> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> "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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
> People often treat relaxation and wakefulness as two opposites: relaxation as a drowsy and dull, wakefullnes as sharp and jittery. But the two can co-exist.
I've discovered recently the two indeed are opposites and meditation is considered to be a kind of wakefulness, that I personally find no benefit in.
People who are in need of relaxation I therefore find do not want or need meditation as it enforces a moderate kind of wakefulness.
They either should in this alternative view, rest (which is an unfocused and unforced state whereas meditation maintains some kind of focus and attention) or engage in something "wakeful" which might naturally involve having attention.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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. On what we choose. Something simple at first, like breathing. Wider focused awareness as we get meditation muscle, like listening to our physical body, then our feelings, then our day, then the trajectory of our life, our values, etc. Whatever is important to visit regularly with the whole focus of our mind.
The ability to meditate spills into our days. We get better at choosing and maintaining our focus on what is important.
We can view the distractions as the workout of a steep hike. Not the problem at all, but the terrain, chosen precisely to require adaptation to overcome.
But everyone is different, and our minds and nervous systems are complex, so that’s just one take.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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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.
> 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.
> 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.
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?
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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?
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...
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
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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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.
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> 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
> 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.
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.
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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.
> "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/
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!
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.
Could you describe what it might "need to do" and why or how it becomes overwhelming?
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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.
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.
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> People often treat relaxation and wakefulness as two opposites: relaxation as a drowsy and dull, wakefullnes as sharp and jittery. But the two can co-exist.
I've discovered recently the two indeed are opposites and meditation is considered to be a kind of wakefulness, that I personally find no benefit in.
People who are in need of relaxation I therefore find do not want or need meditation as it enforces a moderate kind of wakefulness.
They either should in this alternative view, rest (which is an unfocused and unforced state whereas meditation maintains some kind of focus and attention) or engage in something "wakeful" which might naturally involve having attention.
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
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.
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...
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.
Coming from another stressed out startup CTO, I'm curious what your daily meditation routine look like now?
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.
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.
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. On what we choose. Something simple at first, like breathing. Wider focused awareness as we get meditation muscle, like listening to our physical body, then our feelings, then our day, then the trajectory of our life, our values, etc. Whatever is important to visit regularly with the whole focus of our mind.
The ability to meditate spills into our days. We get better at choosing and maintaining our focus on what is important.
We can view the distractions as the workout of a steep hike. Not the problem at all, but the terrain, chosen precisely to require adaptation to overcome.
But everyone is different, and our minds and nervous systems are complex, so that’s just one take.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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)
Not a new idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system
Michael Levin has a lot of new ideas.
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
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
Is there any evidence yet for this theory? Sounds falsifiable.
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...
I wonder if we can objectify subjective experience in the future. Maybe somehow measure and visualize thoughts and feelings.
MCTB or Dhamma overground might have been a less confronting link to share :)
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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?
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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
So experiencing your inner reality is the final goal in itself?
I thought that the point was to reduce suffering.
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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”.
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.
"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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
I dont understand that. I always assumed meditation is not a practice or an antipractice. There is no goal to reach. Nothing to gain.
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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.
This is known. https://www.energyarts.com/qigong-exercises/
I really love how Kosho Uchiyama describes meditation with the metaphor "opening the hand of thought"
https://wisdomexperience.org/product/opening-hand-thought/
I started with a relaxation method (shiatsu für personal use) more than 30 years ago. Today I realise that this was my Startingpoint with Meditation.
why is there a video of ordering room service in the middle of the post?
It's to make a point more visible. It's explained in the paragraph below it.
pain when meditating? huh?
what do you mean?
- Aleister Crowley, Liber E vel Exercitiorum, 1911. https://hermetic.com/crowley/equinox/i/i/eqi01005
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.