Putting meditation to the test (2011)
newscientist.comMeditation is not pseudoscience, this topic has been brought up multiple times in HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=meditation https://hn.algolia.com/?q=mindfulness
If you read the HN threads you will find countless people talking about how meditation has helped them from their personal experiences.
Meditation has a lot of benefits and the results have been scientifically validated by different groups of researchers: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005789407... http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00845519 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361002/ http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/eight-weeks-to...
A recent research even showed that meditation is more powerful than a placebo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10789738
If you are still skeptical, watch this video by Dan Harris, a skeptical news reporter turned meditation evangelist, it convinced me to meditate everyday and I think it'll convince you too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAcTIrA2Qhk
Although I'm a fan of meditation, and actually do think it increases focus, I think the experiment they conducted is not very scientific:
>Headed by Katherine MacLean at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, the study measured the volunteers’ attention skills by showing them a succession of vertical lines flashed up on a computer screen. They then had to indicate, by clicking a mouse, whenever there was a line shorter than the rest. As the retreat progressed, MacLean and her colleagues noted that the volunteers became progressively more accurate and found it increasingly easy to stay focused on the task for long periods.
I feel like I could also get better at it just by practicing... At least I think they should have benchmarked the experiment by comparing to people not meditating 5 hours a day, this is just inductive reasoning to me.
This being said, I love meditating and have found it to bring lots of good benefits to me. I find that focus can be trained in better ways, but meditation is great at making me enjoy the present moment, and take my time more.
>I find that focus can be trained in better ways
Such as?
Have these studies been reproduced elsewhere, or is it a singular group of researchers extolling the virtues of meditation?
as a 10+ yr practitioner, studies are useless. practice it and test it by yourself, no harm done and a lot to gain ;)
It's not really "no harm done" - the opportunity cost of wasting time that could be spent on other activities is a deterrent, for me at least.
Worst case scenario: you spend half an hour day relaxing. Doesn't seem like a terrible waste of time.
Worst case scenario: you persist in a course of treatment that has no evidence of efficacy rather than get treatment with some evidence of efficacy.
Meditation isn't solely or even primarily a method for treating things.
The article is full of examples of meditation being used to treat mental and physical ill-health.
>> Putting meditation to the test
>> “Training allows us to transform the mind, to overcome destructive emotions and to dispel suffering,” says Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard.
>> and tested the effects of different meditative practices on cognition, behaviour, physical and emotional health and brain plasticity.
>> It suggests that meditation can indeed change aspects of your psychology, temperament and physical health in dramatic ways.
>> watching for changes in their mental abilities, psychological health and physiology.
>> at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore,
>> meditation seems to have an effect on emotional well-being. A second study from researchers with the Shamatha project, to appear in the journal Emotion, concluded that meditation improves general social and emotional functioning, making study participants less anxious, and more aware of and better able to manage their emotions.
>> The ability to manage one’s emotions could also be key to why meditation can improve physical health. Studies have shown it to be an effective treatment for eating disorders, substance abuse, psoriasis and in particular for recurrent depression and chronic pain.
etc etc.
Sure, because they are looking at meditation as a treatment modality, while that's not all that it can be used for.
If you're doing something for fun, relaxation, and/or enjoyment - do you require randomized clinical trials establishing that said activity has provided these types of experiences for other people? Or can you trust your own appetite for fun, relaxation, and enjoyment?
Meditation !== Medication
> It's not really "no harm done" - the opportunity cost of wasting time that could be spent on other activities is a deterrent, for me at least.
But this is really true for any activity. You don't know you'll like it until you try it. If you tried it and didn't like you wasted your time.
The only problem I see is if you continue to do meditation even if you don't enjoy it because you believe in benefits. But like with working out, I doubt that really happens. If people can't find enjoyment in it, they drop it sooner or later.
The problem with meditation, and similar "experiences that can't be described", is that you never know if you tried it long enough or well enough to actually enjoy it, or if it simply doesn't work for you.
Working out, at least if done correctly - which can be assessed by others - will provide some benefits even if you never get to enjoy it.
And the loss is not just wasted time - it's the feelings of frustration and low self-esteem that come from the perception that you're failing without having idea how to improve.
