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Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

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Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#51

Post by icebraining »

nkohari wrote: post #35
icebraining wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get how that quote relates to the parent post, can you clarify?

The quote refers to an idea in Zen Buddhism called shoshin , or "beginner's mind". The general idea is that the more you believe you are an expert on a subject, the more closed off you become to new ideas and ways you can improve. Instead, shoshin encourages you to approach all things with eagerness of a beginning. If you're interested, you should read Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, which is a short book collecting some…

I understand the quote, but I still don't get the relevance to the first post, sorry. Can you describe it more explicitly?

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#52

Post by mercer »

grabcocque wrote: post #2

As somebody with clinical anxiety, I have been prescribed CBT and Mindfulness on the NHS, I think this piece misses several key points. For one thing, NICE (the UK NGO responsible for analysing evidence and making recommendations on the efficacy of treatments and their cost effectiveness) and an all-party Parliamentary group found signifcant evidence to recommend Mindfulness as a treatment for anxiety and mild depres…

I'm quite excited about CBT, but I think it's kind of a half-way-there step towards meditation/mindfulness, and in my personal case it actually was counter-productive in a way that meditation hasn't been.

The core difference, I'd say, is that with CBT there is still too much emphasis on your thoughts. You're taught to use your own thinking to counter those thoughts, which is a bit like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.

In my case, that made an anxious mind more anxious, because the anxiety itself is usually irrational and caused by thoughts.

Again, I'm quite excited by CBT because I do think it can be very effective. But I'm even more excited about some of the 'newer' approaches under the CBT umbrella that don't suffer from the flaw of still relying on your irrational mind to solve irrational problems.

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#53

Post by physicsyogi »

samarvir wrote: post #23

I believe there are only 2 way to reach truth. 1. experience your truth 2. do statistically sound study to show if your truth is in fact the truth of majority. to challenge and test the use of , meditation and 'Mindfulness', JUST TRY IT on yourself. this won't kill you or cost you fortune. find your own truth. P.S. - I think this magazine Article to be somewhat hocus - pocus. I can't pinpoint what's wrong1 except som…

Number two seems not right. For the path you’re talking about to be useful, shouldn’t it still work even if you’re the last person on left on Earth? Number two also assumes that the majority of people are also searching for truth (seems they aren’t, currently) or have already found it (which would require that they’d been already searching).

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#54

Post by crusso »

icebraining wrote: post #25
brango wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meditation has massive potential for very real, profound experiences. There is much that science doesn't understand about our bodies yet but that has been empirically discovered over the millenia. Meditation can certainly be boring, but it's not necessarily training yourself to be bored. There are many different facets depending on the style of meditation you practice: * Zen might get you enquire into yourself why yo…

(1) is often mentioned as a benefit of mindfulness meditation, but it always puzzled me; first, it seems something everyone does to some degree - thinking "I'm being paranoid" is essentially that recognition, no? Second, it's always missing the second part: and then what? One can recognize an optical illusion as one, but that knowledge doesn't make it fade away. I mean, it can help to know, but it seems there's step…

Consciousness exists on many levels with many co-processes. Without careful meditative practices, we tend to view our minds along a linear path as we change our focus from thought to thought. We are immersed in our stream of consciousness. That stream is our identity.

Meditation forces a meta-examination of that stream and recognize that it isn't the one flowing river that you normally feel it to be. Meditation allows you to exercise other levels of your consciousness that can recognize, observe, and even control those other parallel threads of consciousness.

I have read that there are possible pitfalls for people already suffering from paranoid schizophrenic-ish disorders. I think they're already dealing with an out-of-control sense of not having a single stream of consciousness that they always recognize as themselves.

I can only speak for myself, but I don't find the sensation of a multi-threaded "me" all that alarming. YMMV

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#55

Post by jaclaz »

owebmaster wrote: post #45
occultist_throw wrote: post #37

"Mindfulness" is an occult method. End of discussion. It can be, and has been studied not by science, but by people working with the occult. And mindfulness is more of a byproduct of meditation, controlled breathing, or other techniques that Shiva told Shakti. We'll eventually be able to analyse these things in the words of science. But not yet. If you're looking for proof, you will be looking for a very long time, u…

As we say in Brazil: "monkey that can't eat a banana will say it's unripe". Some people try medidation and succeed, some don't and think that the ones succeeding are faking it. > And then, N=1 research usually isn't looked highly upon. Genius!

