[HN Gopher] Meditation as Wakeful Relaxation: Unclenching Smooth...
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Meditation as Wakeful Relaxation: Unclenching Smooth Muscle
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 173 points
Date : 2026-01-07 15:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (psychotechnology.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (psychotechnology.substack.com)
| ryandv wrote:
| You must learn to sit perfectly still with every muscle tense for
| long periods. Various things will happen to you
| while you are practising these positions; they must be carefully
| analysed and described. Note down the duration of
| practice; the severity of the pain (if any) which accompanies it,
| the degree of rigidity attained, and any other pertinent matters.
| When you have progressed up to the point that a saucer filled to
| the brim with water and poised upon the head does not spill one
| drop during a whole hour, and when you can no longer
| perceive the slightest tremor in any muscle; when, in short, you
| are perfectly steady and easy, you will be admitted for
| examination; and, should you pass, you will be instructed
| in more complex and difficult practices.
|
| - Aleister Crowley, Liber E vel Exercitiorum, 1911.
| https://hermetic.com/crowley/equinox/i/i/eqi01005
| mionhe wrote:
| I assumed this was referring to a simple seated position, but I
| was incorrect. He had people in some odd poses for meditation.
| Thank you for posting the source.
| zenon wrote:
| Possibly a non-Jungian explanation for John Sarno's hypothesis
| that chronic pain could be caused by emotional issues triggering
| interruption of blood supply to painful areas.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Back in grad school I was riding my bike home in a thunderstorm
| after 1am and crashed into a parked car. The next day the
| people at the health center panicked when I told them my neck
| hurt and rushed me to get an X ray which found no fractures.
|
| For years afterwards I had pain that floated everywhere from my
| head to my upper back, neck, shoulders, etc, also had something
| like sciatia affecting one leg that I blamed from overdoing
| Yoga. It was definitely exacerbated by stress.
|
| In 2021 I had something that was half midlife crisis and half
| mental health crisis that had me on my back foot until quite
| recently. My dentist had long told me I ground my teeth and
| should get a bite guard but I didn't take any action until the
| summer of 2021.
|
| Within two days the pain focalized completely to my jaw and
| became agonizing. I definitely had the jaw clicking sign of TMJ
| disorder. For about six months I was on a strict regimen of
| eating very little solid food, instead I would throw random
| foods into a pot (like turnips, seaweed, beef, crazy stuff) and
| cook them like soup then grind them up with an immersion
| blenders. And I drank shakes from Burger King whenever I
| wanted.
|
| I had a lot of emotional growth in that time and the pervasive
| anxiety I had went away. There was a day when I looked back and
| realized I just hadn't thought about the pain in my jaw for a
| long time. Maybe one day every few months my jaw bugs me a
| little.
|
| I had another time when I was self-employed and not getting
| enough work and had terrible tendinitis in my hands which
| cleared up when I started doing push-ups.
|
| That's my model for chronic pain and getting over it.
| svdr wrote:
| The idea that there is much more computation (and
| intelligence/agency) going on in biological and other systems
| seems to be getting more popular. (The author writes: The whole
| body is a computer: it'd be wasteful for evolution to only use
| the brain for computation when other systems could take part
| too.). Michael Levin has some super interesting ideas about this.
| ceroxylon wrote:
| One of the most cited papers of all time is Jerome Lettvin's
| "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain" (1959).
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110928024235/http://jerome.let...
| (PDF)
| nprateem wrote:
| Not a new idea.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system
| svdr wrote:
| Michael Levin has a lot of new ideas.
| gabennn wrote:
| GabeN mentions similar in a video with IGN a few years ago.
|
| Machine brain interfaces can reliably model thought to action
| of using ones arm, for example.
|
| But it cannot model "feeling". It's, as of that interview, an
| intractable problem to map all electrical activity in us given
| external stimuli. Every body "feels" a cold stimulus in a
| different part of their. This wasn't qualitative either;
| imaging technology shows activity unevenly occurs across every
| human body. Put an ice cube on someones hand, their left knee
| tissues may react. Put ice cube on another person's hand, back
| of their neck reacts not their left knee.
|
| Then there are stories of people missing the majority of their
| brain but only learned this medically after living a normal
| life; going to college, holding a career together for a couple
| decades.
|
| Brain-centrism was just as dumb as our other takes that attempt
| to demarcate a center to our center-less universe. Even just
| practically speaking, I know a lot of PhDs who cannot cook or
| rotate a tire. Where is the intelligence in letting oneself end
| up such a helpless, and thus codependent, tool?
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I've been dealing with chronic pain in my hands, arms, and
| shoulders, and one of the things I've slowly been figuring
| out is that the pain I feel in my hand is actually coming
| from tight muscles in my forearm. Referred pain is _weird_.
| tern wrote:
| There's a conversation on YouTube between Mike Johnson (whose
| theory is the subject of the article) and Michael Levin.
| Levin's work has been a huge inspiration ... for everyone
| working between biology, psychology, and spirituality.
| jordwest wrote:
| > it'd be wasteful for evolution to only use the brain for
| computation
|
| Even what we consciously experience as the brain is really only
| a tiny part of the brain.
|
| The little language centre and the capacity to imagine are only
| a tiny subset of a multitude of brain functions and yet we
| believe that those two functions make up "me". Actually it's
| just those two functions telling a story that they are me.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| Is there any evidence yet for this theory? Sounds falsifiable.
