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'Mindful people' feel less pain

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Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain

#111

Post by daniel_iversen »

FPGAhacker wrote: post #90
ollerac wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been listening to his Guided Mindfulness Meditations a few times a week. The body scan has been a phenomenal way of for me to relax into the difficult emotions and feelings I sometimes experience. Highly recommended.

I can’t stay awake through it. Which is okay. I often don’t sleep well so I’m chronically deprived.

Don’t lie down while meditating and don’t meditate in your bedroom. Also try not to have your head resting on anything while meditating. Lastly, apparently with certain kinds of meditation if you do fall asleep that’s ok too - it’s your body ridding itself of fatigue - you probably need more sleep :)

Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain

#112

Post by [deleted] »

projektir wrote: post #63
HiroshiSan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true if your being tortured by someone other than yourself? I've seen the picture of the monk who set himself on fire while meditating in protest. I wonder if suffering is only optional if you inflict it on yourself.

At the very least, you could damage someone's brain faculties to the point that they can no longer philosophize their way out of suffering. And that is likely unnecessary, some drugs should suffice. "Suffering is optional" is a concept that dies immediately if you apply even a tiny amount of creativity to the question. It also fails if applied to animals. It's really only available to people in a specific range of si…

[deleted]

Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain

#113

Post by kranner »

GW150914 wrote: post #109
danharaj wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah. There's definitely pain out there that can't be studied to oblivion. Anyone so pompous hasn't experienced, for example, a cluster headache.

Hah. There's definitely pain out there that can't be studied to oblivion. Anyone so pompous hasn't experienced, for example, a cluster headache. Or passed a kidney stone, or had a thrombosed hemorrhoid, or been tortured. I think there’s a difference between breathing through lower back pain, and trying to contextualize someone threading a live wire up your urethra to make you talk. Even if you’re exceptionally good w…

There was the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who self-immolated in public. He appeared to remain calm throughout. Searching for "the burning monk 1963" will turn up images and videos, though I won't link to them here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%9...

Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain

#115

Post by [deleted] »

projektir wrote: post #73
danharaj wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted I think mindful pain management is a thing, especially chronic pain which I've had forever. But I've certainly felt acute pain far beyond the ability of my higher faculties to contend with...

Yeah, I won't disagree that things can be managed given certain conditions. There are definitely better and worse ways of greeting pain for the average person. But I'd never say it as an absolute and I think that's incredibly dangerous and the "suffering is an optional thing we invent in our heads" all over this thread is making me cringe.

[deleted]

Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain

#116

Post by logicchains »

nabla9 wrote: post #7

I 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, ar…

It reminds me of a quote by Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius: “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain

#117

Post by andai »

kranner wrote: post #113
GW150914 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah. There's definitely pain out there that can't be studied to oblivion. Anyone so pompous hasn't experienced, for example, a cluster headache. Or passed a kidney stone, or had a thrombosed hemorrhoid, or been tortured. I think there’s a difference between breathing through lower back pain, and trying to contextualize someone threading a live wire up your urethra to make you talk. Even if you’re exceptionally good w…

There was the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who self-immolated in public. He appeared to remain calm throughout. Searching for "the burning monk 1963" will turn up images and videos, though I won't link to them here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%9...

XKCD 846: "It's hard to imagine the pain of a deeply infected dental nerve. To get an idea, put your hands in a bowl full of ice cubes, and hold them there for 90 seconds."

Here Randall is using this example as one of the worst pains in the world, while others submerge themselves in ice baths voluntarily for health and enjoyment (eg. Wim Hof the ice man)

There is something about facing an unpleasant stimulus (to put it lightly) voluntarily that changes the neurology, and the subjective experience of it.

Re: 'Mindful people' feel less pain

#118

Post by nugga »

lalos wrote: post #84
projektir wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suffering is a conscious decision Do you think your cat won't suffer is you stop feeding it? Do you think it's making a conscious decision to suffer if it's hungry?

Interesting argument, with a broken premise. There's still debate on what level of consciousness animals have [0]. Is a cat conscious enough to predict that tomorrow it will have less food and save some for tomorrow to avoid feeling that hunger? Does a human have that degree of consciousness to do exactly that? Can a human differentiate itself from an animal by deciding to act instead of reacting like I proposed? Isn…

The way I see it plenty people s seem to live in what The Bhagavad Gita (a book on yoga and consciousness) describes as 'animal nature', in that they do not necessarily know that they're thinking and that they are constantly moved by the thought stream. They are very reactionary to stimuli.

You may not be able to choose the content of your thoughts exactly, but you may be able to change how they work on you.

I do not know how to scientifically quantify or test this but it is a reported by scores of people and can be understood experientially.

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