6 ms·
Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me.
by cm2012 9mo ago
Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me.
- dymk 9mo agoIt starts like that. Work up to 30 minutes, start with 5. The mind has an uncanny ability to entertain itself when it’s bored but paying attention.
- doublerabbit 9mo agoYou also find out how much noise your brain filters. You end up hearing conversations more clearly, environmental noises you wouldn't normally hear and I find more clarity for the environmental area.
- Tagbert 9mo agoIt can be at first until you get used to it. You can observe your surroundings, make up stories about what is happening. Ask yourself questions. Listen to yourself. This is a bit like excercise. When you first start, 30 minutes of exercise can be torture as your is out of shape and not used to the effort. Keep doing it and it feels better and you feel better. Work on becoming a source of thoughts rather than a consumer of thoughts.
- ugjjhgvjb 9mo agoSo… stimulate yourself? > Work on becoming a source of thoughts rather than a consumer of thoughts. This is the classic “sounds deep but actually means nothing” vague statement that’s only meant to massage one’s ego and try to reenforce an unsubstantiated idea in a faux-philosophical way. You are always “sourcing” thoughts even when “consuming”. Being able to sit still, quietly without having to stimulate oneself is, by all means, exactly that: avoid stimulating oneself. Looking around and trying to come up with small stimulations based on your surrounding is merely replacing one object (say, your phone) with another.
- bovermyer 9mo agoIn order to avoid all stimulation, there is but one recourse, and it is rather final. Generally, I prefer just sitting quietly and not worrying about the definition of stimulation or whether I'm doing it correctly.
- exe34 9mo ago> You can observe your surroundings, make up stories about what is happening. I had to sit still a lot as a child, since I wasn't allowed to have friends or go anywhere. I read a lot, but a lot of the time I was to tired or bored to read, so I'd just defocus my eyes, and disappear into my imagination. It would look like I'm reading, so I wouldn't get punished. In hindsight I'm not sure it's terribly healthy, as I now find it impossible to put up with boring people (which is basically everybody who has time to sit around chatting, almost by definition).
- vlod 9mo agoI have a feeling I had a similar childhood to you (strict/smothering). I also find it problematical to deal with people who live 'normal/standard' lives who are not curious about the world and how everything works. Being put in a conversation talking about sports, gossip, celebrities is intolerable for me. I've come to accept (and I think some people here may resonate with) that this is can be a blessing or good filtering mechanism.
- robocat 9mo ago> I now find it impossible to put up with boring people (which is basically everybody who has time to sit around chatting, almost by definition). You're being judgemental to call them boring. Plus widening your opinions to be a "definition" sounds like an unhealthy worldview. You likely appear boring to others. Then again I have a saying I use when anyone says they are bored - I say they are boring!
- exe34 9mo ago> Then again I have a saying I use when anyone says they are bored - I say they are boring! This is a very clever come back, I wonder if it might qualify as the best thought terminating cliché I've seen this year! I never say I'm bored. The universe is too interesting a place to be bored. I did mean it, that most people, individually, are what I find boring. I'd rather withdraw into my mind and work on something interesting, whether it's about figuring something out, or trying to design something. The painful part is pretending to care long enough to get away without somebody getting butthurt. The "almost by definition" is that the people I find interesting are usually busy doing interesting things, so the boring ones are the only regular people at social gatherings. I do not go to those anymore.
- johnisgood 9mo agoI end up being consumed by depressive thoughts and lots of body scanning. I hate it.
- RussianCow 9mo agoMaybe your exercise can be to direct your thoughts elsewhere. Start with 5 minutes instead of 30 and actively try to think about something else when your thoughts become too negative. I can't guarantee it will help you but it's a sort of meditation that's worked for me when I felt like my brain wouldn't turn off.
- dwaltrip 9mo agoSounds like your body is telling you something? Time to find support that you trust and face whatever is going on under the hood. For me, the three major turning points were quitting my job, later starting somatic therapy with the right therapist, and then finally getting diagnosed with ADHD. Good luck to you :) wish you the best
- johnisgood 9mo agoWell, I have MS and I have muscle spasticity, spinal hyperactivity, etc. The feeling of not having control over your body is terrible.
- dwaltrip 9mo agoDamn, I'm sorry to hear that. That sounds very difficult.
- bradlys 9mo agoPeople talk about this with exercise and I’ve never understood it. As someone who has exercised continuously for years - it has never gotten better. Which, to me, makes sense because you’re supposed to always be pushing yourself. You’re not supposed to ever feel comfortable or feel better from it. You should always feel shitty because if it doesn’t hurt then you’re probably not making optimal development. The only thing I ever “feel” good about is purely a mental thing. Eg I hit a new PR (progress), didn’t skip a lift (perseverance), or whatever. The act of exercising itself is always painful and it’s why I always dread it.
- seba_dos1 9mo agoWanting to "make optimal development" is just one of possible motivations for exercising and not everyone who does it is interested in that. Maintaining good health and generally wanting to feel better across the day are also perfectly valid reasons to exercise.
