Give up expectations. You will be free from stress. Thats it.
Simple, but not easy :-)
Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation
161–170 of 214 posts
Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation
#162Meh I don't buy it, the method of the study seems not very sound. I myself was on a 10 days meditation retreat http://www.sobhana.dhamma.org/ where we meditated for 16 hours a day or something and sure it helped with the mood, relaxation, etc. but it wore out after a couple of weeks and I never had the nerv to meditate daily because it was not worth it. Btw. my brother and sister attended it too and both say the same about it.
Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
What part is being killed?
Commitment to the truth. You have to successfully lie to yourself to pull off what GP described.
You're welcome to suggest measures I should undertake to be more effective at getting to the truth in these matters.
Here's what I'm doing so far:
- Reading a wide variety of scientific sources across the spectrum of thought on these matters: Dr Bruce Lipton - pioneering stem cell biologist, now author and speaker; Rudy Tanzi - Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and researcher behind some of the biggest recent breakthroughs in Alzheimer's research; Lissa Rankin - mainstream physician and author; Bernardo Kastrup - PhD scientist, philosopher, author; Sir Roger Penrose - Physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science; Sam Harris - Neuroscientist/Atheist/Skeptic movement icon; Richard Dawkins - biologist & father of the modern Skeptic movement; Jerry Coyne of https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/; http://www.quackwatch.com/; https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/; Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. - Biologist and Author. Karl Popper - philosopher of science and leading contributor to The Scientific Method. Comparing points of view from all these sources with each other and with my own experiences and what I can establish from publicly available studies in science journals and papers published via NCBI.
- Conducting a variety of lab tests of physiological metrics over almost 10 years, including: blood pressure (was consistently high for a few months about 10 years ago, went low for an extended period around 5-6 years ago, and has been consistently optimal for the past 2 years); cholesterol (improving), blood sugar (normalising), iron & zinc (improving), hormones eg adrenaline, cortisol, thyroid (normalising), inflammation (reducing), white blood cell count (improving).
- Collaborating with acquaintances who have been afflicted with similar illnesses (chronic fatigue, auto-immune illness, depression, etc), particularly those who are strongly scientific/rational in their worldviews. Admittedly my own scientific background is merely limited to high-school chemistry/physics/advanced math, a career as a software developer (self-taught), several years working in the fields of agricultural science and secondary science education, and an upbringing by an electronics engineer father and a mainstream medical practitioner mother. But my most trusted fellow travellers in this journey are minimum Master's-degree qualified in science (one in biotech, one computer science), and are widely reputed as being among the best in their field.
But I sincerely want to be as effective as is humanly possible at avoiding delusion and finding truth; my qualify of life depends on it. Please be forthcoming with any suggestions.
By the way, your challenge is to refute anything I've said without succumbing to the "beg the question" fallacy. Ideally you'll avoid all the other fallacies too (particularly Ad Hominem), but "beg the question" is the trickiest and most important to avoid in this debate.
Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
>All this stuff draws contempt from curmudgeonly skeptics (of which I used to be the worst kind), but from painful experience I've found these techniques to be far more effective than any of the more conventional approaches I'd tried previously. Yes, throwing away your critical eye towards the world in favor of starry-eyed credulity can certainly kick the placebo effect into overdrive. If you're constantly questionin…
"Curmudgeonly skeptics" love to think about themselves as realists. Skeptic is not a realist, however - when you think about yourself as a skeptic, you already set the limit to what you can experience and how your mind and skills can change and evolve. "Mindset" by Carol Dweck comes to mind.
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Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
That falsely assumes that meditation's only effect is to make you emotionally more durable. One of the interesting effects is that when you become more durable, and able to endure, you're also able to make better decisions. You can "zoom out" and perceive options that were invisible before. Sometimes this means the often painful realization that you are the asshole, and need to change. But other times this means seei…
I'm fond of meditation. I just dispute the idea that in a world full of injustices, that meditation is the path to happiness. We need a bunch of extreme anger and indignation to change the world.
I don't dispute that "extreme anger and indignation" can change the world, but I'm not convinced that it effects change that is long-term good. Anger and indignation often lead to rash decision making, hostility, vengeance, etc. The world isn't really better when we trade injustice against one group for injustice against another, and extreme anger has an unfortunate tendency to do just that.
Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
I recommend HeadSpace https://www.headspace.com/ . I think it's great that you start slowly and guided which is perfect for a beginner.