| ryandv wrote:
| Experiment for yourself. The Buddhists have kept a tradition
| that makes falsifiable claims and provides steps for
| reproduction. I have reproduced some of these claims myself.
|
| What differentiates this practice from the natural science is
| its study of subjective phenomena, as opposed to objective
| physicalities.
|
| https://firekasina.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/the-fire-k...
| etyhhgfff wrote:
| I wonder if we can objectify subjective experience in the
| future. Maybe somehow measure and visualize thoughts and
| feelings.
| eskaytwo wrote:
| MCTB or Dhamma overground might have been a less confronting
| link to share :)
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| I find it interesting how meditation eventually becomes an
| anxiety reduction method, or general emotion management.
|
| What should it be if there is no burden of stress or negative
| impression of any emotion? Why rid of stress? It comes and goes,
| it is as fleeting as relaxation.
|
| I guess meditation is a insight into there being no problem to
| solve, once that insight is clear, there is no need for
| meditation.
| HPsquared wrote:
| For me a big factor is the way you become _aware_ of the stress
| when it is absent for a short while. I felt a similar thing
| returning to work after the Christmas break. It 's good to know
| about how you are feeling.
| rdcooper wrote:
| I notice I often have very strong knee-jerk reactions to these
| kind of comments.
|
| It's usually from some person that has not spent very much time
| meditating at all or invested much time around the various
| cultures which treasure and pride themselves in their
| meditative practices. It usually goes something like:
|
| "[Some kind of reasoning], therefore, there is no need to
| meditate."
|
| I'd like to provide an analogy which I think fits:
|
| We use our muscles every day. If you just use your muscles
| well, there's no need for strength training!
|
| And sure, I mean, that KIND of works. But like... There's a LOT
| of research around the benefits of strength training. And
| there's a multitude of reasons why someone might want to get
| involved in strength training. Very few people aspire to become
| powerlifters, etc.
|
| IMHO, it's a dangerous view to take, as it can lead to
| dismissal of a lot of fantastic use cases, and it leads to
| people dismissing meditation outright ("No doctor, my friend
| said that if I just move correctly, I don't need strength
| training!").
|
| And yes, similar to strength, there's no upper limit on
| training for things like focus, concentration, mindfulness.
|
| There's no 'need' for meditation sure, but by that logic
| there's no 'need' for most things.
|
| What seems to be true to me is that it's absolutely fantastic
| in terms of technologies available to us for self (and also
| society)-improvement.
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| I am doubtful of the scientific validity and am definitively
| not dismissive of cultures that use meditations for inquiry
| into Self.
|
| Strength training is a good example because it is an
| immensley stressful activity with adaptations that sometimes
| go into tics.
|
| I believe I've read accounts of experienced meditators also
| stressing themselves to the verge of lunacy. Some even deal
| with panic attacks , unannounced, despite lecturing on inner
| peace.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Dedicated mediators sometimes experience signs and symptoms
| of psychosis
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8380174/
|
| In general psychosis-proneness is a quantity that people
| have more or less, some people have harmless hallucinations
| or "unusual experiences" but psychosis-prone people have
| more trouble when they are under more stress. Some
| researchers think that meditation practice could be
| protective
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-023-01856-y
|
| Personally mindless use of the word "mindful" is a pet
| peeve of mine because I knew somebody who would talk about
| mindfulness just before he walked into an open pit. Also
| back when I was more anxious I always thought my mind was
| "full" by default and wanted to empty it, I found that many
| practices would just fill my mind up with more noise.
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| someone who needs mindfulness might know they need it and
| thus talk about it
| IAmBroom wrote:
| > I knew somebody who would talk about mindfulness just
| before he walked into an open pit.
|
| Ironically (or not), there is a Buddhist story about
| this...
|
| _A monk comes to see his master, and announces that he
| had achieved perfect mindfulness.
|
| The master said, "That is wonderful! And, when you came
| in, how many umbrellas were by the door?"
|
| The monk realized he had not achieved perfect
| mindfulness._
| metabagel wrote:
| There are claims and links to scientific studies in this
| article.
|
| https://www.skepticspath.org/blog/what-is-the-science-of-
| med...
| nprateem wrote:
| The Buddha used the analogy that once you reach the other
| shore you discard the boat.
|
| The idea of no longer needing formal meditation after
| enlightenment isn't new.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| It's strongly rejected by most schools of zen, fwiw. Using
| meditation as a tool to get somewhere, then discarding it
| once you are "there" is not zen buddhism.
| etyhhgfff wrote:
| One interpretation is: Because you are now always in a
| meditative state.
| wubrr wrote:
| There is a lot of scientific research/results based on actual
| measurable results and biology which supports the benefits of
| strength training. Can the same be said about meditation?
| yownie wrote:
| yes. why don't you bother to look some up instead of
| antagonizing others?
| wubrr wrote:
| So many allusions and claims such as your 'yes' in this
| thread, and yet, not a single actual link/reference to
| anything actually scientific/verifiable...
|
| Maybe you should actually share a link if you're so sure,
| instead of crying about being antagonized?
| metabagel wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46531259
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Fascinating repy:
|
| > I often have very strong knee-jerk reactions to these kind
| of comments.
|
| OK, YOU have an overwhelmingly emotional reaction to these
| comments. That is not a very successful path to understanding
| anything.
|
| > It's usually from some person that has not spent very much
| time meditating at all or invested much time around the
| various cultures which treasure and pride themselves in their
| meditative practices. It usually goes something like:
|
| > "[Some kind of reasoning], therefore, there is no need to
| meditate."
|
| I do not see anyone arguing anything remotely like this.
| Perhaps your "knee-jerk reactions" are distorting what people
| are saying.
| CPLX wrote:
| Meditation isn't an insight. It's a practice.
|
| Your comment makes as much sense as saying that once you've
| moved the heavy weight to a new position there's no more need
| for weightlifting.
