Meditation

[Dextrose]

'Cause I saw the yoga thread and that people were talking about meditation in it.

Basically, my idea is that meditation is a really key aspect to being an overall fit person.

Reason #1: Breathing. The body needs to be properly supplied with oxygen in order to do its best work. That means the rhythm, pace, shape and content of your breath are vitally important to everything that you do. Contrary to popular perception, the body does not naturally know how to breathe best. (I fucking assure you on this one.) It requires practice, just like anything else.

Reason #2: Focus. This one requires even more practice than breathing. See, the muscles work by mental activation, which means that in order to do your strongest lifts, or your longest runs, or your deepest stretches - or your most rapid musical passages, or, hell, your most inspired coding moments - your mind needs first of all a state of natural clarity and the discipline to never waver from the effort at hand. You already have enough muscle mass in your body to lift a car. (Fucking assured.) The problem is, your brain literally doesn't know how to use it all, because there's this safety mechanism that prevents your muscles from working at 100% efficiency. It's okay though - you can teach yourself to activate your muscles at higher efficiencies which essentially raises the bar on your abilities without even putting on more bulk. More bulk, in fact, is often a bad idea, because it helps you less in the long run in the absence of more important factors to your strength and overall fitness. Point being, mind over matter isn't bullshit.

I had a psychology book once that said that meditation was good, but it was basically just another form of relaxation, and any form of relaxation is good. That's complete and utter crap, and whoever thought it up should probably shoot themselves. Meditation approaches the balance between tense and loose in order to learn to have a supple, but active, mind. Meditation will help you train better, train more often, and feel better about training, no matter what you're training yourself in. And...I so want to make a Jesus/Buddha joke, but I won't, because that's "mean."

Meditation is an incredibly simple thing to do. I refer you to these two videos, which I think capture the essense of the practice incredibly well. This guy's probably one of the most inspiring speakers I've ever heard:
http://www.shambhala.org/teachings/view.php?id=69
http://www.shambhala.org/teachings/view.php?id=71 <- Actually makes a weight training metaphor in this segment.
http://www.shambhala.org/teachings/view.php?id=72 <- More of an exploration of Buddhism, but it's from the same talk and I find a lot of this stuff revealing of the meditative practice itself.

"And we can have a certain amount of confidence that people have been doing this practice - that the Budda did this practice, [and] understood tremendous abound." One of the more profound statements I've had in my time, even though I think he lost track of the grammar mid-way.

Have fun not doing stuff for a while every now and again.

[BlackSails]

I had a psychology book once that said that meditation was good, but it was basically just another form of relaxation, and any form of relaxation is good.

Meditation benefits are on par with taking half an hour out of every day to lie down and listen to music you like.

[Dextrose]

No, they're not. You're simply wrong here. If you think that, you clearly don't understand what, exactly, meditation entails.

Edit: I was about to leave it there, because frankly that statement is so ridiculous, I'm not sure how to approach it, but I imagine if you didn't get what I was talking about before, you're going to need some further clarification. Lying down for a half hour and listening to music does not teach you how to be mindful about the way you think, to be aware of your thought processes, to understand how and why they happen, or to alter them in order to lead a happier, more relaxed, more fulfilling, and more compassionate daily life; it does not teach you how to breathe properly, how to be aware of your own breath, how to calm yourself in every-day situations, or how to how to use the action (and mental image) of breathing to produce other inward and outward results. Lying down and listening to music is nearly the antithesis to meditation in this regard - it is not mindful, it is not productive, and it is not forward-thinking or really very beneficial except to serve as a distraction from things that still trouble you as soon as the music is turned off.

[Gunfingers]

People leaving a hypnotic state often report feeling very rested. Significantly more so than music or even a good night's sleep. I assume someone skilled enough at meditation could achieve the same result.

Back when i did karate we opened the class with a few moments of meditation. The idea was to clear your mind before class. I did the whole kneeling thing. I folded my hands in front of me and imagined my breath going in a circle down my trachea, out through my hands and back to my mouth.

It really is relaxing, but everything i know about breathing and focus came from running. Those little bits of meditation had nothing to do with it.

Also, i'm pretty sure Dextrose should stop being a douche to everyone who disagrees with him. "You're simply wrong here" isn't the kind of thing we take kindly to here.