- tmn 9mo agoExercising is doing some activity that is good for your health. You’ve reduced this to some narrow set of activities that presumably make you stronger, faster, or better at some other easy to measure metric. I assure you it’s easy to enjoy exercising if your incentive is longevity and simply healthy living by a more subjective metric
- senbrow 9mo agoIt seems very likely to me that the sensations experienced during exercise are highly variable among individuals. I say this because my experience is very different from yours: I get a very perceptible "high" once I get into the rhythm of a good workout. Think mild euphoria, mood lift, and general feeling of "rightness" in my body once it's been well wrung. This only happens if I'm in decent shape, though. If I've fallen out of shape it's a slog. Edit: I can't remember the podcast, but I recall some discussion of emerging clinical evidence in exercise response variability along many dimensions that may help explain the disconnect.
- socalgal2 9mo ago
- amanaplanacanal 9mo agoWhen I was younger I used to visit a local zendo, and I think the meditation sessions were 40 minutes. It's definitely an experience. Very easy to fall asleep without external distractions. The idea was to just learn to concentrate on bodily sensations, skin, breathing, sound.
- cm2012 9mo agoI have tried sensory deprivation tanks a few times and always fall asleep within 5 min, like clockwork.
- unsungNovelty 9mo agoIt is. I did somewhere around ~10mins or something in my first try. Which I was told is very high for a first attempt. But it is indeed difficult. Like @dymk said, you work your way up. Also, a lot of folks think it's easy to do. Until you try it, that is. I also remember reading somewhere around the lines of handling the chaos in your-self. Or controlling the chaos within yourself. And always thought this exercise showed what that is about. (Sorry, forgot the expression. Been a while. It's definitely more nicely put than the above.)
- reg_dunlop 9mo agoMy therapist used to say: this means you must do it for 40 minutes
- cm2012 9mo agoId find that annoying and find a new therapist
- patrickmay 9mo agoMeditate for 30 minutes every morning. If you don't have time, meditate for 60 minutes.
- anotherevan 9mo agoI want to add that to my quotes database[1]. Would "Patrick May" be the right attribution? [1] https://q4td.blogspot.com/ https://q4td.blogspot.com/
- lifetimerubyist 9mo agoSome people just call this "meditation".
- Tarq0n 9mo agoNot if you freely engage in rumination. Meditation is not just sitting with your thoughts.
- thornewolf 9mo agosome forms of meditation can be. it's a very general term
- tzone 9mo agoI think it depends on what counts as doing nothing. Every time I cut my hair, I sit in a chair for ~30minutes silently without doing anything. My barber knows I don't like small talk so he just cuts my hair and that's it, there is no conversation. I would say it is very enjoyable 30 minutes every time I do it. I don't think anyone would describe that kind of experience as hard to do?
- chongli 9mo agoYou're still being stimulated by the act of the barber cutting your hair. Sitting in a chair doing nothing alone in a silent room is a different story.
- cm2012 9mo agoI enjoy the sensations at the barber very much.
- frutiger 9mo agoHow long has your barber been cutting hair?
- Cthulhu_ 9mo ago> I don't think anyone would describe that kind of experience as hard to do? Some would, especially the younger generation. Their attention span - or probably their brain chemistry - is strongly affected by constant stimulation, to the point where disconnecting from it causes anxiety and restlessness. Not just the younger generation either, millennials are probably the first generation to be affected.
- hansmayer 9mo agoThen dont sit still for 30 mins - try doing it for 3 minutes at first. If you feel like it, repeat the next day with either the same or longer length. Or dont do it at all. If you do - think of it as a kind of a meditation, without the extra steps. Some isolation from sensory stimulation is good for your brain - there is growing evidence we are all over exposed to attention-robbing mechanisms of the digital world.
- astura 9mo ago>Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me. Those of us over 40 have already had plenty of this in our lives, it used to be such a common part of life! Waiting for appointments, waiting for the bus, etc. before smartphones. My first job had two hours between lunch and dinner service. I only had about 15 minutes of work during that time, so it was hour plus of almost entirely idle time every shift.
- cm2012 9mo agoPre-smart phone era I would bring a book on the bus or sleep.
- 2ap 9mo agoPart of my job, is that I design protocols to help young children lie in MRI scanners for a living. We have all sorts of techniques to help with this. However, for each new scanning protocol, I like to have had it myself - so I know what the children go through. And, at times lying inside a MRI scanner, detached from the world, with only the noise of the scanner (very reduced with our new noise cancelling headphones), is almost meditative, and a welcome escape from the constant connection and pressures of being immediately available at work. Sounds like the writer achieves something similar in the coffee shop.
- jddj 9mo agoFascinating. How many MRIs have you had? I get a break from constant availability from air travel, but that's slowly eroding as it becomes more connected.