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| I dont understand that. I always assumed meditation is not a
| practice or an antipractice. There is no goal to reach.
| Nothing to gain.
| nprateem wrote:
| Correct. Meditation is really a state. Formal practices
| just aim to help you get there.
| girzel wrote:
| It is a practice that leads, as a consequence, to insight.
| Insight is not information that might be read from a book,
| it is experience that uses observation to arrive at
| understanding and transformation. You can't just "decide to
| have" the experience without doing the work of transforming
| yourself through observation. People who have gone far in
| the practice do tend to say that there was never any goal
| to begin with, that they ended up where they started, but
| that's more of a metaphor than anything else. Someone who
| travels around the world and ends up where they started is
| in a very different place than someone who never left home.
| metabagel wrote:
| It's a practice. There are benefits. It's not a cure-all.
| The goal is to be more in control and aware of your own
| thoughts and feelings. You achieve that by learning to turn
| off the "monkey mind" - the continuous stream of
| distracting thoughts and feelings which can lead us down
| paths which are not of our deliberate choosing and not
| necessarily beneficial to our wellbeing.
|
| It is often said that if you go into meditation with a goal
| to improve yourself that you will probably be disappointed.
| I guess I would say that meditation is as much about
| unlocking your intuition as it is about anything else, so
| consciously trying to improve yourself through meditation
| does seem to miss the point of the practice.
| CPLX wrote:
| > The goal is
|
| That may be your goal and it's a fine one. It's a not
| accurate as a blanket statement.
|
| For context I am speaking in the context of being a
| practicing Zen Buddhist. But that's only one other of
| many perspectives.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| Thinking about what meditation is, and practicing meditation
| are not the same.
|
| The thinking mind cannot simulate its effects.
|
| The thinking mind assumes it is the whole mind. Meditation
| reveals it to be a tiny subset. Which cannot experience or
| simulate its superset.
|
| A discussion at the level of this subset is by definition
| limited.
|
| Among other things, the practice changes the meaning of "I".
| etyhhgfff wrote:
| Well there is metacognitive awareness allowing us to think
| and therefore speak about thinking on a meta level. However
| the absence of thinking is hard to describe.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I thought the entire point of meditating was to realize you
| don't need to constantly solve problems, not to solve all of
| them.
|
| Very western version of meditation to view it as a tool to
| achieve something with.
| etyhhgfff wrote:
| "Very western version of meditation to view it as a tool to
| achieve something with."
|
| Thats exactly what makes meditating so hard for westerners,
| just sitting, not actively doing anything, no external
| constant stimulation.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| I want to comment that in Buddhism, the role of meditation
| isn't (just) to reduce anxiety or manage emotion. Indeed if
| this was the role, then other techniques of anxiety reduction
| or emotion management could replace meditation.
|
| Instead, the ultimate role of meditation is to experience your
| inner reality. And it's really the experience that is
| important, just thinking about it doesn't have the same effect
| krzat wrote:
| So experiencing your inner reality is the final goal in
| itself?
|
| I thought that the point was to reduce suffering.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| You experience reality to understand the true nature of
| reality, to see things as they are. This is what leads to
| reduced suffering
|
| You also need to calm your mind, reduce your anxiety etc
| but as a prerequisite
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Samatha-
| vipassan%...
|
| Meditation as a form of relaxing is practicing Samatha, and
| meditation to see things as they are is Vipassana. in
| reality both work in tandem, but Vipassana is the goal.
| (Vipassana is Buddha's innovation here - meditation in
| other religions is more like Samatha)
|
| The main thing is that learning about the true nature of
| things at an intellectual level isn't enough in Buddhism.
| It's, like.. there are parts of your mind that are
| unaffected by what you learn intellectually, you need to
| actually experience things yourself to influence your
| unconscious mind
| eskaytwo wrote:
| Meditation has many techniques. Similar to how people have many
| different motivations and programs when they have a regular gym
| practice. Strength is different to agility is different to
| flexibility.
| krzat wrote:
| "there is no problem to solve" is a thought.
|
| It becomes insight if it actually feels true.
|
| "It feels like there is no problem to solve" is a synonym of
| being relaxed.
| noitamroftuo wrote:
| why is there a video of ordering room service in the middle of
| the post?
| rambambram wrote:
| It's to make a point more visible. It's explained in the
| paragraph below it.
| evtothedev wrote:
| This makes anecdotal sense to me. When I first started mediating
| (~10 years ago), my wife said to me that my face looked younger.
| I think it was from releasing all the startup-CTO stress that had
| tangled everything.
| cknoxrun wrote:
| Coming from another stressed out startup CTO, I'm curious what
| your daily meditation routine look like now?
| evtothedev wrote:
| 10-20m minutes every morning. Back when Headspace was
| strictly a meditation app, I went through the entire "pro"
| sequence, and now I feel good about going it alone.
| Genuinely, and very positively, life changing.
| dloss wrote:
| > "simply taking time to feel your body and put your attention
| into latched tissues can release them."
|
| That has been my experience as well. I have developed my own
| little technique around this idea, where you invite tight areas
| of your body to soften and spontaneously make tiny stretching or
| unwinding movements - without forcing, bracing, or following a
| scripted routine. I call it Intuitive Release.
