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Meditation study shows changes associated with awareness, stress (2011)

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Re: Meditation study shows changes associated with awareness, stress (2011)

#41

Post by fernly »

rohitarondekar wrote: post #9

I'm not well versed with reading research papers etc but I have one question. Could it be possible that by simply practicing mindfulness meditation the brain restructured itself via a placebo style effect rather that because of the meditation itself? For anybody who has access to the paper what did the control group do during the eight weeks?

Not clear what distinction you are trying to make. They practiced mindfulness meditation according to a specific, published plan, and brain anatomy changes were noted. It doesn't seem they are making any claim other than, this series of exercises produce this effect.

The paper doesn't seem to be available, but the abstract at the author's page[0] says "Healthy but stressed individuals are randomized to either a meditation-based stress reduction intervention or health education control intervention."

[0]https://connects.catalyst.harvard.edu/Profiles/display/Perso...

Re: Meditation study shows changes associated with awareness, stress (2011)

#42

Post by chrissyb »

kranner wrote: post #39
chrissyb wrote: post #33

The thing i don't like about the term "meditation" is that its too closely intertwined with spirituality. Where meditation should actually be associated with relaxation. This article only mentions the control group twice, once to say "None of these changes were seen in the control group, indicating that they had not resulted merely from the passage of time". This is just bad reporting - How about telling us what the…

They weren't expecting to see changes in the control group. Control groups represent the baseline, untreated state. Also, meditation and relaxation are not the same thing.

You're right, meditation is relaxation with a sprinkle of woo.

Re: Meditation study shows changes associated with awareness, stress (2011)

#43

Post by [deleted] »

chdir wrote: post #6
pgrote wrote: post #3

What is the best way to learn how to meditate? Any good resources?

Either join a course or pick up a good book. I found this book immensely useful and simple to follow: "Mindfulness in Plain English" [1] [1] http://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-Anniversary-...

[deleted]

Re: Meditation study shows changes associated with awareness, stress (2011)

#44

Post by pedalpete »

KobaQ wrote: post #17

The goal of meditation is not to get a better brain. As the goal of yoga is not to get a sexy body. These articles and even more the countless yoga ads with young beautiful ladies are really counterproductive from the viewpoint of yoga. They might be helpful from another perspective. I can't summarize the real goal of yoga properly (meditation is one of the important exercise beside contemplation; the asanas are for…

Meditation enables the getting of a better brain with the goal of having a better life. Yoga(modern western understanding of the asanas) enables the getting of a better body with the goal of having a better life.

What is this better life? Well, in respect to these two areas, it is a brain with the ability to focus and relax and a body which is flexible and balanced. That's my interpretations anyway.

Re: Meditation study shows changes associated with awareness, stress (2011)

#45

Post by adrice727 »

arbitrarywords wrote: post #31
peatmoss wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll second this, with the specific request for recommended secular resources. I've found I get pretty turned off the higher the quantity of mysticism / spirituality, veneration of random leader persons, and faux eastern cultural elements thrown in as color.

I found Waking Up by Sam Harris pretty interesting. It's a bit more abstract than a how-to manual, more why and what. http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religio...

As someone who has gradually moved away from the more "woo" end of the spectrum and more towards the practical end, I found Waking Up to be a really good read.

Re: Meditation study shows changes associated with awareness, stress (2011)

#46

Post by nhtr_ »

sravfeyn wrote: post #30
redmaverick wrote: post #23

There are different types of meditation styles. I had experience with a type of meditation mentioned in the article. It is known as mindfulness meditation. Even in mindfulness meditation there are different approaches. Mine is mindfulness through the awareness of bodily sensations. http://www.dhamma.org/ This is the 10 day course I underwent. It is pretty brutal and intense. You meditate for 8 hrs a day in total sile…

Why and in what way is thinking about sensations and one's body different from thinking about past or future? Aren't there other ways to condition mind to bring back its thoughts away from the Past or Future, why is focusing on breathing the only way that meditation teaches?

I'd say breathing is sort of a two-way binding mechanism.

When you're at peace, it's slow and deep. And when you're stressed, exhilarated or angered it's turbulent and erratic. So when you're, say, stressed, you can transition to a peaceful state by deep-breathing; and as you are relaxing you find yourself not needing that much focus/energy to keep the breathing that way - the binding automatically happens.

One can use almost any object to meditate upon - visual image, mental image, sound, music, whir of a motor, randomness of objects around you, tick of a clock; just about anything; the more rhythmic, the better. But for us inexperienced ones, breathing works the best.

Also, we should not think about breathing, rather feel it, granted it starts with thinking :) Thinking is what meditation shuns, at least when we're practicing

Re: Meditation study shows changes associated with awareness, stress (2011)

#47

Post by mattrepl »

chrissyb wrote: post #42
kranner wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't expecting to see changes in the control group. Control groups represent the baseline, untreated state. Also, meditation and relaxation are not the same thing.

You're right, meditation is relaxation with a sprinkle of woo.

Meditation is more concentration than relaxation.

Re: Meditation study shows changes associated with awareness, stress (2011)

#48

Post by [deleted] »

kranner wrote: post #29
codyb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people (including Siddhartha or Buddha) used to walk for meditation. If that's the case, and you practiced mindfulness while exercising it might be possible to do both at once. Often when you hear of great athletes, especially great endurance athletes like Michael Phelps, they talk about how they don't think about the whole X meters or Y miles at once. They focus on performing the next stroke or next ste…

Walking meditation e.g. as described in 'Mindfulness in Plain English' is slow and deliberate, and I don't think one can get much physical benefit out of it. I'm no expert but I think concentration is only part of the picture. This can be concentration on the breath, or concentration on a physical activity as you describe it. The other part is using the highly developed concentration state for the actual (mindfulness…

[deleted]

Re: Meditation study shows changes associated with awareness, stress (2011)

#49

Post by adrice727 »

rory096 wrote: post #35
redmaverick wrote: post #23

There are different types of meditation styles. I had experience with a type of meditation mentioned in the article. It is known as mindfulness meditation. Even in mindfulness meditation there are different approaches. Mine is mindfulness through the awareness of bodily sensations. http://www.dhamma.org/ This is the 10 day course I underwent. It is pretty brutal and intense. You meditate for 8 hrs a day in total sile…

Can you offer some background on why you decided to attend? How much experience with mindfulness did you have beforehand?

I'm not OP, but I attended the same 10-day course last year and will likely attend another one at some point in the near future.

I started experimenting with meditation after listening to Howard Stern talk about transcendental mediation around seven years ago. At the time, I was struggling a lot with anxiety and bouts of depression. When I discovered Mindfulness and Acceptance Therapy, I started to move away from mantra meditation(TM) and towards mindfulness meditation. Over the years, I became more and more interested, not only in meditation, but in Eastern philosophy, and studied everything from Vedanta to Zen to Yoga to Tibetan Buddhism.

I meditated anywhere from 20-40 minutes a day, but I was never very consistent. Sometimes I would skip a day, and sometimes a week, but I always came back to it. The anxiety and depression eventually went away, but I still was a very unhappy person, and I didn't understand why.

Enter psychedelics. After a psilocybin trip last spring, I wrote about 40 pages worth of advice to myself. It was all very practical, very pragmatic, almost fatherly. Part of that advice was something along the lines of, "If you really want to figure out what's going on, you need to study your mind, study your thoughts." I signed up for the first available course.

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