101–110 of 118 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like that you find that weird.
I think it's a little like learning how to play a piano. You can sit down and teach yourself or you can look for help from a teacher. Either way works although I think most people benefit from some guidance.
Perhaps we don't need an app to meditate? Does everything need to have a tie to tech and the latest gizmo?
So there's too much tech and people should just stop? It's not that I disagree, I just don't think you're adding anything interesting to that debate. And you are shitting on someone's work.
Then came the social features. They actually weren’t bad. You could create a profile and track your meditation, and you’d get messages from people all over the world thanking you for “meditating with them.”
Then the app was sold to a couple of meditation entrepreneurs.
It took a little while, but soon the app wasn’t a nice meditation timer any longer. It was a platform for people to share and sell guided meditations.
The timer feature was de-emphasized. Login became required. They added courses, group meditations, sleep stories.
The timer is still in there if you can find it, only now some features are restricted to Insight Timer premium members who pay $60/year.
—-
I think the app was at its best right before it was sold. Sign in was optional, and while the social features felt a bit superfluous they were quirky and fun, and also easily turned off.
Motivation is the biggest barrier. Most people might wait until there are “problems” and turn to meditation (even then it might be hard to convince them), but if you crack the motivation problem, you could be on to something.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meditation is physiologically different from sleep and each confers benefits that the other does not.
He was pranking you.
There are a list of posting guidelines linked at the bottom that all new users are recommended to familiarize themselves with.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're not a fan of meditation how can you speak to the benefits of different techniques?
I'm not a fan of cooking either but I can recognize when a tool can be beneficial for it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a fan of cooking either but I can recognize when a tool can be beneficial for it.
No, you can't. If you don't cook you will not understand the differences of the various types of knifes, forks, spoons...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meditation isn't a "trance state". There are recurring refutations of this throughout Buddhist literature over the millenia. The answer to a conditioned existence is not more conditioning. Yes, states of refined pleasure can be used as springboards for insight, so-called "jhanas" but they are by no means the dominant method of practice. Seeing through conditioned reality doesn't require any trance or altered state at…
> Qigong is its own thing Qigong exercises are very much like guided meditation, almost like kata in martial arts. You can gain the benefits of Qigong as meditation without buying into the energy work as anything other than a metaphor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's nice to see a renewed public interest in meditation driving the trend of new meditation apps, but I feel that most of the apps miss the point. The act of meditating is marketed as an individualistic, prescriptive activity for stress and anxiety; it is absent any of the spiritual content that (for me) makes it potent. To elaborate, I personally didn't get much out of meditation until I starting using it to sit wi…
> By contrast, apps like Headspace are selling themselves like "feeling anxious? Try our app!" and getting corporate sponsorships for employers to give subscriptions to their employees, like a commodity to pacify a stressed out workforce. These don't sound like complaints about anything the app itself lacks, they sound like complaints that it is successful at marketing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a fan of cooking either but I can recognize when a tool can be beneficial for it.
No, you can't. If you don't cook you will not understand the differences of the various types of knifes, forks, spoons...
I'm not really a fan of cooking either but I still do it most days. It is possible to know something about a thing, have experience of a thing, have some useful insight into tools that are useful for it, all without enjoying said thing.