|
| https://dirk-loss.de/intuitive-release/
| andai wrote:
| This is remarkable! I arrived at a very similar place in the
| last few days. I've been working with painful negative beliefs
| and memories.
|
| This evolved from my meditation practice, I simply observe
| sensations in my body. (I tried meditating "normally" (focus on
| breath) but all this pain kept coming up!)
|
| One of the techniques I arrived on through trial and error is
| simply asking the energy if it wants/needs to release itself.
| And then just allowing it to do so. Giving it permission as you
| say!
|
| So far in every case I have tested, every bundle of pain in my
| body, the answer has been yes.
|
| The hardest part is just being willing to let it do whatever it
| needs to do, which can be very odd and a little overwhelming
| sometimes. But you get used to it very quickly!
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Could you describe what it might "need to do" and why or how
| it becomes overwhelming?
| nikhilsimha wrote:
| usually when a sharp sensation arises in an area, there is
| a habitual tendency to counteract - unconsciously tense
| surrounding muscles or antagonistic muscles or switch
| posture etc.
|
| the idea is to observe with clarity the counteraction and
| let the sharp sensation arise and pass without the
| counteraction/resistance.
| andai wrote:
| Sure, so my experience is... It feels like something solid
| is dissolving. That's the most common experience. It goes
| from the sharp heavy sensation into a diffuse watery
| pleasant sensation.
|
| There could be many other effects as well. There can be
| sharp pain. There could be dull throbbing. It can feel like
| stuff is moving around (especially in the gut area, which
| seems to respond to such a process with actual physical
| movement).
|
| Basically it's pretty weird if you're not used to it.
|
| But in my experience, the fear of what we might experience
| is almost always greater than what we actually do
| experience. Which I think applies to life in general as
| well.
| eskaytwo wrote:
| In more formal traditions the focus on breath (or similar) is
| to develop concentration/samatha/samadhi. The focus on
| sensations is the insight/vipassana component, and often this
| is where the tension bubbles up to the surface. Keeping calm
| (equanimous) during this process can indeed be non-trivial!
|
| It sounds like you have come to a practice very similar to a
| lot of the Burmese traditions of insight meditation, which is
| quite fascinating.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Sounds a lot like qigong, there is a whole... not sure what to
| call it, system? which involves pretty much exactly this
| increase of mind/body connection and relaxing/manipulating of
| fascia/muscles.
| dloss wrote:
| Do you have any specific pointers concerning that
| "relaxing/manipulating of fascia/muscles" part? I have only
| dabbled a bit in qigong and hadn't noticed this. Would love
| to learn more.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| check out flowing zen qigong school, it's online, not
| terribly expensive, the guy has a book that you can
| probably find on the high seas or def on amazon if you want
| to dip toes. he's much more focused on no-woo than any
| others i tried.
|
| his program is basically exactly this, body awareness and
| manipulations. i felt better when i was doing it, need to
| get back on the horse too probably.
| throwforfeds wrote:
| > If this works, there must be some way to tune our meditation
| methods specifically for relaxing smooth muscle.... using
| awareness to track exactly how and where the body grips and lets
| go.
|
| It's great that westerners are exploring these things, but I
| can't help but think the strong aversion people have for things
| not being "proven" by western science is holding everyone back.
| This is literally yoga and meditation practice and has been
| studied for at least a couple thousand years.
|
| Even if we exclude the modern invention of yoga as exercise in
| the 20th century, there are seated practices of releasing these
| tensions in the body. It's not even framed in mystical terms,
| it's literally just opening the body and getting rid of
| discomfort, pain, and stress in the body so that you can sit and
| focus for longer periods of time in your formal meditation
| practice.
|
| Even in the author's teacher's capital V Vipassana tradition,
| invented in the 20th century, it is known that the piti that
| arises even in the first stages of meditation can be directed.
| That weak piti is just the piloerection response, which is an
| autonomic response, and if you can control it it would seem to
| imply we of course have facility over things science assumes we
| have no control over.
| wubrr wrote:
| Many things have been practiced/studied for thousands of years
| - that alone isn't interesting or valuable imo.
|
| What are the objective benefits of meditation - what is the
| exact/specific process and what specifically does it
| accomplish?
|
| I can see how being in a silent reflective state and similar
| practices could have various effects and benefits (not that I
| know specifically what those are) - but what separates me
| zoning out in the shower/on the bus from actual meditation? How
| is 'guided' meditation when you're actively listening to
| someone else even the same thing?
|
| Whenever I ask my meditating/'spiritual' friends about these
| things the response is basically vague undecipherable gibberish
| and allusions that it is unexplainable to someone like me who
| is not ready to accept the truths lol.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| It's very subtle and to be honest if you need to be sold on
| it it's probably not going to help you much. It can be as
| simple as having half an hour where you can put everything
| (including yourself) down and stop poking at it, compounded
| over time there are some benefits, but yeah i don't think
| it's something that needs to be sold or gamified etc.
| apparent wrote:
| > if you need to be sold on it it's probably not going to
| help you much
|
| This seems like a red flag because it can be used to
| justify anything, even being in a cult. I think there
| probably are benefits to some of these things, but we
| shouldn't shut down when someone asks what the mechanism
| is. Perhaps they want to get some of those benefits, but
| want to go about it a different way, and therefore want to
| know how they might go about doing that.
