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It being boring is part of the point - normally your brain is constantly stimulated so it does indeed feel strange and uncomfortable when that stimulus is taken

It being boring is part of the point - normally your brain is constantly stimulated so it does indeed feel strange and uncomfortable when that stimulus is taken away. Pushing through that is what leads to progress. Meditation is like physical exercise, it's not exactly "fun" at the time, you sort of have to learn to enjoy it, but it's never easy. Like exercise the real reward is backloaded

wolvoleo 4mo ago
This is exactly what the OP and I argue against, people insisting that it must be good for everyone. By the way the 'painful' part does more heaviy lifting there, not the boring. I've really tried a LOT during therapy and in some other situations. And it just doesn't work for me. Same with traditional exercise by the way. I can't do exercise in a gym (too empty) or have those 'gamification' goals, it must be more natural. I'm extremely anticompetitive and antiauthoritarian so some watch telling me I'm doing great just generates irritation.
- nmcfarl 4mo ago
  That’s all reasonable, and everyone is different , but I do think your original comment needed pushback, because meditation is often portrayed as enjoyable and easy at least in certain kinds of media. And I do think a lot of people give up when they find it boring and painful on their first practice. And for me, it is boring and painful AND useful. And took weeks to start to show any benefits at all. Sort of like going to the gym. And people should know that that is a common thing, that you might hate meditation practice but still find it useful and continue.
  - pigpop 4mo ago
    You should include the same advice that is given for exercise, it can and should occasionally be a bit painful but you have to discover your safe limits and only push yourself a little past them each time. You don't want to rack weights in 45lbs increments until you tear a muscle, you do it in 2.5lbs or 5lbs increments and practice for several sessions of work/rest at the same level for a while before making another small increment. People often quit both exercise and meditation because they just try to push through the pain and often end up with negative results due to injury or emotional and cognitive strain in the case of meditation.
- pigpop 4mo ago
  It's all exertion, for both "meditation" and exercise. I'm convinced that meditation doesn't work for a lot of people because it has too much dogma about what it's supposed to be, and maybe those aspects are valid for certain pursuits, but it obscures the core principle. Take exercise as an example first. It's also a practice that is layered under heaps of nonsense and complexity or fluffed up with idealisms and systems. If you strip all of that away it's about one simple thing: strengthening the muscles and connective tissues of your body including organs like your heart and lungs. Muscle and living tissue only responds to repeated exertion and rest (rest includes nutrition). If you never exceed your current capacity, it will never grow or strengthen and will probably weaken. So exercise becomes simply pushing yourself a little beyond your current capacity and then properly resting afterwards. How you do that is up to you, taking a longer walk than you did last week, slowly mastering calisthenic poses, progressive overload weight training, becoming actually good at ballroom dancing or ballet, competing in field sports, the same principle applies and you get much the same results. Now returning to meditation, the first thing we should do away with is the label because it is almost as much an error as calling all exercise bodybuilding. It should really be thought of as "attention training" where you are improving your control over and the capacity of your attention. Like with your body, your mind responds to exertion and rest. Both are required. How you train your attention is up to you, sitting without distraction is