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A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

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Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#281

Post by ChatGTP »

antonvs wrote: post #271
TeMPOraL wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we reduce ourselves to a bunch of "computers" there's not much left for the stuff that actually matters, like the actual awesomeness that is having a body, which is highly sensitive and able to experience amazing things. This does not follow, except for stripping away the religious/spiritual part. Computers are amazing! So is hardware! And so is the dance of software and hardware that makes magic happen. I've se…

> every argument I've read so far triggered my "religious/spiritual mumbo jumbo" detector quite hard. Agreed. Sounds like a number of people have found a spiritual way to look at this, which seems a bit like a kind of quasi-religion, similar to the mystical aspects of Zen or yoga.

Are you the spirituality police?

You seem worried people have found a deeper connection to their bodies and then, for some reason label it as “spiritual” or “mumbo jumbo” and go on trying to diminish their experience, why ?

Personally, the more I see of this anti-spiritual enforcement, the more I see intellectualism and science becoming the dogmatic religion of the Catholic Church when it was illegal to have unorthodox ideas. Interestingly, true mystics and fee thinkers have always been attacked.

If people like to think their more than just their brains, and instinctively they feel this is accurate, what’s it to you ? Why go on the internet and try tell people otherwise. It’s their business and if others want to share that view well that’s none of your concern. It’s also ok to debate the point sure, just be respectful?

None of these posters are hurting anyone by discussing their ideas or feelings?

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#282

Post by Eumenes »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #135

When I was less wise, I remember suggesting exercise to someone suffering from depression. Didn't go so well. You reach an unfortunate point when depressed that makes it difficult to listen to actually useful advice. It's an unfortunate state of mind to say the least.

Encouraging someone who needs exercise to exercise is almost always met with a dismissive attitude from my experience. They view it as thinly veiled insult. Might as well call them fat or lazy or dumb. People can be incredibly sensitive.

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#283

Post by zdragnar »

haswell wrote: post #136
zdragnar wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another +1 here for that argument being distinctly not Judeo-Christian. Orthodox Christians in particular are of the belief that you worship with your whole self- mind, body and soul.

As a child of fundamental baptists, all of the circles I grew up in saw their bodies as temporary shells. They also saw their bodies as created by god, and thoughts/emotions as having metaphysical sources and consequences. Setting aside any specific doctrinal positions, the broader claims and beliefs of the church push one to think of themselves in some rather odd ways. If certain thoughts and feelings are temptation…

Interesting.

> thoughts/emotions as having metaphysical sources

Maybe this is a Protestant or a reformed thing? Yes, the devil is a temptor, but pretty much every sect agrees that there is no way for man to redeem himself but through faith. It is our nature to sin, and thus we are perfectly capable of it without the devil's help.

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#284

Post by mtalantikite »

xyzelement wrote: post #116
mudita wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that made me transition from a mindset of “I have a body” to “I am a body”, was actually Zen meditation. This was surprising to me. Before I tried it, I thought of meditation as a purely mental thing, I didn’t expect that the first really noticeable effect of regular meditation would be a changed relationship to my body, Much later I discovered contemporary dance, quit my phd in machine learning and became…

I appreciate your story and at the same time I don't agree with fully identifying with just the body. In fact in my yogic training, we learned to apply the 'i have' vs 'i am' as much as possible - directly opposite of what you are saying. As someone growing religiously right now, I like the framework of the body being a vehicle for the soul (or at least, the mind) resonates a lot more.

I'm not sure what sort of yoga you practice, but if it is more based in Hinduism then this would be one of the major differences between it and Buddhism. [1] In all schools of Buddhism there is the teaching of anatman, that there is no self or soul. [2] So the attitude around 'I' is a bit different, mainly that there is no permanent 'I' to identify with. Still, you're right in that 'I am a body' isn't quite right either.

[1] There are Buddhist yogas though, mainly from modern day Bangladesh that were preserved in Tibet, for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Dharmas_of_Naropa and the trul khor exercises. A Baul I've been lucky to practice with a little talks about it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JZ4__GTbjA

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatt%C4%81

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#285

Post by AlbertCory »

fhars wrote: post #193
AlbertCory wrote: post #104

Exercise is the best drug there is. When you hurt afterwards, it's not your body saying, "do that less." It's your body saying "do that more!"

No, ist is your body saying "you've been doing it wrong."

sometimes. And sometimes you just haven't worked that muscle at all.

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#286

Post by krumpet »

paulpauper wrote: post #95
hisnameisjimmy wrote: post #3

A key unlock for me was doing exercise where at some point I was trying so hard and breathing so aggressively that I couldn't really think anymore, I could only focus on the task at hand. For me, that's been biking up steep hills. I like biking because I get to see a bunch of cool stuff and if I go up hills I get a dope view. I joke that doing these rides feels like I'm re-boring my arteries because my heart pumps so…

not really a fan of overly strenuous cardio. I am not sure how it makes you better. i tried it and it never did much for me. it doesn't even help for weight loss due to metabolic adaptation and increased appetite.