|
| Telling them that someone who wants to be "sold" on it
| isn't going to benefit just makes the whole thing seem less
| legit, IMO.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Well, disclaimer -- I am a practicing zen buddhist, but
| it's something I came to myself, we aren't recruiting
| like religions, and there is no dogma or origin myth to
| believe in.
|
| You're unlikely to see a buddhist missionary asking if
| you've heard to truth about emptiness on a street corner
| ;)
|
| My point was simply that, at least in my personal
| experience, if i had found zen as a tool to achieve
| something, e.g it was sold to me as having some effect
| other, it would not have worked.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| _> You're unlikely to see a buddhist missionary asking if
| you've heard to truth about emptiness on a street corner
| ;)_
|
| And if you do, kill him! ;)
| throwforfeds wrote:
| > You're unlikely to see a buddhist missionary asking if
| you've heard to truth about emptiness on a street corner
| ;)
|
| That made me lol, because yes I've never experienced
| that. But then I remembered that SGI had a lot of
| controversy due to their aggressive proselytizing in
| Japan in the 20th century. [1]
|
| Also, we do have to bear witness to Theravadin monks in
| Myanmar advocating for (and participating in) genocide
| against the Rohingya due to their religious beliefs.
| Similarly in Sri Lanka against Tamils and Muslim
| populations there.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dsei_Toda#Aggress
| ive_pro...
| amelius wrote:
| I think the problem is that when you look at a brain from
| the inside, a lot of it looks irrational. Someone
| explaining a feeling or a mechanism based on thoughts to
| someone looking at that brain from the outside will have
| to bridge billions of neurons standing in between them.
| Nobody, not even a neuroscientist can do that, with any
| scientific rigor.
| rdlw wrote:
| What does reading a great novel or starting a garden
| specifically accomplish? People do some things for reasons
| that aren't easily quantifiable. It seems to me that you are
| starting from the viewpoint that everything has to prove its
| worth before you accept it, even if millions of people before
| you have found it fulfilling and worthwhile, which does not
| seem productive.
|
| If you had never read a book before, and someone was trying
| to convince you to try it, what could they point to that
| would fulfill all your criteria? Would it be enough to say it
| makes you smarter? That's not very specific. It sharpens your
| thinking? Makes you more empathetic? That would all seem like
| 'vague undecipherable gibberish' if you had no experience
| with it. They might resort to saying that it can connect you
| with a great dialogue that has been occurring for over two
| thousand years, but as you say, the fact that people have
| been doing it for thousands of years doesn't make it
| interesting or valuable.
|
| Seeing a study that some part of the brain responds more
| quickly for up to 90 minutes after reading or that people
| with gardens live 0.28 years longer on average would not make
| me want to do those things more, because those are NOT the
| benefits of doing those things. You have to figure out what
| you're supposed to do with your one human life. Science is
| one tool, culture is another. Neither of them makes the other
| superfluous.
| wubrr wrote:
| > What does reading a great novel or starting a garden
| specifically accomplish?
|
| It accomplishes many things - specifically granting
| entertainment, pleasure, etc that practitioners like.
|
| > It seems to me that you are starting from the viewpoint
| that everything has to prove its worth before you accept it
|
| I'm starting with the viewpoint that there are literally
| thousands of various different practices out there have
| have existed for a long time and have been practiced by
| many people. Many of these are complete bullshit. How do
| you filter out the good from the bad/useless?
|
| > even if millions of people before you have found it
| fulfilling and worthwhile
|
| Millions of people have found many many different things
| fulfilling and worthwhile over the ages, some of these
| things we've since realized are bullshit/bad. Do you accept
| every single belief/practice based on how popular it has
| been?
|
| > If you had never read a book before, and someone was
| trying to convince you to try it, what could they point to
| that would fulfill all your criteria?
|
| They could say: it's entertaining/interesting/pleasurable,
| they could say that knowledge/insights are contained in
| books, that different/interesting perspectives and other
| people's thoughts are contained in books (which are
| objective facts), etc. Saying 'it makes you smarter' is
| vague and unconvincing.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| >How do you filter out the good from the bad/useless?
|
| You try them for yourself. Accept no substitutes for
| this.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Unless (and even if) you choose to live your life as a
| sort of survey of all possible human practices, the
| things you will never have the chance to try will vastly
| outnumber the things you try.
|
| Also, many practices confer the best benefits after a
| significant time commitment, so even if you optimize for
| number of things, you _still_ won 't actually be
| experiencing them in the same way as their proponents do.
|
| Given the vast amount of experiences, practices, and
| tools available to us, I think it's pretty reasonable
| that most people seek out at least some level of external
| curation.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| Sure, but the person I replied to seemed quite adamant
| and specific in rejecting external curation.
|
| He wants to know for sure, he'll have to see for himself.
| That's actually one of the very useful generalizable
| lessons you can learn on this path.
|
| Of course you won't be able to experience everything?
| That's a feature of the universe. You won't even be able
| to _hear_ about everything. It 's up to the individual to
| decide their breadth/depth ratio, but at a certain point
| you need to, pardon my french, "shit or get off the pot".
