61–70 of 100 posts
With the risk of sounding esoteric or self-help I have to admit that both cold showers and wim hoff breathing method have at least made me less stressed out and more resistant to cold and sudden change of temperature. It started out of curiosity while in my meditation conscious living mood about a year ago, but ended up something I exercise daily since it just feels good to me. Most notably I noticed that my legs whe…
Wim Hof "Iceman" definitely gives me "cult leader" vibes but cool to see this research get published in a very reputable scientific journal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaMjhwFE1Zw
The paper mentions voluntary activation of the sympathetic nervous system and anecdotally from my own meditation and yoga practice I've found that I have some control over a very specific SNS response. I'm able to control piloerection ("goose bump" activation) any time I want, something I wasn't ever able to do before and found to be quite strange when I noticed myself gaining control over it. Not exactly an awesome…
Very interesting. How quickly can you trigger it? I've experienced something similar but it takes long time to arrive, at least 5-10 minutes, I wonder if with practice you found exactly the state that triggers it and you can do it instantly. Also, have you felt it as in waves going up and down? or just located in same place ? And lastly, does it have any health utility?
Immediately with a breath (as in start inhaling, it happens). Without a breath, maybe 5 seconds or so?
- Also, have you felt it as in waves going up and down? or just located in same place ?
It's all over the body, although I can focus on just one part of the body and do it there, but that takes me a little longer. (We're still talking about seconds here though. Maybe 20?)
- And lastly, does it have any health utility?
Maybe? Haha, hard to say. If anything probably indirectly, since this has come from a meditation practice, and meditation itself has numerous documented/studied health benefits.
The paper mentions voluntary activation of the sympathetic nervous system and anecdotally from my own meditation and yoga practice I've found that I have some control over a very specific SNS response. I'm able to control piloerection ("goose bump" activation) any time I want, something I wasn't ever able to do before and found to be quite strange when I noticed myself gaining control over it. Not exactly an awesome…
I figured out how to do this and how to get chills on demand on my last acid trip. I've forgotten how to do the goose bumps thing but I just tried the chills (you know the pleasurable sensation from good music) and that has remained. Feels odd but LSD is a good tool for this stuff.
You can ask yourself why something is as it is infinitely until the cycle regresses in on itself. Like the child that keeps asking `why?`. The lie we've accepted is that somewhere beneath this pile of whys is a foundation that makes things as they are for a reason. Something solid. An un-moving axiom. That's something to consider. Furthermore we can apply `Why?` to the widely accepted belief in the axiom that our ide…
If by "we" you mean the mainstream western world, then you are correct. However, the notion that consciousness extends, or can extend, further than our minds and bodies, has been known and practiced upon for thousands of years.
On a tangent, I've personally thought about the "infinite cycle of why" a lot and have come to the conclusion that: 1) like you point out, there is no final why, which technically means there is no "real why" for anything at all, only whatever we accept at the moment as the answer, and 2) we are addicted to using language/words - which are useful but imperfect and incomplete tools to communicate things that are impossible to fully describe with them, like feelings, experiences and consciousness, this leads to innumerable problems as inevitably pretty much every message uttered by anyone is distorted into an almost invisible game of telephone.
The paper mentions voluntary activation of the sympathetic nervous system and anecdotally from my own meditation and yoga practice I've found that I have some control over a very specific SNS response. I'm able to control piloerection ("goose bump" activation) any time I want, something I wasn't ever able to do before and found to be quite strange when I noticed myself gaining control over it. Not exactly an awesome…
I also gained this ability after meditating for an hour every day for ~4 months. A BUNCH of weird things started happening actually and I kind of backed off of it because of them. It proved to be a lot more than I really signed up for. (Fascinating things happened though...) ...But I have retained the piloerection ability, which I can do on command within 2-5 seconds or so. There's also some weird sensations in my si…
I picked it back up about a decade later and found some texts really helpful that I'd recommend to anyone working at a meditation practice:
- "The Other Shore" by Thich Nhat Hanh
- "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryū Suzuki
- "Zen Training" by Katsuki Sekida
There are of course tons of others, but better to start with fewer than an overwhelming collection of things when getting situated.
Also, yeah, the sinuses thing is weird and was also surprising when I started noticing it!
Edit: Also, a physical yoga asana practice really brought me a whole lot deeper into my meditation practice. Find a teacher you connect with. Typically yoga studios that have "Mysore" or "Hatha" practices on their schedules will be teaching something that isn't just calisthenics. That'd be enough to open the doors and get going.
You can ask yourself why something is as it is infinitely until the cycle regresses in on itself. Like the child that keeps asking `why?`. The lie we've accepted is that somewhere beneath this pile of whys is a foundation that makes things as they are for a reason. Something solid. An un-moving axiom. That's something to consider. Furthermore we can apply `Why?` to the widely accepted belief in the axiom that our ide…
> It's becoming apparent that our consciousness can extend further than we previously believed If by "we" you mean the mainstream western world, then you are correct. However, the notion that consciousness extends, or can extend, further than our minds and bodies, has been known and practiced upon for thousands of years. On a tangent, I've personally thought about the "infinite cycle of why" a lot and have come to th…
You can ask yourself why something is as it is infinitely until the cycle regresses in on itself. Like the child that keeps asking `why?`. The lie we've accepted is that somewhere beneath this pile of whys is a foundation that makes things as they are for a reason. Something solid. An un-moving axiom. That's something to consider. Furthermore we can apply `Why?` to the widely accepted belief in the axiom that our ide…