'Mindful people' feel less pain
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'Mindful people' feel less pain
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Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain
#2If I understand correctly, they say that meditation deactivates default mode and this has a positive impact on pain tolerance. Interestingly, there is lots of discussion on the importance and value of default mode for creativity and other things. Are these at odds or have I misunderstood?
Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain
#3If I understand correctly, they say that meditation deactivates default mode and this has a positive impact on pain tolerance. Interestingly, there is lots of discussion on the importance and value of default mode for creativity and other things. Are these at odds or have I misunderstood?
I had never heard of "default mode" before this. Do you have any suggested reading on the topic, especially around creativity?
Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain
#4If I understand correctly, they say that meditation deactivates default mode and this has a positive impact on pain tolerance. Interestingly, there is lots of discussion on the importance and value of default mode for creativity and other things. Are these at odds or have I misunderstood?
I had never heard of "default mode" before this. Do you have any suggested reading on the topic, especially around creativity?
Maybe only tangentially related, but Michael Pollan's recent book about psychedelics "How To Change Your Mind" goes in-depth on this. There's something about being able to quiet the "default mode network" that lends the mind to transcendental/creative thought. The same effect can be achieved through meditation or breathwork.
Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain
#5Mindfulness meditation taught me something that Haruki Murakami describes well about running: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain
#6Mindfulness meditation taught me something that Haruki Murakami describes well about running: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
Just curious what the difference is? Suffering is your reaction to the pain? Like if you're stoic you acknowledge the pain but continue on with out suffering?
Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain
#7I think Marvin Minsky had it right in his book The Emotion Machine (2006):
From Chapter III. From Pain to Suffering
>Why does the sensation called pain sometimes lead to what we call suffering? How could such a simple event distort all your other thoughts so much? This chapter proposes a theory of this: if a pain is intense and persistent enough, it will stir up a certain set of resources, and then these, in turn, arouse some more. Then, if this process continues to grow, your mind becomes a victim of the kind of spreading, large-scale “cascade” that overcomes the rest of the mind, as we depicted in §1-7:
Then he quotes Daniel Dennett:
> “If you can make yourself study your pains (even quite intense pains) you will find, as it were, no room left to mind them: (they stop hurting). However studying a pain (e.g., a headache) gets boring pretty fast, and as soon as you stop studying them, they come back and hurt, which, oddly enough, is sometimes less boring than being bored by them and so, to some degree, preferable."
The whole chapter is online: http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/E3/eb3.html
Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain
#8Mindfulness meditation taught me something that Haruki Murakami describes well about running: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
Just curious what the difference is? Suffering is your reaction to the pain? Like if you're stoic you acknowledge the pain but continue on with out suffering?
Here’s the best analogy I’ve heard.
Imagine you wake up and your back is sore. Getting out of bed is a struggle, everything aches and you must move slowly.
Without other knowledge, you may get worried, anxious, feel distressed.
If you remember you had a workout yesterday, you may actually enjoy the feeling. It reminds you of the effort you put in, the future progress you’ll make as muscles are repaired.
The physical sensation is exactly the same.
Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain
#9Mindfulness meditation taught me something that Haruki Murakami describes well about running: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
Just curious what the difference is? Suffering is your reaction to the pain? Like if you're stoic you acknowledge the pain but continue on with out suffering?
Suffering is a form of indulgence. The pain can exist and you can be fully aware of it, but if you don't indulge in it there will be no suffering. It just is. One of the components of this is desire for an alternative. This combined with reobservation of the pain leads to a cycle (indulgence) of the mind - the essence of suffering.
Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain
#10My experience is that stopping and paying attention to a stubbed toe makes it more bearable than yelling and hopping around the room.