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Mindfulness meditation. Sitting with your thoughts and emotions, experiencing them, and understanding them, rather than avoiding them or distracting yourself fr

Mindfulness meditation. Sitting with your thoughts and emotions, experiencing them, and understanding them, rather than avoiding them or distracting yourself from them can have a dramatic effect on your life. And 10 minutes a day for a week can get you far enough to see some real benefits, like reduced stress and increased awareness of unhelpful thought patterns.

samfar90 7y ago
I don't want to sound ridiculous, but I've gotten the same benefits that you seem to describe (I have never tried mindfulness) since I started to smoke weed.
- sgillen 7y ago
  Both things change how you think temporarily. I think they both do so in such a way that you can identify and emotionally deal with stuff that would otherwise remain unresolved.
  - sshine 7y ago
    I'm sorry, but there is a fine line between dealing with stuff and smoking weed, one of which involves dealing with stuff, and the other postponing dealing with stuff.
    - saiya-jin 7y ago
      That's simply not true. I've dealt with hard stuff in my life (ie very long term relationship went into tough sudden breakup) with weed. It gave me a good perspective on it that holds to this day, it made me close the whole topic completely very quickly (1-2 weeks at max) in a rather pleasant way. I've set my life priorities with help of weed. They still hold to this day. I've done some of the best decisions on direction of my life with weed. Looking back +-10 years ago, damn those were some fine decisions. Weed gives me, when alone, often semi-constant stream of very creative ideas just popping out of sub-consciousness. I've come up with ideas for startups at least 50x, often to find later somebody is already well into executing it (often in areas I normally don't touch, ie self-belaying machines for climbing, or self-shaping moving wall for climbing - I never ever saw/heard about any of those, but it seems they are quite popular in US). The rate, amount and depth of those ideas just isn't there when sober. The rate is so high that I sometimes don't manage to record them all. All this was done alone, just me and my emotions. YMMV, but for my introvertish personality type, it works wonders. There are drawbacks of course, like with everything else. But postponing dealing with issues is more of an alcohol style effect.
      - sshine 7y ago
        Okay, so I won't try to rob you of that experience. I've felt creativity and perspective when doing psychoactive drugs, too. The rate of good ideas (or rather, the feeling of that, as it is) was called "interpretation madness" by one podcaster. When you relate alcohol with postponing one's emotions, perhaps this is because you've seen that happen. So have I. But I've also seen dozens of friends get stuck in their emotional (and educational) development for years because of weed. Don't forget the hashishins - the drug is literally named after a bunch of assassins who smoked to forget.
        saiya-jin 7y ago
        Yeah, that's why I mentioned YMMV. I've seen people turn aggressive on weed, but then again they were broken personalities to start with, and alcohol wasn't faring much better. I've witnessed one lady mentioning seeing blood run down the walls during whole trip. Tons of people just giggle with little additional insight. Don't know, maybe mindset thing. It's a mind altering drug, can be quite powerful, can create (easy to shed) psychical dependence. As we say back home about fire - good servant, bad master.
        jmcqk6 7y ago
        >But I've also seen dozens of friends get stuck in their emotional (and educational) development for years because of weed. Weed has different effects on different people. Assuming that weed will have the same effect on everyone is obviously a bad assumption. There are tons of stories about many different things (gluten, msg, sugar, caffiene, coffee, tea, ice cream, tylenol, etc. etc.) having different effects on different people. Sometimes those differences are completely perceptional, and sometimes they are physical, but the outcomes are definitively different. It's a deep cognitive bias to ignore this fact.
    - samfar90 7y ago
      This statement , "postponing dealing with stuff.", is not true, at least not for everyone. At least in my case and according to several testimonies I read/heard. I have never been more apt to deal with issues than since I started smoking weed.
    - sgillen 7y ago
      I think different people use it differently. Certainly a lot of people use it to postpone dealing with stuff. I do think it’s possible to use it as a tool to help you deal with stuff though, and I think that’s what the person I was replying to was doing.
- mapcars 7y ago
  >since I started to smoke weed. There are some similarities in the effect, yes. But the problems with weed is it's effect is temporary and it messes up your awareness. Also you can not do in in many public places. Should I mention that certain types of meditation make you even more intoxicated? :)
  - samfar90 7y ago
    I am curious, like what types of meditation ?
    - mapcars 7y ago
      I'm sorry I will not give direct answer simply because it should not be taken lightly and without proper atmosphere and an experienced guidance can go out of control. But if you keep your interest and intention to try experience something different - I'm sure you will find out.