- normie3000 9mo agoI absolutely love going in the machine. Highly meditative and usually I fall asleep by the end. You can get the soundtrack on YouTube too, but it's not quite the same. What works to get children to stay still though?
- 2ap 9mo agoAh, depends on the child! But for kids over 8, a nice long form video works well. That, and having enough time so that they don't feel like we're in a rush, but also not taking to long to load them onto the scanner... For the younger ones, it's very much dependent on the child. So we take a bit of time to get to know them before we get them to attend. We have videos to prep them, and can follow a script when loading them (e.g. becoming an astronaut and blasting off into space...).
- yumraj 9mo agoSounds like meditation to me.
- FpUser 9mo ago>"Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me" I've done more than that. Summer time I often swim in open water up to 2 hour at once as one of the ways to stay fit. Obviously it becomes routine and not very entertaining. So I usually doing some high level software design work in my mind at this point, exploring some concepts, thinking business ideas etc. etc. So my body does monotonous work of not very high intensity and my brain is busy with everything else. Not board at all. I once spent 1.5 hour standing in a church listening to a priest for more than an hour (funeral). Same thing I mentally solved the problem why some piece of my code did not work. Without this ability I would go nuts. My brain always has to be busy with something. It is like a drug for me.
- notdang 9mo agoTry ultra running for at least 10 hours. You run out of things to think about, plus you are so tired that you cannot concentrate for long on the same subject. After some struggle you will enter into a weird state that I think should be similar to what they achieve through meditation.
- FpUser 9mo ago>"Try ultra running for at least 10 hours" Not my cup of tea. But I do get your point.
- vlod 9mo ago"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." - Blaise Pascal I try and think about this often.
- randycupertino 9mo agoReminds me of the trend of "raw dogging flights" - ie no book, no TV, no music, no headphones. https://www.travelweek.ca/news/airlines/what-is-raw-dogging-and-why-are-people-doing-it-on-planes/ https://www.travelweek.ca/news/airlines/what-is-raw-dogging-...
- anonymous908213 9mo agoI don't think it's very much worth thinking about. It's a pseudointellectual quip that sounds superficially insightful but which holds zero substance. The overwhelming majority of humanity's problems, such as they might be described, stem from the biological drive to survive and procreate. The quip presupposes that man naturally has a room to sit quietly in; this is not the case. The procurement of a room to sit in requires a significant amount of effort. It can entail the securing of territory and building of the shelter oneself, or it can entail the education, advanced skill development, and daily labour required to pay to reap the results of other people having secured the territory and built the shelter. To say nothing of food, mating, and rearing of offspring. Pascal was born well-to-do, so perhaps he was removed from the general human experience. He was provided with the room to sit quietly in by the efforts of others, and may never have had to work a day in his life, affording him the luxury to make that statement. He also did not marry or reproduce. If everyone had lived the life he lived, there would be no rooms to sit in and indeed no men to sit in them. Being charitable, I suppose it's true that if all mankind were to stop reproducing, there would shortly be no more problems for humanity on account of humanity no longer existing.
- anotherevan 9mo agoIf nothing else, having to go to church every Sunday in my youth taught be to be able to sit still while bored off my brain for an hour a week.
- cm2012 9mo agoMy mom used to say I made her seasick since I would fidget and sway so much when bored in church. I'd also pretend to go to the bathroom just to leave the service to walk around. Memories unlocked!
- mrmuagi 9mo agoEnduring boredom is the antithesis of mindless doomscrolling.
- epistasis 9mo agoI felt that for much of my life. Time without stimulation was, if not scary, at least a bit panic inducing. Learning to sit without stimulation, without any distractions from my worries, led to being able to realize that "hey, I'm OK, I don't even need those worries." Which led to handling the underlying pressures and stresses MUCH better, without panic, without stress, with a full clear mind. I could apply my full intellect to things that before were hard to deal with. It felt like a super power when I first started practicing sitting.
- jdkee 9mo agoThat is because the monkey mind is trying to create a narrative where none exists in the moment.
- abustamam 9mo agoI thought it was too, but when my daughter was born she had trouble regulating her temperature so I had to stay with her while she was under the warmer for an hour, then another hour swaddled in my arms. They didn't allow phones, so I got to spend two hours with her, no distraction. The time passed surprisingly quickly. I sang to her, I told her stories from my head. Nowadays when I'm feeding her or napping her I admittedly do have a phone behind her head, but I'll always cherish those two hours where it was just us two.
- r721 9mo ago>People Prefer Electric Shocks to Being Alone With Their Thoughts https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/people-prefer-electric-shocks-to-being-alone-with-their-thoughts/373936/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/people-pr...
- j45 9mo agoSolitude and once’s own company once learned is bliss. The mind finds entirely new areas of stimulation when it’s not being distracted or purely having sensory experiences.
- blitzar 9mo agoSounds like the morning standup for most people.
- beAbU 9mo agoTry rawdogging a train ride or short flight, and do nothing but take in the view. You might fool your body into accepting this state by actually doing something, but not really doing something.