cortex, inferior parietal cortex, middle occipital cortex and posterior cingulate cortex. Moreover, in the region adjacent to the medial prefrontal cortex, both higher fractional anisotropy values and greater cortical thickness were observed. I don't think a non-professional could have any idea what this passage actually means, without knowing what each above-mentioned brain area is actually responsible for. Apparently some areas got thicker while some others got thinner. Is it unconditionally a good thing?

jkp56 7y ago
I think this is like making an observation that a serious runner has bigger leg muscles. That's a correct observation, albeit useless.
jumpi 7y ago
can't explain, but I can point to the discussion section of that paper, where that sentence is expanded and some of the mentioned cortexes (cortices? I don't know) are associated with presumed body/mental functions.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Variously I've heard those who work on brains (physically and mentally) say that locating function in a particular area is akin to Phrenology and has no place in modern scientific understanding of the brain. As an outsider that seemed wrong as brain functions are always described in pop science as being located strongly, but presumably the individual brain's adaptations make this something that can't be generalised too broadly?
  - en-us 7y ago

ninkendo 7y ago

Are there any apps out there that can help get me into meditation, which don’t require any of my personal information? I almost tried headspace, but the first thing it did was make me create an account, so I deleted it. I’m willing to pay money, but I don’t want a continuing relationship with a meditation app. Edit: and I just tried calm, and same thing. Doesn’t let you do anything until you create an account with them. Why does a meditation app need an account? Why does it need to be some VC funded growth hacking startup nonsense? Can’t I just buy a thing and use it?

caltrain 7y ago
What you are asking for is a timer. Not an app. https://www.amazon.com/Uigos-Digital-Kitchen-Magnetic-Backing/dp/B01L8XF7AK https://www.amazon.com/Uigos-Digital-Kitchen-Magnetic-Backin...
- ninkendo 7y ago
  I mean sure, but I was hoping for something that could guide me through it for the first few sessions at least. I suppose I could just listen to a guided meditation album, but why is it so rare for there to be an app that doesn’t need you to sign up and give them your personal information?
  - qwerty456127 7y ago
    > I mean sure, but I was hoping for something that could guide me through it for the first few sessions at least. Try Muse. It's a hardware EEG headset + 2 apps: one for pure EEG monitoring and recording and one for guided meditations. Seeing an objective confirmation of the fact you actually are doing something and progress helps a lot. Being able to influence the plot on the screen with your will alone is an awesome experience too. > why is it so rare for there to be an app that doesn’t need you to sign up and give them your personal information? That's sad indeed. If you are afraid somebody can misuse this data - just go to YouTube. There are enough of great buddhist teachers (e.g. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche) who explain everything and guide you through meditations there.

exdkv 7y ago

My personal issue with meditation is inability to be non-judjemental. I am not aware of the variety of meditation techniques, the only few that I've tried were simple body scan and focusing on breath. The common advice from all of the guides that I've followed so far was 'concentrate on a thing (breath or body scan or whatever) and if your focus has switched to some arbitraty not-connected thing, just recognize that and move your focus back, not blaming or judging yourself for losing focus'. This last 'not blaming or judging' is a real problem for me. I just cannot stop thinking of myself like 'hey, you've failed to keep focus again, shame on you'. As a result, to the end of the session I feel even more nervous, distracted and generally worse that it was before the session. This used to be different for me a number of years ago, when I've just started trying to meditate. I remember that my first attempts really allowed me to relax and stay away from the daily stress. But this first streak lasted not more than a month, and the latter ones worked worse with every other try. Have anyone ever felt the same? What would be a good solution for this problem?

awgm 7y ago
Find a good teacher

kolektivc 7y ago

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