perhaps the most accessible but it's about as challenging as limiting yourself to doing prison cell bodyweight exercises. Walking without distraction is a very valid practice but is harder to manage since it requires isolation and freedom from interruptions that many people would find on a walking route. Many other techniques have been developed with many different aids and systems but the important thing to remember is that you are trying to do the same thing for your attention as you are for your muscles, push it a little more beyond your current capacity each week and giving it sufficient rest between sessions (including proper nutrition and sleep). If the usual things that are sold as meditation practices don't work for you then try things that seem more natural to you but which still stretch your attention. This could be viewing a piece of art for a set amount of time, finding a location with a fairly static view and doing the same, holding or placing an item you own in front of you and examining it, repeating a line from a book or a poem, listening to a single note repeated on an instrument or hummed. It doesn't really matter much what it is as long as it takes effort to contemplate it for a long duration and isn't so complex and changeable that it overwhelms your untrained ability to fully consider each part of it. Even more active practices can train your attention like writing, penmanship / calligraphy, painting / sketching, yoga, dance, martial arts and others but they are probably not the best place to start if you are fully untrained. This dovetails into the point of the article, that programming is a form of "meditation" for many people. Really, it's something that you can infinitely stretch your capacity for and exert your attention on.
- squidsoup 4mo ago
  The thing about meditation is, if you're doing it, there is no "you" that it is either good or bad for.
ajb 4mo ago
It eventually worked for you - great. That doesn't prove that it will eventually work for everyone. At some point, when something is not working, you have to write off the sunk cost. In many cases, there's no obvious threshold as to when you make that decision, and it's easy to think that maybe, if you'd just held out a little longer, been a bit more determined, you could have made it work. But you have to make a call, without knowing for certain either way. And it can be the right call, even if, with perfect information, you'd have made the other choice. So, while I'm sure lots of the people saying "you should just have tried harder" are doing so with complete good will, it's not helpful. You don't know, for another random person on the internet: * how much work they put in * what other burdens they were carrying * what other needs and responsibilities they could use that time and energy on * how their mind is different to your mind etc, etc. In short, you don't have most of the information needed to make that decision for them, and you don't have any call to judge them for it.
- ifwinterco 4mo ago
  I'll be honest, both these things are true: It works extremely well, and I don't do it as consistently as I should, precisely because it's actually kind of hard work and the reward is uncertain and delayed (though it can also be enjoyable at the time sometimes). So I'm also in the boat where I don't get the benefits I could get, I get it. Making it a routine is legitimately hard. I just find it hard to believe that it wouldn't be beneficial to most people if they stuck with it, because so many human problems are caused by fixating on the past and future and ignoring the present. I can't experience what it's like to be someone else, but based on what other people say and do, most people seem to be experiencing similar problems to me in this regard. Having said that: if you have any kind of mental health condition like depersonalisation, derealisation etc, you should consult a medical professional before starting any kind of meditation programme. These are powerful techniques that can be dangerous if used inappropriately by the wrong person