  - samfar90 7y ago
    And also, the effects of weed do not appear to be temporary. I still get the benefits (minus the drawbacks) hours and days after the last joint.
- Synaesthesia 7y ago
  That’s fine but doesn’t mean people can’t get benefits from mindfulness! Both could be good
- tudorw 7y ago
  Mindfulness is a lot cheaper :)
  - collyw 7y ago
    Depends. I get better effects from meditation after having just completed a ten day course. But it takes a lot of time to get there and to keep doing it on a daily basis. If you used that time for something that earned you money I doubt it would work out cheaper.
  - marc_io 7y ago
    And portable too.
  - samfar90 7y ago
    Totally agree with you!
- aasasd 7y ago
  Weed does open the eyes to how much more relaxed you can be, both emotionally and physically: turns out that normally I have muscles tense that I never even knew about. After that, you begin listening to your body and the brain more, and to track the state of them both instead of taking it for granted. That's how the way to ‘mindfulness’ starts. You learn that the two states are in a feedback loop: if you're tense, you get angry and anxious, which gets you more tense. To break the loop, you could of course hit a blunt, but that's not always an option, or at least not always the best one. Alternatively, you can take some time to free the brain from being hung up on the worries and to free the body from being contorted by tenseness.
- unityByFreedom 7y ago
  Mindfulness is easier than getting weed. You can be mindful of your breathing for 5 seconds, right now. That's all it is, you just sit there letting thoughts come and go, trying to bring focus back to your breathing for 20 minutes. IMO it's better than coffee for acquiring focus and lasts the whole day.
  - samfar90 7y ago
    I will try mindfullness some day
hombre_fatal 7y ago
I find Sam Harris' Waking Up guided meditation lessons the most useful (can find it on mobile app stores, the 30+ lessons are free and start off short and simple). Until those, I thought meditation was inherently coupled with eastern mystic bullshit with zero benefits for anyone who didn't want to buy into a bunch of other baggage. He has a book by the same name as the mobile app. The first chapter (read out loud here) is what first started convincing me that mindfulness was something I should seek out and develop: https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-one/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-one/ I started doing it while laying in bed before falling asleep. Ended up with a daily morning practice sitting up on my bench.
- fellow_human 7y ago
  Interesting that other cultural practices are dismissed as mystic bullshit by default, until a white man introduces it. That makes it more trustworthy other white people.
  - psv1 7y ago
    This is has nothing to do with "cultural practices" or the skin color of whoever introduced it. It's more about answering the question "Is the evidence in favor of this practice strong enough to try it for a while?".
  - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
    Whitewhashing indeed. But harris is not just a random white guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris#Reception
  - henryaj 7y ago
    No, the 'mystic bullshit' is very real in e.g. vipassana (for example, anything about "vibrations") regardless of the race of the speaker
    - dr_dshiv 7y ago
      Why are vibrations associated with mystic bullshit? I've noticed this too, but I don't understand.
sjapkee 7y ago
>Mindfulness meditation Absolutely useless thing which for some reason is shoved into each thread.
- cmstoken 7y ago
  This will help: https://samharris.org/how-to-meditate/ https://samharris.org/how-to-meditate/
- maccard 7y ago
  Rather than dismissing the parents comment, would you tell us why you find it useless and add to the discussion? Personally I found mindfulness to be helpful in unwinding, and I've found that my concentration levels are generally higher than they were before I started using it. It may not be the most efficient technique, but it's been a benefit for many people, me included.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    Not GP, but I sympathize with their sentiment. I think I'm generally pretty "mindful", but I've tried meditation probably half a dozen points in my life (each for a week+) and it has never felt like anything but a waste of time to me. I really don't know how to express it in any more detail, it simply didn't feel like I had accomplished anything of value with that time.
- wawhal 7y ago
  1. Have you tried mindfulness meditation? 2. Which type of mindfulness meditation have you tried? 3. Why do you think it is useless when most people find it useful? 4. With what goal did you try the meditation that it seemed useless? You cannot throw a word "useless" without emphasising the "use".
- marc_io 7y ago
  I've learned some of the most useful things in my entire life through mindfulness meditation.
nroets 7y ago
I upvoted, but I found that it's a bit different from what you describe: It's a technique to stop obsessing about the past and the future. For example, many people are so focused on planning for the future that it's unhealthy. Mindfulness can help to distract their minds for the unhealthy though pattern. Either way it's good to work through a few different courses and find something that works. For example MBCT.

