Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What exactly is a mindfulness meditation?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 163 posts

Re: Ask HN: What exactly is a mindfulness meditation?

#31

Post by mattlondon »

roenxi wrote: post #24

It is easy to rule out meditation being a scam - most of the people who are willing to explain it aren't trying to charge money for the idea, nobody I know of is trying to sell paraphernalia and while there are books they are rare vs more generic self-help novels. The behaviour of practitioners doesn't make sense if they don't see a benefit. Particularly when observing the Buddhist monks it is clear that by and large…

> It is easy to rule out meditation being a scam - most of the people who are willing to explain it aren't trying to charge money for the idea, nobody I know of is trying to sell paraphernalia and while there are books they are rare vs more generic self-help novels. The behaviour of practitioners doesn't make sense if they don't see a benefit

What? Mindfulness is an industry in itself. Books, videos, podcasts, seminars, trainers. You name it people will take your money to teach you mindfulness, especially in enterprise

Re: Ask HN: What exactly is a mindfulness meditation?

#32

Post by csydas »

I think the issue is that media adaptations of meditation and other pop culture represtnations have really diluted what it means and added biases that you are or are not aware of.

Meditation is ultimately a focusing and calming technique; it's an intentional way that you can find a way to calm down and relax and destress. If you've ever sat outside and just stared off into nothing, feeling your mind slowly calming down and the thoughts that have been bugging you all day/week really not being that strong anymore, you've felt the result of meditation. Maybe you step out at the end of a long day to smoke, or you sat in a sauna or shower and no longer felt so bothered or focused on your troubles, you got the same result. Or maybe you just listened to music and felt your muscles relax and lose all tension.

There are many ways to get to this state and meditation is just a means to get thereike any other. Guided meditation can be pretty powerful too, but it's a different item for a different purpose. I've had guided meditative sessions that felt so surreal and powerful it was like a small acid trip, no exaggeration.

Mindful meditation is something I do a lot just for short bursts to calm down and focus a bit on my feelings since I deal with a lot of nonsense. Just thinking on it isn't great because I get too focused on trying to solve the issues instead of how I'm feeling and reacting. By focusing on this first and understanding what my feeling is trying to do for me and what is the outcome it wants I understand better why I'm angry or upset or feeling helpless. The feelings have a biological goal (fear of things that might hurt me, anger towards things that o don't like and cause me stress, etc) and focusing first on this helps the feelings be more comfortable. Once I get to this state, it's a lot easier for these feelings to lower and I'm able to act a lot better.

It's not magic and it's not hoodoo, it's just what you likely do already in many ways but with fewer external stimuli and a focus on reviewing your own thoughts and feelings. I'm not magically happy at the end of it, instead I'm feeling more in control.

Re: Ask HN: What exactly is a mindfulness meditation?

#33

Post by aristofun »

rlp wrote: post #14

It's about training your mind's executive control/function. You learn to focus on one thing and allow others to pass through your awareness without them being overly distracting/disturbing. Think of your focus like a spotlight. Most people have very little control over their spotlight and it gets aimed at whatever is the latest thing to enter their awareness: a thought, a sound, another thought, a visual, etc. It's b…

So you described concentration training. No need for meditation myth for that to, no?

Re: Ask HN: What exactly is a mindfulness meditation?

#34

Post by aristofun »

mattront wrote: post #11

Personally, I find meditation as presented by Mingyur Rinpoche (from Tibetan Buddhist tradition) very useful and practically applicable to every day life. It goes beyond just mindfulness. Here is a quote from [0]: "...practicing meditation is a process of exploring the heart and mind, of fully experiencing the richness of awareness itself. This implies that meditation is not meant to eliminate the things we don’t lik…

How do you reword it in down to earth actionable way?

So I go and know what to do, and some criteria to know if I’m doing it right.

Re: Ask HN: What exactly is a mindfulness meditation?