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I'm not going to try ground rhino horn, nor snake oil
| containing mercury compounds. That suggestion is
| ridiculous.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| It's ridiculous because it's a strawman: The topic of
| conversation was meditation.
| ssteeper wrote:
| Very simply, meditation is an attempt at single-pointed
| concentration. It involves cultivating awareness of the
| mind's contents and the ability to let thoughts pass without
| fixation. "Zoning out in the shower" probably means something
| more like daydreaming, where any and all thoughts are
| permitted to exist without active control. Focusing intently
| on a difficult cognitive task ("flow state") is more akin to
| meditation than zoning out.
|
| A lot of beginners are so bad at this that some amount of
| guiding back to the goal is helpful. Many can only go a few
| seconds without getting fixated on passing thoughts.
|
| Practicing one's ability to focus on a single thing and
| reducing mind-wandering will improve one's capability for
| concentration.
| wubrr wrote:
| That is a pretty convincing and intuitive take, thank you.
| devilsdata wrote:
| You're talking about Samatha-vipassana which is the
| cultivation of stable attention and mindfulness as two
| skills. Your skill can be measured by the nine stages of
| tranquility:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samatha-
| vipassan%C4%81#:~:text...
|
| But this is only one form of meditation. There are others,
| such as Maitri/metta meditation.
| eskaytwo wrote:
| I think they're just focussing on the Samatha
| concentration aspect?
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| "immersion" as a better translation than "concentration",
| suggested by Sujato
|
| (can't remember their exact chat about that EBT translation
| compared to Bodhi or Brahm in whichever of the miriad of
| Buddhist Society of Western Australia talk/retreat videos I
| heard it discussed)
|
| e.g. in https://suttacentral.net/mn44/en/sujato
|
| mindfulness of body sensation, feeling, thought and
| principle bringing enough equanimity to start ignoring it
| all really easy, though the moral aspect can't be separated
| because doing not wholesome actions will leave you thinking
| about them
| metabagel wrote:
| > How is 'guided' meditation when you're actively listening
| to someone else even the same thing?
|
| Generally speaking, meditation shouldn't be interrupted by
| too many instructions. Most common is no instructions during
| meditation, or instructions only when a shift in practice is
| being done. Otherwise, most of the instructions are before
| starting meditation.
| etyhhgfff wrote:
| Meditation can be a very subjective experience and the
| benefits are often not immediate clear to the person
| practising. Hence it is hard to articulate. Best thing one
| can do is to just give it a try. It is not for everyone
| though.
| throwforfeds wrote:
| > What are the objective benefits of meditation - what is the
| exact/specific process and what specifically does it
| accomplish?
|
| There is no one form of meditation, and each practice has
| different results, but the majority of them share proven
| reductions in anxiety, stress, depression, and improvements
| in all sorts of gauges of mental well being.
|
| One of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism is the
| interdependence of all phenomena [1], and when you begin your
| practice you'll start seeing that when you sit, you might
| notice less daily anxiety, which might translate into better
| physical health. Or you might notice that being slightly less
| depressed makes you engage in your relationships with friends
| and family better. You might notice that your hips open up,
| which might mean less lower back pain.
|
| The point being there are tons of positive benefits from a
| meditation practice that don't include some metaphysical
| nonsense that might be hard to take at face value. As my
| meditation teacher often emphasizes, if the practice doesn't
| deal with your day to day, quotidian problems of being alive,
| then it's just nice philosophy and nothing else. The Buddha
| taught that we should put first things first, and that's
| dealing with the suffering and stress of our lives. [2]
|
| Also, "zoning out" is pretty much the opposite of meditation.
| Meditation is to be fully without distraction, whereas
| "zoning out" is giving in completely to the distraction.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Poisoned_Arrow
| geon wrote:
| > the strong aversion people have for things not being "proven"
| by western science
|
| What does "western" have to do with anything? There is plenty
| of pseudoscience, snake oil and magical thinking in the west.
| I'd wish people were much _more_ skeptical of anything not
| scientifically proven.
|
| Or do you imply there is a racist component to it? That could
| certainly be true.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Things that don't get concrete results for people tend not to
| survive 2000+ years, like meditation, taichi/qigong/whatever;
| so i don't think some things really need scientific proof.
| Even then, how do you scientifically prove if something makes
| you feel better who really cares if it's x or y receptor or
| brainwave pattern or whatever?
| falcor84 wrote:
| Astrology is more than 4000 years old, what concrete
| results did it provide?
| savolai wrote:
| One could claim it is a self reflection tool where the
| point is not the claims at face value, but the value lies
| in the activity itself of focusing, of directing your
| mind to look at and feel your existence from a
| different/wide perspective. Which is true about many
| pedagogical tools.
|
| The concrete results would thus be highly specific to the
| subject and their learning process on what they
| themselves deem relevant.
| yownie wrote:
| This has been my answer too, to more analytical minded
| friends who asked (sardonically).
|
| I-ching / tarot can be looked at strictly as systems for
| structured introspection.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| It gives people some comfort and motivation, same as
| religions do. I'm not saying everything that lasted so
| long has scientifically verifiable benefits, but they
| clear have _some_ societal or mental benefits otherwise
| people wouldn't do em
| muwtyhg wrote:
| This sounds like saying "Everything that human beings do
| is good, because if it wasn't, they wouldn't continue to
| do it!"
| Aeglaecia wrote:
| it may sound like that to you , to me it sounds like
| survival of the fittest has nothing to do with what we
| humans choose to define as fit
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Survival of the fittest is "that which reproduces more
| successfully, continues". In biology, this is genetics.
| In ideas, it's memetics. I suppose this means that our
| most powerful ideas from the internet generation are
| Rickroll, Doge, and Grumpy Cat.
