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Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation

health.harvard.edu

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Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation

#91

Post by charris0 »

I would agree for the most part, as meditation (from my experience) can provide a consistent, harmonising and content feeling that would persist for longer than the joy that comes from pure escapism or novelty of experience of a vacation.

I've been doing Transcendental Meditation I learnt through ZivaMIND for over a year now and I couldn't imagine being as on the ball emotionally/with reference to myself without it. I've found it so brilliant.

IMO, Meditation, and more broadly speaking, the uninterrupted time we allow for ourselves, should be taught in schools and by parents ubiquitously, as its an obvious antidote to our constant connectedness eating away at our wellbeing and creativity and compassion/gratitude.

Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation

#92

Post by mettamage »

littlethrowaway wrote: post #89
mettamage wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

__Meditation: the summary for technical people__ Yea I'm making this up. I'm enthusiastic about it, my username even reflects that I meditate ;) .. Introductory Level Witty, scientific book: Search Inside Yourself - Chade-meng Tan (he used to be a software engineer, now he's trying to set up the conditions for world peace) Take any MBCT, MBSR or 5-week or 8-week mindfulness course .. Beginner Level Retreat practice:…

Be quite careful giving advice about meditation. Under your "beginner" heading you suggest Dhamma - the 10 day 9 day silent course (I'm assuming vipassana is an example of this). I did a vipassana course after a similar suggestion. In me it triggered a full blown manic-psychotic (bipolar) episode. There had been no history of this in my family (or myself) before that point. If you're interested, I made a bunch of pod…

Thanks for the nuance.

Meditation is like exercise, actually it is mental exercise. (Mental) injuries can happen, just like any other form of (mental) exercise. It is indeed an issue that there's less awareness about it compared to physical injuries with physical exercise.

Also, when you do the beginner level, you do need to have done the introductory level. This means that you at least have meditated for half an hour per day, for 5 weeks at a minimum. That's what those derivatives of MBCT and MBSR tell you to do.

Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation

#93

Post by crdoconnor »

puranjay wrote: post #40
snissn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you drink coffee? Try 100% cutting out caffeine!

Any strategies to cut? If I don't drink my morning cup, I get bad headaches around the evening and basically stop functioning.

Drink a lot more water, consistently throughout the day just before cutting and after. It won't stop the headaches completely but it will help.

Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation

#96

Post by ridewinter »

littlethrowaway wrote: post #89
mettamage wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

__Meditation: the summary for technical people__ Yea I'm making this up. I'm enthusiastic about it, my username even reflects that I meditate ;) .. Introductory Level Witty, scientific book: Search Inside Yourself - Chade-meng Tan (he used to be a software engineer, now he's trying to set up the conditions for world peace) Take any MBCT, MBSR or 5-week or 8-week mindfulness course .. Beginner Level Retreat practice:…

Be quite careful giving advice about meditation. Under your "beginner" heading you suggest Dhamma - the 10 day 9 day silent course (I'm assuming vipassana is an example of this). I did a vipassana course after a similar suggestion. In me it triggered a full blown manic-psychotic (bipolar) episode. There had been no history of this in my family (or myself) before that point. If you're interested, I made a bunch of pod…

Agreed. Traditions have, over thousands of years, established the dangers and pitfalls of meditation. Best to start slowly - a short amount of time daily - and find a good teacher backed by some of that tradition.

For me, Shambhala Buddhism really resonated. Skepticism is encouraged, and the brilliance of those thousands of years of wisdom is a great support along the path.

Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation

#97

Post by cheez »

cryptica wrote: post #95

Meditation does nothing for me. It's ironic that the people I know who are into meditation tend to be completely out of touch with themselves and meditation doesn't seem to actually change anything about them.

I've found two kinds of people who meditate: those who should be on drugs, and those who look like they're on drugs because they are so zen.

One of the benefits of regular meditation is a letting go of things that don't matter and focusing on the things that do.

Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation

#98

Post by jsprogrammer »

throwfaesfe wrote: post #90
skankhunt42 wrote: post #76

Now I can show this to my employees when they ask for vacation days. I won't allow anything but the best for them and meditation can be efficiently packed into the lunch break time frame.

hn-logic at its best.

Sarcasm is an excellent genre for short texts.

Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation

#100

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

elcapitan wrote: post #51
not_an_account wrote: post #25

Mindfulness meditation is one of the pillars on which my life rests. If you have never done it before, realize that it's hard, especially if you fall anywhere on the ADHD spectrum, and it's just brutal for the first few weeks for anyone. As your brain becomes more still and your focus improves you'll notice your productivity improve. As the mental chatter drops you'll also notice the problems in your life, that you'v…

> I rarely talk about meditation in professional circles because, for one, people think it's weird No, it totally makes sense. Long walks in the woods or long runs are almost like meditation for me, and it is definitely like vacation for the mind. I just wonder where to get started with actual meditation - I have to admit I find the predominant literature about that topic extremely esoteric, and that's something that…

Just as a question, what makes long walks in the woods or long runs not "actual meditation"? I guess my question can also be phrased as, what do you think meditation is?

I'd argue that meditation is more about approach and frame of mind than activity -- and there certainly are moving forms of meditation. There's also just a lot of kinds of meditation, from a lot of widely different traditions, so you're not going to find unified literature. (There's also a few major world religions that feature meditation as a component, so you'll find a lot of the literature tied up with that worldview, as well.)

That's what prompts my question above: if you don't have some goal or idea in mind, it's sort of hard to direct you to particular resources.

The place I suggest starting for everyone is find somewhere in your life that you're meditating without knowing it, and try to do that somewhere else. Sports, crafts, etc. Can you intentionally make an activity feel like a long walk in the woods or a good run? like losing yourself in being focused on a hobby?

...can you feel that when just sitting there?

At some level, that's all meditation really is.

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