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The Remarkable Brain Waves of High Level Meditators [video]

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Re: The Remarkable Brain Waves of High Level Meditators [video]

#101

Post by kieranmaine »

yoble wrote: post #19

The book they mention, Altered Traits, is a great read for those interested in what hard facts the numerous studies on the subject have yielded so far (+ some nice stories about "olympic level meditators"). The authors make a point of painstakingly explaining why these kind of studies are hard to conduct, what a good one looks like and why they had to discard ~99% of them to write the book because of statistical insu…

I second this. I just finished this book and it was excellent - however the edition I read is called "The science of mediation". They're very honest about which studies provide robust evidence and really quantify what the benefits of meditation are. They also delved into the 4 "neural pathways" meditation transforms. I've been meditating for 3.5 years and it was a real eye opener reading about how the different techniques I use affect different parts of my brain.

A highly recommended read!

Re: The Remarkable Brain Waves of High Level Meditators [video]

#102

Post by gchamonlive »

jamescostian wrote: post #97
gchamonlive wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share the thought that Olympic is an unfortunate word to describe long term meditators. At least in vipassana one does not meditate to get better at it, because there is no getting better at, only the act of meditation. You get better at not letting the mind wander of, but that is not the goal, just a consequence of practicing meditation.

My comment wasn't about the article's word choice, it was about the fact that if this article is correct, then there seems to be a link between meditation and autism spectrum disorder (based on 4 studies showing strong gamma waves being a great indicator of ASD). Since many meditators say that meditation "cures you of mental illness", the idea that the best meditators have ASD is probably something that meditators wo…

interesting. I misunderstood your comment, but now it makes clear sense. Thanks

Re: The Remarkable Brain Waves of High Level Meditators [video]

#103

Post by gchamonlive »

jamescostian wrote: post #97
gchamonlive wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share the thought that Olympic is an unfortunate word to describe long term meditators. At least in vipassana one does not meditate to get better at it, because there is no getting better at, only the act of meditation. You get better at not letting the mind wander of, but that is not the goal, just a consequence of practicing meditation.

My comment wasn't about the article's word choice, it was about the fact that if this article is correct, then there seems to be a link between meditation and autism spectrum disorder (based on 4 studies showing strong gamma waves being a great indicator of ASD). Since many meditators say that meditation "cures you of mental illness", the idea that the best meditators have ASD is probably something that meditators wo…

yet I believe that meditation is not a tool to calm the mind, but rather to focus it. The mind is always active and meditation gives you the means to shift the activity focus to something healthier, even if it means that the mind is working harder at it.

When you meditate you are not disperse in a thoughtless slumber, that would be the first stage of non-rem sleep, but rather completely focused. That might explain the increase in gamma waves.

Re: The Remarkable Brain Waves of High Level Meditators [video]

#104

Post by babygoat »

the_clarence wrote: post #59
tvladeck wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but have a similar story. According to my goal-tracking apps, I meditate about 65% of days, and I average about 10 minutes a day. (So, not a ton, but pretty consistent.) The most common way that meditation changes me is to help me identify that I'm in a rumination cycle and to break out of it, and to be more present in certain moments. For me, it's not that I have noticed a baseline change, but rather tha…

It makes me think that meditation could just be practicing to put your mind in a quiet place. Whenever you are in a bad place, if you’ve trained well, it’s easy to grt back to that quiet place of your mind.

It is that and so much more. That quiet place is infinitely deep.

Re: The Remarkable Brain Waves of High Level Meditators [video]

#105

Post by albanberg »

amrx431 wrote: post #94
albanberg wrote: post #88

In the Viniyoga tradition, meditation is on an object that is chosen by a teacher for their student. The object is chosen very carefully for the situation of the student. The student works one on one with the teacher. There are class situations, although these are for getting an introduction to the tradition. In this tradition, the meditation comes after the asana practice (yoga exercises) in order to prepare the bod…

In original Patanjali Yogasutras, Yama, Niyama, Asana, Dharana are first to be practiced and perfected.