[Dextrose]

Editted already and adressed. Not knowing how else to phrase something isn't being a douche. Calling someone a douche on account of that, on the other hand, is. So right now? Yeah, I'm being a douche to you, and thank you for dragging me into your douchey cycle, I'll be on my way now.

Meditation is not about being rested. Being able to maintain a calm mind is a major component to the rest of the goals of a meditative practice, but if you want to feel rested, go the hell to sleep.

As for your little bits of meditation? I'm happy you knew how to breathe and focus before you started meditating in class, but the idea there was that it was supposed to help you to actually do it, and really, if it wasn't helping you, you were doing it wrong, and there's no other way to put it. There's nothing wrong with that, you just need to learn to do it right if you want it to help you, and it can, and it will if you want it to. Basically, unless you open your mind to it, if you keep going around saying "Meditation won't work, it doesn't, and it didn't," it never will.

[lanicita]

Cut it out with the personal attacks. This subforum is not for debating, it's for sharing information. Share what you know in a positive and helpful manner, ask about what you don't know, and leave it at that.

[Gunfingers]

I never said meditation doesn't, can't, and won't ever work. I assume by the fact that you bothered telling us about it that you improved your breathing and focus through this technique. I do happen to believe that a better way to learn those techniques is through proper cardiovascular training. This also comes with the side effect of improved cardiovascular fitness.

[Dextrose]

Thinking of it in contest with cardiovascular training is completely missing the point, and for you, I am going to leave it at that until you actually give a damn about what's being said here.

[Izawwlgood]

I'm all about it, just don't think it is a surrogate for other forms of fitness, or that it is required to be fit/focused/content.

When in California, I spent a lot of time in La Jolla (the most beautiful place on Earth!) lying on my back in the water and letting the waves push me around (and persuading at least one lifeguard I wasn't dead). It was meditative.

Currently, the only meditation I have is videogames, which is hardly a meditation, and I need to find another.

But sitting quietly with my eyes closed, paying attention to my breathing just frustrates me.

[Dextrose]

Here are a couple excerpts from the Sakyong's speeches on Shambhala's website on a similar subject:

"And so from that point of view, people say, y'know, to me, 'I meditate,' or 'I do not meditate.' And from my point of view, I say, 'Well you're always meditating.' Because you're always becoming familiar with something. [We] get up in the morning, and we are constantly meditating. Now, generally speaking, we can look and say, is that meditating beneficial? We rise in the morning and we have anxiety, we have anger, we have jealousy. And so, naturally, we're becoming familiar with jealousy; someone has something we want, and after a while, we're really good meditators. We don't wander at all. We're completely focused, and--" laughter "Yeah. So, we know how to meditate. ... The point of meditation is that we're honing something that is very important and prescious so that we can actualise it." -- From Meditation Is Like Drinking Water, http://www.shambhala.org/teachings/view.php?id=69

"And here, there's a quality of, we're always meditating - what is it we want to ingrain? If we sit in a situation and worry and worry, we're going to ingrain worrying. And a lot of times, when people say, 'Well, I've been meditating,' I say, 'Have you really been meditating or have you sort of been doing that worry session?' You're sitting there just worrying away, and then you get up, and you say, 'Well, meditation doesn't really work, I feel terrible afterwards.' Well, meditation worked really well! 'Cause you meditated on worrying, and here's the result, of course it worked!" -- From Small Mind or Big Mind, http://www.shambhala.org/teachings/view.php?id=78 (same talk)

So, I think the idea here is that meditation will work the way you let it work. If you allow yourself to be frustrated, you will not only be frustrated, but you'll be better at being frustrated at your meditation. It's habitual. So I suggest, if you want to try it again, that you focus on the good feeling of being relaxed and the settling feeling of the body when you breathe, and when you find yourself becoming frustrated at what you're doing, just disregard the frustration and make your breath the foremost thing in your mind once more.