samfar90 7y ago

I don't want to sound ridiculous, but I've gotten the same benefits that you seem to describe (I have never tried mindfulness) since I started to smoke weed.

sgillen 7y ago
Both things change how you think temporarily. I think they both do so in such a way that you can identify and emotionally deal with stuff that would otherwise remain unresolved.
- sshine 7y ago
  I'm sorry, but there is a fine line between dealing with stuff and smoking weed, one of which involves dealing with stuff, and the other postponing dealing with stuff.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    That's simply not true. I've dealt with hard stuff in my life (ie very long term relationship went into tough sudden breakup) with weed. It gave me a good perspective on it that holds to this day, it made me close the whole topic completely very quickly (1-2 weeks at max) in a rather pleasant way. I've set my life priorities with help of weed. They still hold to this day. I've done some of the best decisions on direction of my life with weed. Looking back +-10 years ago, damn those were some fine decisions. Weed gives me, when alone, often semi-constant stream of very creative ideas just popping out of sub-consciousness. I've come up with ideas for startups at least 50x, often to find later somebody is already well into executing it (often in areas I normally don't touch, ie self-belaying machines for climbing, or self-shaping moving wall for climbing - I never ever saw/heard about any of those, but it seems they are quite popular in US). The rate, amount and depth of those ideas just isn't there when sober. The rate is so high that I sometimes don't manage to record them all. All this was done alone, just me and my emotions. YMMV, but for my introvertish personality type, it works wonders. There are drawbacks of course, like with everything else. But postponing dealing with issues is more of an alcohol style effect.
    - sshine 7y ago
      Okay, so I won't try to rob you of that experience. I've felt creativity and perspective when doing psychoactive drugs, too. The rate of good ideas (or rather, the feeling of that, as it is) was called "interpretation madness" by one podcaster. When you relate alcohol with postponing one's emotions, perhaps this is because you've seen that happen. So have I. But I've also seen dozens of friends get stuck in their emotional (and educational) development for years because of weed. Don't forget the hashishins - the drug is literally named after a bunch of assassins who smoked to forget.
      - saiya-jin 7y ago
        Yeah, that's why I mentioned YMMV. I've seen people turn aggressive on weed, but then again they were broken personalities to start with, and alcohol wasn't faring much better. I've witnessed one lady mentioning seeing blood run down the walls during whole trip. Tons of people just giggle with little additional insight. Don't know, maybe mindset thing. It's a mind altering drug, can be quite powerful, can create (easy to shed) psychical dependence. As we say back home about fire - good servant, bad master.
      - jmcqk6 7y ago
        >But I've also seen dozens of friends get stuck in their emotional (and educational) development for years because of weed. Weed has different effects on different people. Assuming that weed will have the same effect on everyone is obviously a bad assumption. There are tons of stories about many different things (gluten, msg, sugar, caffiene, coffee, tea, ice cream, tylenol, etc. etc.) having different effects on different people. Sometimes those differences are completely perceptional, and sometimes they are physical, but the outcomes are definitively different. It's a deep cognitive bias to ignore this fact.
  - samfar90 7y ago
    This statement , "postponing dealing with stuff.", is not true, at least not for everyone. At least in my case and according to several testimonies I read/heard. I have never been more apt to deal with issues than since I started smoking weed.
  - sgillen 7y ago
    I think different people use it differently. Certainly a lot of people use it to postpone dealing with stuff. I do think it’s possible to use it as a tool to help you deal with stuff though, and I think that’s what the person I was replying to was doing.
mapcars 7y ago
>since I started to smoke weed. There are some similarities in the effect, yes. But the problems with weed is it's effect is temporary and it messes up your awareness. Also you can not do in in many public places. Should I mention that certain types of meditation make you even more intoxicated? :)
- samfar90 7y ago
  I am curious, like what types of meditation ?
  - mapcars 7y ago
    I'm sorry I will not give direct answer simply because it should not be taken lightly and without proper atmosphere and an experienced guidance can go out of control. But if you keep your interest and intention to try experience something different - I'm sure you will find out.
- samfar90 7y ago
  And also, the effects of weed do not appear to be temporary. I still get the benefits (minus the drawbacks) hours and days after the last joint.
Synaesthesia 7y ago
That’s fine but doesn’t mean people can’t get benefits from mindfulness! Both could be good
tudorw 7y ago
Mindfulness is a lot cheaper :)
- collyw 7y ago
  Depends. I get better effects from meditation after having just completed a ten day course. But it takes a lot of time to get there and to keep doing it on a daily basis. If you used that time for something that earned you money I doubt it would work out cheaper.
- marc_io 7y ago
  And portable too.
- samfar90 7y ago
  Totally agree with you!
aasasd 7y ago
Weed does open the eyes to how much more relaxed you can be, both emotionally and physically: turns out that normally I have muscles tense that I never even knew about. After that, you begin listening to your body and the brain more, and to track the state of them both instead of taking it for granted. That's how the way to ‘mindfulness’ starts. You learn that the two states are in a feedback loop: if you're tense, you get angry and anxious, which gets you more tense. To break the loop, you could of course hit a blunt, but that's not always an option, or at least not always the best one. Alternatively, you can take some time to free the brain from being hung up on the worries and to free the body from being contorted by tenseness.
unityByFreedom 7y ago
Mindfulness is easier than getting weed. You can be mindful of your breathing for 5 seconds, right now. That's all it is, you just sit there letting thoughts come and go, trying to bring focus back to your breathing for 20 minutes. IMO it's better than coffee for acquiring focus and lasts the whole day.
- samfar90 7y ago
  I will try mindfullness some day