wolvoleo 4mo ago

This is exactly what the OP and I argue against, people insisting that it must be good for everyone. By the way the 'painful' part does more heaviy lifting there, not the boring. I've really tried a LOT during therapy and in some other situations. And it just doesn't work for me. Same with traditional exercise by the way. I can't do exercise in a gym (too empty) or have those 'gamification' goals, it must be more natural. I'm extremely anticompetitive and antiauthoritarian so some watch telling me I'm doing great just generates irritation.

nmcfarl 4mo ago
That’s all reasonable, and everyone is different , but I do think your original comment needed pushback, because meditation is often portrayed as enjoyable and easy at least in certain kinds of media. And I do think a lot of people give up when they find it boring and painful on their first practice. And for me, it is boring and painful AND useful. And took weeks to start to show any benefits at all. Sort of like going to the gym. And people should know that that is a common thing, that you might hate meditation practice but still find it useful and continue.
- pigpop 4mo ago
  You should include the same advice that is given for exercise, it can and should occasionally be a bit painful but you have to discover your safe limits and only push yourself a little past them each time. You don't want to rack weights in 45lbs increments until you tear a muscle, you do it in 2.5lbs or 5lbs increments and practice for several sessions of work/rest at the same level for a while before making another small increment. People often quit both exercise and meditation because they just try to push through the pain and often end up with negative results due to injury or emotional and cognitive strain in the case of meditation.
pigpop 4mo ago
It's all exertion, for both "meditation" and exercise. I'm convinced that meditation doesn't work for a lot of people because it has too much dogma about what it's supposed to be, and maybe those aspects are valid for certain pursuits, but it obscures the core principle. Take exercise as an example first. It's also a practice that is layered under heaps of nonsense and complexity or fluffed up with idealisms and systems. If you strip all of that away it's about one simple thing: strengthening the muscles and connective tissues of your body including organs like your heart and lungs. Muscle and living tissue only responds to repeated exertion and rest (rest includes nutrition). If you never exceed your current capacity, it will never grow or strengthen and will probably weaken. So exercise becomes simply pushing yourself a little beyond your current capacity and then properly resting afterwards. How you do that is up to you, taking a longer walk than you did last week, slowly mastering calisthenic poses, progressive overload weight training, becoming actually good at ballroom dancing or ballet, competing in field sports, the same principle applies and you get much the same results. Now returning to meditation, the first thing we should do away with is the label because it is almost as much an error as calling all exercise bodybuilding. It should really be thought of as "attention training" where you are improving your control over and the capacity of your attention. Like with your body, your mind responds to exertion and rest. Both are required. How you train your attention is up to you, sitting without distraction is perhaps the most accessible but it's about as challenging as limiting yourself to doing prison cell bodyweight exercises. Walking without distraction is a very valid practice but is harder to manage since it requires isolation and freedom from interruptions that many people would find on a walking route. Many other techniques have been developed with many different aids and systems but the important thing to remember is that you are trying to do the same thing for your attention as you are for your muscles, push it a little more beyond your current capacity each week and giving it sufficient rest between sessions (including proper nutrition and sleep). If the usual things that are sold as meditation practices don't work for you then try things that seem more natural to you but which still stretch your attention. This could be viewing a piece of art for a set amount of time, finding a location with a fairly static view and doing the same, holding or placing an item you own in front of you and examining it, repeating a line from a book or a poem, listening to a single note repeated on an instrument or hummed. It doesn't really matter much what it is as long as it takes effort to contemplate it for a long duration and isn't so complex and changeable that it overwhelms your untrained ability to fully consider each part of it. Even more active practices can train your attention like writing, penmanship / calligraphy, painting / sketching, yoga, dance, martial arts and others but they are probably not the best place to start if you are fully untrained. This dovetails into the point of the article, that programming is a form of "meditation" for many people. Really, it's something that you can infinitely stretch your capacity for and exert your attention on.
squidsoup 4mo ago
The thing about meditation is, if you're doing it, there is no "you" that it is either good or bad for.

ajb 4mo ago

It eventually worked for you - great. That doesn't prove that it will eventually work for everyone. At some point, when something is not working, you have to write off the sunk cost. In many cases, there's no obvious threshold as to when you make that decision, and it's easy to think that maybe, if you'd just held out a little longer, been a bit more determined, you could have made it work. But you have to make a call, without knowing for certain either way. And it can be the right call, even if, with perfect information, you'd have made the other choice. So, while I'm sure lots of the people saying "you should just have tried harder" are doing so with complete good will, it's not helpful. You don't know, for another random person on the internet: * how much work they put in * what other burdens they were carrying * what other needs and responsibilities they could use that time and energy on * how their mind is different to your mind etc, etc. In short, you don't have most of the information needed to make that decision for them, and you don't have any call to judge them for it.

ifwinterco 4mo ago
I'll be honest, both these things are true: It works extremely well, and I don't do it as consistently as I should, precisely because it's actually kind of hard work and the reward is uncertain and delayed (though it can also be enjoyable at the time sometimes). So I'm also in the boat where I don't get the benefits I could get, I get it. Making it a routine is legitimately hard. I just find it hard to believe that it wouldn't be beneficial to most people if they stuck with it, because so many human problems are caused by fixating on the past and future and ignoring the present. I can't experience what it's like to be someone else, but based on what other people say and do, most people seem to be experiencing similar problems to me in this regard. Having said that: if you have any kind of mental health condition like depersonalisation, derealisation etc, you should consult a medical professional before starting any kind of meditation programme. These are powerful techniques that can be dangerous if used inappropriately by the wrong person