> The problem with meditation, and similar "experiences that can't be described", is that you never know if you tried it long enough or well enough to actually enjoy it
But this is also true for most activities (playing a violin, playing tennis, or programming). Still, we decide whether any of it is for us by trying it. People who get into it, stay in it for long enough to really learn it and get benefits of it, people who don't get into it, and don't enjoy it on some level drop it quickly. I'm not saying that this is theoretically the best way to explore new activities, it's more of an observation that this is how people generally do it and that meditation is no different. You try it, and it either does something for you (enough to keep doing it), or it doesn't and you drop it.
> You don't know you'll like it until you try it.
Article isn't about whether you enjoy it or not; article is about whether it has benefits or not.
In that specific context "I think it brings me benefits" is not good enough even though "I enjoy it" is.
I was responding to a guy/gal that was wondering whether to try it if there is no hard evidence that it is beneficial. My answer to that is: try it, if you like it, it doesn't matter whether there are all those claimed benefits. The fact that you like it is enough a reason to do it.
If you don't like it, even if there are benefits (like there are from working out) and even if you know there are, you likely won't stick to it anyways (like most people don't stick to exercise regimes).
No disrespect intended, but somehow I doubt you're minimizing your opportunity cost every minute of every day. You've got ten minutes to spare. It takes repeated practice, but after a time I think you'll notice results.
True, but spending time meditating would inevitably be reducing something else - even if it's just an equivalent of goofing off on HN.
If you enjoy meditating, or think there's a sufficiently high chance of benefits from it, you won't mind. But if you remain sufficiently unconvinced, why spend time on it when you could enjoy more free time instead, just because someone else is convinced there is value in it? To me it seems less an interesting thing I'm eager to try, and more a new chore or exercise I'd have to take up, so the time spent wouldn't be taken straight out of the activities with the least utility - more likely out of "daily/weekly maintenance habits" time. So it would really need to be more effective than whatever I usually would have done instead. If I'm going to spend an extra 10 minutes/day on a new habit, is meditation going to be the most effective one?
It's a similar argument to why I wouldn't spend an hour a week going to church, just because someone else thought it would benefit me with little downside risk. Sure, it might, but I'd need more convincing before I decided to put the time in.
The tricky thing is that it's such a personal, subjective, experiential activity that it seems likely that any amount of scientific PDFs would remain unconvincing.
"I keep hearing people talk about how lime is so tasty, but why should I spend my hard-earned money on a citrus fruit until I've seen convincing evidence that it's actually tasty?"
I'm interested in how people make decisions about what to do. Especially considering how the frontiers of science are so difficult to keep track of. Like, if you were to base your diet on recent nutrition research, you'd have to spend hours every day just reviewing the literature, and you'd probably have to change your diet every week to accomodate for new findings, contradictions, etc.
To me it seems like people are most likely to just go by their own intuitive desires and preferences, using science at most to validate and confirm what they already wanted based on other factors. So, bluntly speaking, someone who is really fascinated by "spiritual" stuff will google for "meditation benefits pdf" and someone who wants to do other things with their time will look out for criticisms and "FUD."
Mostly I'd just make the point that if you try and sit quietly for ten minutes on three consecutive days, that's a negliglible time spent to try for yourself something that a lot of people say is significantly nice in some way—and that's probably a more efficient use of time than to try and look through the available scientific evidence.
Lime is a source of C, which you need if you want to stay alive.
Sure, but aren't there more effective ways of getting vitamin C? A lime is like half a dollar. I don't want to spend my life eating a suboptimal vitamin C source!
Can confirm, I worry about where I might have gone if it hadn't been for meditation pulling me out. It's impossible to put into words what it does for you, you're right, you just have to try it without any pre-conceived notion of what you want to get from it which for some, is too wild an idea.
Devil's advocate here. Lots people say the same thing about religion. In fact, you could almost replace meditation with religion in your comment. Quite illuminating.
And it's probably true for religion too. That doesn't constitute a counterargument. The negative aspects of religion (for example, you can argue that religious faith is exclusionary and confusing, and so on) don't carry over to meditation just because they have something in common.
This is how homeopathy has hung on as long as it has.
Thinking like this kills people.
Also, am I the only one who sees a massive conflict of interest in a practitioner saying their field doesn't need to be investigated?