This is an interesting quote that I think is somewhat relevant:

“Can these four Yoga Aṅga – Yama, Niyama, Āsana, Prāṇāyāma – be practiced by everyone at every stage of life? How often and how long should one practice? How can we adapt our practice to changing circumstances? These questions and others like them must be answered by a competent teacher, according to each student’s individual circumstances.” – T Krishnamacharya’s commentary to Yoga Sūtra Chapter One verse 30

Re: The Remarkable Brain Waves of High Level Meditators [video]

#107

Post by cgag »

vbuwivbiu wrote: post #99
AltruisticGap wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put very curedly, they're getting high. And, everybody's getting high. Life is about pleasure. If you found out that you can feel really, really good by sitting and doing nothing... would you do it? Of course you would. :) Now the stark reality however, is that to be able to sit and meditate properly requires to be already at home in the body. Any amount of trauma will make that particularly difficult. As soon as you…

"If you found out that you can feel really, really good by sitting and doing nothing... would you do it? Of course you would. :)" Nope, I'd go for walk. Meditation is passive and lazy. Being outside in nature with the sounds of the birds and the UV light, being actually connected with the universe, being alive.

You can meditate while walking if you want to, or meditate while sitting outside in the sun. Not that going for a walk period isn't great.

Re: The Remarkable Brain Waves of High Level Meditators [video]

#108

Post by nabla9 »

petra wrote: post #78
lettergram wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To capture gamma waves you need to have something that samples at least 200 times per second on the low end 400 times per second on the higher end. This is a minimum, preferably you'd be sampling 1000 times per second. Most EEGs sample between 240 - 500 times per second. This is due to the way FFTs work. Now this does not include noise OR sensor sensitivity, which for reference you'll see from things like electrical…

What's the technical problem in measuring a differential signal at a 1000 samples/sec, plus removing noise and amplifying it ? It's a common analog electronics problem. And if it's not technically complicated, why does nobody do this ?

Oversampling removes only uncorrelated noise. Sampling 200 - 250 times times per second per electrode is enough for basic gamma.

Gamma is problematic to measure because:

* Power of the EEG signal decreases with frequency. Skull and skin muffles gamma frequencies effectively.

* Gamma overlaps perfectly with muscle activity (~20–300 Hz). It's easy to measure muscle artifacts instead of gamma. Meditation relaxes muscles. Unless you are able to recognize and remove these artifacts, you are actually measuring how meditation relaxes muscles.

* Typical research in gamma EEG setting records thousands stimuli-response epochs to find the signal by averaging over these epochs. Biofeedback applications need to get the signal from single epoch. The latter is much harder problem and generally just not done.

If you could drill a hole into the skull and place electrodes inside, things would be much easier.

Re: The Remarkable Brain Waves of High Level Meditators [video]

#109

Post by Matumio »

sage2018 wrote: post #34

I find the real benefits of meditation are evident when it is done consistently. Sadly, it is easy to stay consistent with checking phone several times a day than meditating few minutes a day. Any tips on how to make it a habit?

What helped me is to use an app as meditation timer. It can send a notification if I haven't meditated for a day. (No matter how briefly; five minutes is already so much better than nothing.) The sport is to never trigger the notification.

Re: The Remarkable Brain Waves of High Level Meditators [video]

#110

Post by bakul »

lettergram wrote: post #87
petra wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the technical problem in measuring a differential signal at a 1000 samples/sec, plus removing noise and amplifying it ? It's a common analog electronics problem. And if it's not technically complicated, why does nobody do this ?

It's a very difficult problem, first lets just look at data throughput: 1000 samples/sec, 4 bytes per sample, 32 nodes - that's 128Kb / second. Not crazy by any means. However, you then have to process that... That's doing an FFT + binning (in the case of brain waves). All doable at probably 60 FPS (where a frame is the prior 1 - 3 seconds). Still not a problem, then try to do error correction! You have 32 sensors, w…

http://web.mit.edu/6.111/www/f2017/handouts/FFTtutorial12110... shows an FFT implementation using a Cyclone EP2C20 FPGA. It can do 50ksps, 1K points, 12bit precision, 100 µsec/1K complex FFT @ 50Khz clock. May be a Zynq can be used to build a standalone device?

I wonder if the EEG signals can tell if your attention wanders. That may help improve meditation.

Have you looked at/played with the Muse or Muse2 EEG headband?

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