>As we say in Brazil: "monkey that can't eat a banana will say it's unripe".

JFYI and as a side note, more or less every country has the same, possibly derived from Aesop:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#56

Post by rem1313 »

lukev wrote: post #32

I normally wouldn't weigh in here, since I am the furthest thing possible from an expert, but after even a little dabbling in meditation I can see some major misconceptions in the other comments. It isn't about being bored, or about any of the benefits that may or may not occur. Meditation is a useful discipline because it is about training the mind to (a) become conscious of and "reify" individual thoughts and sensa…

Yes, my thoughts exactly (not an expert as well). It was eye-opening for me, if only for just the technique to understand how the mind works and how it can be directed more productively

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#57

Post by smt88 »

submeta wrote: post #41

There is no need for scientific proof. I observe that being mindful changes things for me: The way I listen to people, the way I eat, the way I handle rejection or anger or any other feeling. I realize that being mindful (vs mindlessly and blindly doing things) sharpens my senses, makes me think clearer, makes me change perspectives, create more categories or realize that I think within categories. I got in touch wit…

What does this have to do with the article?

Proof is important for something used in a clinical setting when potentially suicidal people are involved. Proof that these things are safe and effectve is literally a life-and-death issue for some people.

Similarly, laypeople prescribe these things for a vast array of problems, and we need to know if that practice is harmful or helpful.

Whether it works for you or whether you need proof is irrelevant to whether proof is needed more broadly.

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#58

Post by crusso »

vidarh wrote: post #24
mettamage wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Secondly, mindfulness feels, to me, like an offshoot of CBT. It appears to be very closely related to CBT in both its approach and what it helps control. Really? When I meditate I need to turn my thoughts off . With CBT you reframe your thoughts by a process of what I'd like to call creative thinking and empiricism. So for me, it's not an offshoot of CBT, since mindfulness is not concerned with thoughts but with be…

> When I meditate I need to turn my thoughts off. Mindfulness meditation is very explicitly not about turning thoughts off, but about letting thoughts arise and fall away without getting caught up in it. Concentration meditation practices do involve turning thoughts off. That said, I also find the comparison to CBT curious. > (in 95% of the cases it's your body). In mindfulness meditation, while it can be your body,…

"and fall away without getting caught up in it"

I'd agree that thinking of mindfulness as turning thoughts off is not quite right - but I think he means what you mean when you say "fall away". He probably thinks of letting a thought fall away and not following it as "turning it off".

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#59

Post by jononor »

icebraining wrote: post #25
brango wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meditation has massive potential for very real, profound experiences. There is much that science doesn't understand about our bodies yet but that has been empirically discovered over the millenia. Meditation can certainly be boring, but it's not necessarily training yourself to be bored. There are many different facets depending on the style of meditation you practice: * Zen might get you enquire into yourself why yo…

(1) is often mentioned as a benefit of mindfulness meditation, but it always puzzled me; first, it seems something everyone does to some degree - thinking "I'm being paranoid" is essentially that recognition, no? Second, it's always missing the second part: and then what? One can recognize an optical illusion as one, but that knowledge doesn't make it fade away. I mean, it can help to know, but it seems there's step…

The important bridge is to realize that the feeling (paranoia) is something you can choose to embrace or not.

Once the feeling is no longer something that automatically 'happens to you', one can start to explore it - at a safe distance, no rush. Why am I feeling in this way? Is there a good reason? If yes, what could I do about it? What would happen if I would just dismiss the feeling without doing anything? What would happen if I embrace this feeling/act it out? Once an idea of what strategy is most likely to give a good outcome, one makes the choice.

Its kinda like having a person with an outsider perspective help you analyze the situation in a calm and thoughtful manner. Just with much higher bandwidth, less communication challenges and the person is always there for you.

Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws

#60

Post by gerbilly »

Sandorie wrote: post #9

Between being a placebo and a straight up pseudoscience(if I even were to call it a “science”) in my opinion “mindfulness” is a type of pavlovian conditioning design to establish a self-empathy defense mechanism within our minds. I’ve been to “mindfulness events” for executives and corporate, where people claim to let go of their ego only to look down on anyone who is not as “open minded “ as they are. Overall is ano…

Sorry but what are you talking about?

Mindfulness is a type of mental training for achieving a balance between attention and awareness and a strong concentration that can be used to study your mind.

It's a form of introspective psychology.

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