Not trying to convince you to chase strenuous cardio. There are many, many activities that can support living a healthy life.

That being said...

I really don't know any serious athletes who enjoy going to practices or going to the gym to workout. In my opinion it's rarely about enjoying the moment. Rather, it's about the way it makes a person feel when they're done. Or, it's about reaching a long-term goal and the joy that comes with accomplishing something currently out of reach.

And, of course, that type of joy can come from a wide variety of activities - exercise, coding, music, arts, etc.

Edit: Removed unnecessary quotes.

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#287

Post by jononomo »

haswell wrote: post #278
jononomo wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a hardcore yoga practitioner -- I love the extra awareness of my body and mechanics that I have now after 10 years of practice.

I should also mention that I’m only 6 months in, and I can only imagine what a decade of practice brings. I know there is still much to learn, but I wanted to drop this here for anyone wondering if it’s worth the time investment. I knew I’d stick with it within a few weeks. 2-3 weeks was when I started noticing some definite changes in strength. It just gets better from there.

It took me years, but I eventually got to the point where I could legitimately do the standing splits to full extension, lol. I'm now working on conquering the handstand.

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#288

Post by embeng4096 »

stef25 wrote: post #272
hinkley wrote: post #2

I don’t know if this has changed for younger generations, but a lot of people, particularly those in intellectual pursuits, suffer to one degree or another from thinking of themselves as a brain being carried around as a meat sack. We are learning more about mind body connections and this is very not true (the ways the vagus nerve can totally fuck with your mental state is terrifying, and there are people with dysfun…

> the ways the vagus nerve can totally fuck with your mental state is terrifying, and there are people with dysfunctions that are five times worse Can you expand on that and / or provide some links? Very curious. Thanks.

Here[0] is a blog post by someone who identified it as playing a part in a severe case of selective mutism that deeply impacted their professional ambitions. The description is interwoven with a narrative of their time at some sort of week-long retreat, but there are sections (mostly in italics, as they're memories) that describe the mutism, their efforts to identify its source, their learning about the vagus nerve interactions, and the takeaways about the vagus nerve and its role in their experience.

[0]: https://fortelabs.com/blog/groundbreakers/

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#289

Post by haswell »

zdragnar wrote: post #283
haswell wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a child of fundamental baptists, all of the circles I grew up in saw their bodies as temporary shells. They also saw their bodies as created by god, and thoughts/emotions as having metaphysical sources and consequences. Setting aside any specific doctrinal positions, the broader claims and beliefs of the church push one to think of themselves in some rather odd ways. If certain thoughts and feelings are temptation…

Interesting. > thoughts/emotions as having metaphysical sources Maybe this is a Protestant or a reformed thing? Yes, the devil is a temptor, but pretty much every sect agrees that there is no way for man to redeem himself but through faith. It is our nature to sin, and thus we are perfectly capable of it without the devil's help.

As an adult, I can appreciate the nuance of the positions of these various sects (though to be clear, I consider myself an atheist at this stage of life).

But as a young child required to learn about how the world functions according to these ideas during the critical period of self-formation, such nuance was lost, and many foundational/implicit beliefs were formed and ingrained.

More broadly, I think it’s interesting to consider whether some of this is an unintentional side effect of the teachings, even if the texts technically communicate something else.

I know that for me personally, when I first encountered other schools of thought on the mind/body connection and my concept of my own self/body started to shift, all I could think is “holy shit, this is the opposite of what I was taught”.

Re: A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

#290

Post by haswell »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #235
haswell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people feel like “they” are somewhere inside their head. They look out at the world through eyes that are windows. The world is out there, “I” am in here. In this undefined black hole of “me”, mysterious, but definitely separate from the world and what’s “out there” past one’s eyes. They feel like their bodies are just the mechanical thing that carries them around. They don’t think of the systemic impact of…

Let's flip this around: once you learn to drive, and then drive enough for it to become something you do unconsciously, is the car now part of "you" too? If not, then I wouldn't use the embodiment/integration argument to define where "you" is, as the brain can learn to turn just about anything into extra limbs or senses, if you use it frequently enough.

Some would argue that we are deeply and intrinsically interconnected to the world around us in ways we seldom consider, and the idea that a vehicle could become part of “us” is not so farfetched.

If you keep going down the rabbit hole of looking for “you”, the only consistent answer that comes up is that there is no single or stable center, and that the boundaries of “you” are not so easy to find. Going deeper still points to the feeling of “I” being nothing but a useful illusion, and most importantly, just another feeling that you experience alongside other feelings like happiness or anger.

Some would argue that your whole world is you, and that our internal states and experience of the world are inseparable from the environment and people around us.

This is not a metaphysical claim, but a more broad statement about the systemic factors that influence what it’s like to be you.

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