#35

Post by aristofun »

firtoz wrote: post #13

When we focus we do not really focus. For example, while we eat, we get all kinds of thoughts, and we can easily get lost in them. Planning about the future, thinking about the past. We can get lost in our mind and our thoughts carry us around. This is our default mode. With meditation, we can learn to focus on what we are doing much more precisely than "typical" focus that we think is focusing, but the typical one w…

> When we focus we do not really focus.

How do you know that?

How do you measure and decide if you focus enough?

Re: Ask HN: What exactly is a mindfulness meditation?

#36

Post by GaelFG »

An university courses about this, along with drugs, coma, burst of anger and various other 'non-standard states of mind' (sorry it in french but with a google translate you should be able to get researcher names and read some of their papers) :

https://fc.univ-paris8.fr/-etude-des-transes-et-des-etats-de...

"Trance" and meditation are for practicals reason the main focus and the main goal is to allow to use 'meditation induced trance' (as far as I know it's the same thing than mindfulness meditation) to allow people to handle things like stuttering for exemple. They do teach students to put themselves in trance.

For what I heard, it's still a very fresh field but 'there are studies about it'.

Re: Ask HN: What exactly is a mindfulness meditation?

#37

Post by toxicFork »

aristofun wrote: post #35
firtoz wrote: post #13

When we focus we do not really focus. For example, while we eat, we get all kinds of thoughts, and we can easily get lost in them. Planning about the future, thinking about the past. We can get lost in our mind and our thoughts carry us around. This is our default mode. With meditation, we can learn to focus on what we are doing much more precisely than "typical" focus that we think is focusing, but the typical one w…

> When we focus we do not really focus. How do you know that? How do you measure and decide if you focus enough?

You can measure how many times you get distracted, and how far do you get dragged. This is very easy to do during meditation.

Re: Ask HN: What exactly is a mindfulness meditation?

#38

Post by aristofun »

endorphine wrote: post #20

> But then isn’t our whole life a sequence of meditations? Because we always focus on something (with sleep breaks). > Other gurus teach that meditation is “doing nothing”. Okay, but then again there’s nothing special about it, we all do it from time to time. This makes me wonder: have you ever felt overwhelmed by anxiety? Or experienced a panic attack? Or like you had so much stress that you couldn't eat, sleep or f…

No panic attacks in my experience. But plenty of stress and highly stressful events in my life.

And only substantial value I got is a relaxation and calmness, some rest for the body and mind.

But I might as well call it “self relaxation techniques” and ignore the whole meditation industry.

So part of my question is - is there anything there except some common sense relaxation techniques?

Re: Ask HN: What exactly is a mindfulness meditation?

#39

Post by can16358p »

joshxyz wrote: post #19
can16358p wrote: post #15

From what I've understood and practiced it's just being present in the moment, litarally not (explicitly) creating any thoughts, just observing and being aware of any input present outside. Think of yourself like a wireless radio and think of the meditation like putting yourself into monitor mode. It's definitely not a scam and it has been practiced a lot in the Eastern culture for long periods of time with observabl…

> However, like everything that gets popular in the west, there are many charlatans out there who are scammers. Are you frustrated in your life? Are you sad and lonely? Is your life a living hell and you feel lost without direction? Sign up in this meditation course to solve all of your problems for only $9.95! 30-day money back guarantee!

The biggest irony around it is that this knowledge is out there and people who truly want to spread it already provide it for free anyway (not counting paid retreat events which require organization and time, that are understandibly paid/expensive).

Yet people still think that "if I pay this money, I'll get the healing in return" because of the "modern" capitalist way of thinking.

Re: Ask HN: What exactly is a mindfulness meditation?

#40

Post by aristofun »

drewcoo wrote: post #23

It should not be a matter of someone's strict definitions in text. It should be taught to you in person. Yes, it is all bullshit. But to a lot of people it's meaningful bullshit. Your mileage may vary.

This is what I’m honestly trying to find out.

What specific meaning they find in it.

Post reply on HN