Thirded. I've bought a few books and tried audio, youtube videos... Headspace is the only thing that's helped me keep a meditation schedule for more than a few months.
I know some people don't like how much Andy speaks during the sessions, but I liked it a lot. It also helps with that "am I doing this right? Should I scratch that itch? What should I think about? Or not think about?" feeling that comes up, because he addresses those feelings a lot.
Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation
#167Now 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.
The manager can walk around and helpfully hit you with a stick if you let your mind drift.
Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the pages [1] on The HeartMath site references Dr Bruce Lipton. If you're interested in understanding more about the interplay between experiences, emotions, physiology and genetics, I can strongly recommend his book, The Biology of Belief [2], and his many interviews and presentations that can be found on YouTube. His research and writing focuses on the notion that subconscious beliefs are the major influence…
>All this stuff draws contempt from curmudgeonly skeptics (of which I used to be the worst kind), but from painful experience I've found these techniques to be far more effective than any of the more conventional approaches I'd tried previously. Yes, throwing away your critical eye towards the world in favor of starry-eyed credulity can certainly kick the placebo effect into overdrive. If you're constantly questionin…
Most of what I would need to say in response to the allegation of "throwing away your critical eye towards the world in favor of starry-eyed credulity" can be read in this comment below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12873531.
The placebo effect is certainly relevant in this discussion, and unfortunately it partly comes down to definition. Some try to claim the placebo means there is no tangible improvement in physiology, just an imaginary feeling of wellbeing. If that's your definition, then I'm guarding against that with thorough lab testing of all accessible physiological indicators, as described below. If your definition of the placebo effect is that there is a real physiological improvement brought about by emotional processes, then I agree with you, and the techniques I've used are just tools for bringing about a more profound placebo effect, which is fine, as long as it leads to a physiological improvement, which seems to be happening for me.
> If you're constantly questioning whether something is working, it will probably not feel like it's working, whereas if you wholeheartedly believe, you will likely carry that through into your perceptions.
For me it's sometimes been the opposite; techniques that I hoped and deeply believed would be effective turned out to do little, and techniques that I had little expectation of effectiveness turned out to make a big difference. Not always though. There's not really much of a pattern. And there's no pattern to this that aligns with practices being "mainstream" or "alternative". I've had positive and negative experiences with treatments/practices from both sides.
But the core point – that employing effective techniques to change unhealthy subconscious beliefs can reduce unhealthy emotions (including anxiety/depression) in the short term and reduce stress-related illness in the long term – has rung true for me and many others. And it doesn't take much reading through scientific studies on the topic, or even just thinking about it from an evolutionary point of view, to realise that it's unsurprising and uncontroversial that this could be the case. The only question is, what techniques are effective. I've listed the ones that worked for me. Different ones work better for others.
> The sad thing is you have to kill the most valuable part of your human self in the process. RIP.
It'd be worth your while to contemplate what motivates you to say something so mean-spirited.
Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Life doesn't relent. Even young, rich, beautiful people are susceptible to feelings of unsatisfactory-ness that leave them reaching for the booze and hard drugs or just feeling all around unfulfilled and miserable. Humans are built to run on a hedonic treadmill, not to be content in the moment. Meditation is a tool so that when your life scks, your boss is an ssh*le, and your personal relationships are a mess, THEN s…
Your example was extreme with the 'running them off the road' bit, but actually meditation isn't helpful unless it pushes you to that breaking point. You need to get worked up, speak your mind, start the argument, quit your job when things get too bad. Life isn't a float on the lazy river. Feelings of anger and pain exist for a reason. Thats why meditation, as it's sold, is bullsh*t. You're describing an alternative…
meditation helps you realize when you need to take your life into your own hands and make a change for yourself.
Re: Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation
#170Now 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.
This is what bothers me about meditation. Sometimes meditation looks like a panacea. Your life s cks, your boss is an ssh*le, your personal relationships a mess, but if you meditate everything will be all right. Better to put some prozac in the water system.
It's not that everything will be alright. It's a way to focus and take back your life. Your life sucks, your boss is an asshole and if you don't stop, your every move is dictated by the environment and you are just caught in this flow of negative things happening to you.
People tend to be caught up in the past or future. They are either constantly thinking about regrets or hopes and wishes to distracted to see the opportunities in the present.
There's a saying. You should meditate for atleast 30 minutes a day. If you don't think you have time for that, you should meditate for 1 hour a day.x6