hombre_fatal 7y ago

I find Sam Harris' Waking Up guided meditation lessons the most useful (can find it on mobile app stores, the 30+ lessons are free and start off short and simple). Until those, I thought meditation was inherently coupled with eastern mystic bullshit with zero benefits for anyone who didn't want to buy into a bunch of other baggage. He has a book by the same name as the mobile app. The first chapter (read out loud here) is what first started convincing me that mindfulness was something I should seek out and develop: https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-one/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/chapter-one/ I started doing it while laying in bed before falling asleep. Ended up with a daily morning practice sitting up on my bench.

fellow_human 7y ago
Interesting that other cultural practices are dismissed as mystic bullshit by default, until a white man introduces it. That makes it more trustworthy other white people.
- psv1 7y ago
  This is has nothing to do with "cultural practices" or the skin color of whoever introduced it. It's more about answering the question "Is the evidence in favor of this practice strong enough to try it for a while?".
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  Whitewhashing indeed. But harris is not just a random white guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris#Reception
- henryaj 7y ago
  No, the 'mystic bullshit' is very real in e.g. vipassana (for example, anything about "vibrations") regardless of the race of the speaker
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    Why are vibrations associated with mystic bullshit? I've noticed this too, but I don't understand.

sjapkee 7y ago

>Mindfulness meditation Absolutely useless thing which for some reason is shoved into each thread.

cmstoken 7y ago
This will help: https://samharris.org/how-to-meditate/ https://samharris.org/how-to-meditate/
maccard 7y ago
Rather than dismissing the parents comment, would you tell us why you find it useless and add to the discussion? Personally I found mindfulness to be helpful in unwinding, and I've found that my concentration levels are generally higher than they were before I started using it. It may not be the most efficient technique, but it's been a benefit for many people, me included.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  Not GP, but I sympathize with their sentiment. I think I'm generally pretty "mindful", but I've tried meditation probably half a dozen points in my life (each for a week+) and it has never felt like anything but a waste of time to me. I really don't know how to express it in any more detail, it simply didn't feel like I had accomplished anything of value with that time.
wawhal 7y ago
1. Have you tried mindfulness meditation? 2. Which type of mindfulness meditation have you tried? 3. Why do you think it is useless when most people find it useful? 4. With what goal did you try the meditation that it seemed useless? You cannot throw a word "useless" without emphasising the "use".
marc_io 7y ago
I've learned some of the most useful things in my entire life through mindfulness meditation.

nroets 7y ago

I upvoted, but I found that it's a bit different from what you describe: It's a technique to stop obsessing about the past and the future. For example, many people are so focused on planning for the future that it's unhealthy. Mindfulness can help to distract their minds for the unhealthy though pattern. Either way it's good to work through a few different courses and find something that works. For example MBCT.