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| one reflection on that would be the nvc phrase "violence
| is the tragic expression of unmet needs"
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Ok, then let's put it all together and say that people
| are interested in whether or not yoga has concrete
| benefits above and beyond comfort and motivation, which,
| while obviously valuable, are not the _stated_ benefits.
| foxyv wrote:
| This is simply an "Appeal to Tradition" fallacy. People do
| lots of things for thousands of years that are worthless,
| wrong, or pointless. However, this also doesn't mean that
| just because we've done these things for a long time that
| they are in fact pointless.
|
| There are methods to prove subjective things like "feeling
| better." There is in fact a lot of research that shows that
| meditation and exercise like Taichi is good for you.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Forgot the ground rhino horn to make your dick hard. What's
| the thing shark fins are supposed to do? I can never
| remember.
| zorobo wrote:
| Like, praying? Or maybe one feels good after sincere
| prayers, perhaps...
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| I've heard too many stories of people stopping the
| scientific backed medicines because they've thought that
| prayer was enough.
|
| Humans will not be able to evolve until we eradicate
| religion from the earth.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Prayer has been around a lot longer than that, and no
| objective blind tests have ever been able to prove any
| verifiable results.
|
| Longevity of ideas is not correlated with usefulness. Our
| belief systems are not optimized; they are, like genetic
| evolution, just 'good enough' to allow survival.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > There is plenty of pseudoscience, snake oil and magical
| thinking in the west
|
| This is it exaclty. These folks always forget that it's not
| the only idea we've heard today. It's basic cost/benefit.
| This takes 45 minutes to an hour to try out. If it works you
| "feel better" where "better" is hard to define. Cost = 45
| minutes. Benefit = Meh.
|
| Since there are about 1 billion things in the world that
| claim to make me "feel better" at a cost of 45 minutes each I
| have to really narrow my focus. I can't spend 45 billion
| minutes for "Meh."
|
| In my case this made enough sense that I tried it when I was
| young and liked it. A lot of folks spent those 45 minutes on
| something else that seemed more likely to succeed. It's
| perfectly rational.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > It's great that westerners are exploring these things ...
|
| > This is literally yoga and meditation practice and has been
| studied for at least a couple thousand years.
|
| > Even if we exclude the modern invention of yoga as exercise
| in the 20th century, there are seated practices of releasing
| these tensions in the body.
|
| You are very clearly opposing eastern meditation practice and
| science, saying science held westerners back but let me give an
| example...
|
| I've got a tense spot somewhere, I do practice meditation since
| a long time and I definitely can relax myself using breathing
| techniques etc. That's great.
|
| But one of my very best friend lost, 15 years ago, both kidneys
| and had a kidney transplanted from his mom (she was compatible
| and willing to give one). As to my wife, she suffers from an
| auto-immune disease: but thanks to medication she lives a
| normal life (and thankfully doesn't have a reduced life
| expectancy).
|
| So my questions is simple: you talk about "thousands of years".
| Easterners had "thousands of years" and they can... Release
| tension in the body?
|
| Shall we now have a talk about science and ask the inverse
| question: weren't easterners held back by their meditation
| practice while westerners invented: MRI, X-ray, antibiotics,
| insulin, kidney transplantation, heart transplantation,
| artificial heart, in vitro fecondation, polio vaccine,
| anesthesia, chemotherapy, stethoscope, microscope, ...
|
| And that's just a tiny list. I could go on and on. Versus...
| Relaxing tension in the body?
|
| I'm not exactly sure who's been held back by what here.
| foxyv wrote:
| Science is not exclusive to western countries. In fact, I would
| argue that a lot of the basis from science is Eastern
| philosophy. It is merely a method for determining the validity
| of truth claims.
| perfmode wrote:
| Science and eastern philosophy differ in epistemological
| objectives and methodological scope:
|
| Science is characterized by objective empiricism; it relies
| on third-person observation, quantifiable data, and the
| principle of falsifiability to build a predictive model of
| the external, material world. Its goal is to establish
| "public" knowledge that remains true regardless of who is
| observing it.
|
| In contrast, many traditions within Eastern philosophy are
| rooted in disciplined phenomenology or first-person inquiry.
| Rather than seeking to measure external objects, these
| traditions provide a systematic framework for investigating
| the nature of consciousness and the "felt" quality of
| experience from within.
|
| While science seeks to explain the mechanisms of reality
| through a detached lens, Eastern philosophy seeks to realize
| the nature of being through direct, subjective realization.
| lmf4lol wrote:
| > Science is characterized by objective empiricism; it
| relies on third-person observation, quantifiable data, and
| the principle of falsifiability to build a predictive model
| of the external, material world. Its goal is to establish
| "public" knowledge that remains true regardless of who is
| observing it.
|
| That's only really true of the natural sciences. Cultural
| sciences (humanitas) are of a different kind. Here, we
| don't look for universal truths and laws but for meanings
| and interpretations. And they come from the Western
| philosophical tradition.
| perfmode wrote:
| And conversely, Eastern philosophy often centers on
| phenomenology, using first-person introspection to
| realize the nature of existence and consciousness itself.
| foxyv wrote:
| The earliest mathematical knowledge comes from ancient
| India. Many would argue that India is the cradle of science
| which spread to the Middle East and Greece.
| moron4hire wrote:
| The problem is that Eastern medicine is _also_ full of complete
| horse shit. How do you differentiate between the good and the
| bad without just reinventing from base principles?