This is how pseudoscience takes root. You are the easiest person for you to fool.
Yes, God forbid you fool yourself into feeling good and relaxed.
No, God forbid I forgo some better therapy.
Placeboing myself into emotional control and improved attention sounds like a good deal.
but you don't know if you're actually getting emotional control or improved attention.
Its also how science fails to take root: by discouraging people from trying things, just because it hasn't been rubber-stamped by the authorities yet ..
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation." - William Paley
This is the same William Paley (1743–1805) who proposed the watchmaker analogy arguing that complexity in nature was teleological evidence of a creator or intelligent designer.
I have always loved that quote, now I find I have been mis-attributing it for close to 30 years... For quite some time it had been attributed to Herbert Spencer
exactly. science is sad sometimes, just like any other religion, it creates walls that some people get stuck inside of... waiting for some kind of "approval" by its priests
If you think science is a religion, you're grossly misinformed about what science is.
It seems that you get BOTH science and religion wrong. People are free and influence each other. That's a basic assumption we should take into account when understanding social phenomena. Start of story.
This is how science keeps people safe. Bullshit kills:
Here's a good review article to start you off.
https://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=1809...
I'm curious if these scientists try to make the connection between the flow and the focused attention meditation. It seems to me that by trying to meditate, you are actually trying to get to the state of flow.
There are two dimensions in meditation.
1. Samadhi/samatha or single pointed focus that calms or concentrates the mind.
2. vipashana/mindfullness/awareness that is looking inside the functioning mind and gains insight.
These two are not completely orthogonal. Even those who do pure awareness meditation develop the ability to keep their mind focused in this moment. In many traditions practitioners start with concentrative practice until they gain the so called 'access concentration' where they have the ability to stay in present moment without mind wandering too much. This access concentration is what I would call 'the flow'. You can go much deeper in concentration or use the flow to look into your mind. The flow itself is not the task. It's the first step.
In many/most Buddhist meditation traditions dedicated concentration practices are seen as tools and insight meditation seen as being more directly towards the goal of Buddhist meditation.
In Mahayana tradition developing deep concentration states is called Sharpening Manjusri’s sword. Using the sword is different than sharpening it.
I don't think so. Flow makes you blind to everything that is arround you. It's pretty much hyper-focused tunnel vision. "Mindfulness" meditation, on the other hand, gives you a very wide awareness. Of yourself and of your environment. Not just on the task at hand. At least that's how I see it.
There's many types of focus and meditation. Meditation is like swimming. People can study, discuss, and pontificate about swimming, it's all academic until we're in the water sloshing around ourselves.
In the case of mindfulness that is triggering some dismissiveness on your part, there is also abstract, settled, or awareness typed meditation. The latter, focusing on abstract, awareness of awareness (being a witness to your thoughts) without directing them can be just as useful to unlock creativity in day to day life.
Some meditative experiences are very similar to flow and allows the ability to slip into flow that much easier. Some folks can slip into meditation just sitting at their desk by closing their eyes and come out a few minutes later settled and focus in hand for something.
How is meditation like or different than flow? This is an interesting question. I see it as a paradox. When I meditate in the early phases there is wide awareness but when I quiet the mind, for me, there is no awareness and time disappears. Some days I can quiet the mind quickly and go into what you might describe as a trance. But in that trance I can hear / sense what is around me if I chose to.
I don't think the quiet mind phase is flow however. It is just that time disappears.
Meditation makes me peaceful and can provide me with more energy reserves for the rest of the day. Flow makes me satisfied but usually tired and at the same time wanting more flow.
So how do you HN participants see these different states?
Meditation is not a unitary practice. There are important forms of meditation that involve extreme concentration on a single object, inducing unimaginably strong "tunnel vision."
For an obvious example, consider the kasina practice of old-school Theravada Buddhism.
http://web.archive.org/web/20031230220324/http://www.birken....
Breath concentration is done in a similar way, but with the sensation of the breath as the object of fixation rather than a colored disc.
Yes, I think mindfulness is the opposite of flow. Because otherwise, why would I need meditation after a full day of work (flow)?
Can meditation be used to cure premature ejaculation?
assuming you are serious, see tantric meditation
I'm serious, thanks.