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| the Buddha taught critical thinking regarding the base
| teachings, an emphasis that was lost by many later schools of
| thought
|
| https://youtu.be/47-aixLukSo
| IAmBroom wrote:
| If only there were some objective, fact-based way to
| differentiate subjective opinion from real results... But we
| both know that's not possible; the only real answer is to
| blindly accept ALL medical theories as valid.
| throwforfeds wrote:
| Of course, and I wasn't arguing that we shouldn't have
| contemporary scientific inquiry into what's going on. The
| Buddha said that we should do the practice for ourselves and
| not follow it just because someone else said so, or because
| it's tradition. [1] It's great to get some fMRI imagery of
| what's going on in the brain with advanced meditators. We
| should study what's going on because we should be curious!
|
| But what I do find to be a little misguided is what I pointed
| out from the author's statement. There is a tendency in
| western circles to push away everything and not only just try
| to recreate based on first principles, but push those first
| principles away as well. The author was pondering a question
| that millions before her have done the practice of, without
| looking to any of those millions for a guide. Instead, I'd
| say listen to them, practice it, and if it doesn't work,
| discard it.
|
| [1] https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.065
| .th...
| heisgone wrote:
| The biggest challenge is that it's a very slow process and most
| people don't have the patience for it. I have been practicing
| Vipassana for 14 years, including all day long body awareness
| (so, not only on cushion, but basically integrating Vipassana
| to normal activities like work) and it's took close to a decade
| to be satisfied by the results. That being said, permanent
| relaxation of muscle is really what you gain from it. There
| have been period with faster developpement but there are up
| liits to progress. Notably, the release of muscle release all
| sort of chemicals in the blood streams, which would make my
| body smell during intense practice and if we progress too fast,
| we get bizarre side effects. For instance, relaxation of some
| of my muscles meant that other muscles in my legs had to be
| "trained" when walking, or I would be in pain for a while, etc,
| etc.
| wendgeabos wrote:
| pain when meditating? huh?
| froh wrote:
| what do you mean?
| shnock wrote:
| This is known. https://www.energyarts.com/qigong-exercises/
| maxkfranz wrote:
| For those interested in learning more about meditation related to
| muscle tension (as in the author's article), body scans [1] and
| progressive muscle relaxation [2] are often-used techniques.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness#Watching_the_breat...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_muscle_relaxation
| holowoodman wrote:
| The author is looking for this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training
|
| Tried it, works, does exactly what the author wants. And while it
| is a meditation technique, it skips all the religious nonsense
| and focuses on the relevant.
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| Early Buddhist Texts (EBT) are fairly non-religious, e.g. see
| the Thai forest tradition/BSWA talks
|
| this school of thought even often ignores a fair portion of the
| abhidama texts ("about dhamma", the meta commentaries) that
| started to form a number of years after the death of the Buddha
|
| if anyone wants a seriously good deep deep deconstruction of
| the main mindfulness sutta/sutra from this perspective, podcast
| kinda form, see
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL70fWqztn7OXdbGqWEOvhOVqf...
| patrickscoleman wrote:
| I really love how Kosho Uchiyama describes meditation with the
| metaphor "opening the hand of thought"
|
| https://wisdomexperience.org/product/opening-hand-thought/
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Im suprised that nobody else has mentioned it, but back in the
| 90's "self-hypnosis" was briefly popular and it sounds like
| that's what the author is rediscovering.
|
| Its basically guided meditation with visualization, but you guide
| yourself. It does exactly this, but faster, once you master it.
| It also allows you to fall asleep quickly.
|
| Search "stair step induction" for a quick example to try out.
| oerb wrote:
| I started with a relaxation method (shiatsu fur personal use)
| more than 30 years ago. Today I realise that this was my
| Startingpoint with Meditation.
| rene_d wrote:
| Autogenic training [1] is exactly a relaxation technique
| focussing on the progressive relaxation of body regions. It is
| very easy to learn and a body-first approch to approach
| meditative states, which can then be used for auto-suggestion.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| body scan is the first pillar of mindfulness
|
| https://suttacentral.net/mn10/en/sujato
|
| anecdotally, I had a late PoTS (postural static tachycardia
| syndrome, blood vessels don't autonomically constrict correctly
| depending on posture) diagnosis, then hypermobile EDS (tissue
| that's more floppy)
|
| I realised on body scan relaxations that
|
| a) a pain arose in most body parts as I tried to gently allow a
| letting go of tension in that part, like something I had to shake
| off, kinda like DOMS though also similar to the body tension pain
| I get as a certain kind of autistic person repeatedly failing a
| task,
|
| n b) that any however much relaxed part very quickly
| subconsciously tensed up once again within seconds of my focus
| moving to a new part. chronic tension from 1) needing to tense
| for blood to better flow, n 2) trauma. I've had masseurs tell me
| my muscles fight back, n fwiw prolapse op from the EDS, n I get
| pregabalin for the tension pain
| vagab0nd wrote:
| Does meditation really work for everyone? I tried it pretty
| seriously for 2 months, and my mind just wouldn't stop. I'd think
| of nothing for 10 seconds and then get extremely bored, so
| essentially every 10 seconds I'd force myself back. It didn't
| really have any calming effect.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Learning to calmly reset over and over, is normal.
|
| The less reactive we are to the need to reset, the less the
| distractions control us.
|
| And, the more reseating our mind becomes an instinctive habit,
| the more wind is lost for distractions. And the more likely the
| distraction cycle fades or lengthens.
|
| The goal isn't to never have to reseat our minds. Just be
| better at holding our minds.
|
| But everyone is different, and our minds and nervous systems
| are complex, so that's just one take.
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