Maybe the breath thing isn't working for you right now from the get go. Really, there's nothing special about breath, and there's no real reason why you should focus on it, except that it's something very simple and easy to do. Eventually in meditative practice the goal is to rid the mind of the focus on breathing, but the focus on breathing helps rid the mind of everything else first. Again, though, it doesn't have to be breath. One of the stories of a young Siddhartha Gautama has to do with him escaping the palace walls to sit under a tree and contemplate why it is that beings have to suffer, where he supposedly began watching a plow moving back and forth and entered a very basic meditative state for the first time. The only point in focusing on breathing is that it is simple, internal and undistracting. Internal is often a stumbling block here, which is why I say it doesn't have to be breathing - you could focus on the sound of traffic if you really wanted to, as long as you find in it the ability to focus the mind on thinking about less. I encourage you to try different things, but eventually the goal ought to be to transfer whatever meditation you may be doing into your breath, if for no other reason than that breath is what the great meditators of the world know how to talk about and explore.

I feel like it's important to mention here that the Sakyong is actually a marathon runner, among other things, so clearly the cardiovascular training straw man isn't holding any weight in this discussion.

[Izawwlgood]

I feel like it's important to mention here that the Sakyong is actually a marathon runner, among other things, so clearly the cardiovascular training straw man isn't holding any weight in this discussion.

I doubt he trains for his marathons by sitting in a quiet room and breathing. Notice I am not saying I doubt meditation is part of his workout routine.

I'm not sure if you are advocating for meditation as a religious, spiritual action, or a general well-being habit. The Buddhist basis for meditation is an interesting one, and honestly very beautiful, but you started the thread under the auspices of meditation as a physical regiment, and thats the vibe I responded to. I have a spiritual communion I partake in quite often, and I reached it after a lot of searching. I'm open minded to others, but I've yet to find anything that fills me with awe like mine.

But your absolutely correct that the meditative 'habit' I allow to occur will be the result I glean from the session. I frustrate easily, and fully admit that that is likely standing in the way of meditating successfully. I've worked on it, and I've enjoyed it on occasion, but have found it is not something that really helps my day. In the end, I consider myself a doer, and the action of setting aside half an hour or an hour to do nothing but focus on my relaxation is ultimately counter productive for me.

I've set aside similar blocks of time to DO things, like practice Tai Chi, read a book, wrap up old yarns, talk to my girlfriend, cook a better dinner, work out, walk around with a camera, etc. Those are more meditative for me then meditation.

And sometimes, I'm sure many people can attest, the extreme focus that one achieves when wrapped in an activity, be it videogames, playing an instrument, a sport, painting, whatever, is so sublimely... er, meditative, that one doesn't need to seek elsewhere.

[BlackSails]

No, they're not. You're simply wrong here. If you think that, you clearly don't understand what, exactly, meditation entails.

Ok, if you understand what meditation entails, I want a proposed mechanism for its effects as compared to the effects of regular relaxation. Studies would be nice as well.

[Nath]

Interesting thread. Meditation seems intriguing, but I've always thought it basically meant clearing your head and relaxing. I hadn't thought of it in terms of direct physical benefits. I tend to be wary of the 'spiritual' claims about meditation, because they often come from self-proclaimed 'guru' type characters.

Reason #1: Breathing. The body needs to be properly supplied with oxygen in order to do its best work. That means the rhythm, pace, shape and content of your breath are vitally important to everything that you do. Contrary to popular perception, the body does not naturally know how to breathe best. (I fucking assure you on this one.) It requires practice, just like anything else.

Now, I'm not saying that meditation can't help breathing, but I'm curious. In what sense exactly does meditation improve breathing? Does it increase your blood oxygen level? If so, what is your source for this claim?

[recurve boy]

No, they're not. You're simply wrong here. If you think that, you clearly don't understand what, exactly, meditation entails.

Nope. Blacksails is pretty much right. He can indeed get the same benefits of traditional meditation by lying down and listening to music. If this is what does it for him.

Athletes do this stuff all the time. However, we're not interested in the spiritual mumbo jumbo. What we're interested in, is how our arousal levels effect performance. Each person will perform best under different levels of arousal. We want to get into "the zone", and stay in "the zone".

Dextrose's videos do have some important points. You need to practice. You do need some sort of familiarity with your own mind. And breathing is a common focal point. But Dextrose's "learning to breath" comment is pretty much bunk.

What you need to do is be aware of what puts you off your game. Grab a small pocket notebook and write it down. Then we need to identify what you can do to refocus, to get back in the zone. This can be anything. Breathing is common. But if you like listening to Heavy Metal or ABBA, then do that. I used to like to count to 20. Write this down too. This can also take a while to figure out. You should try different things. Right down what worked and what didn't work. Maybe you have a few steps. Maybe different situations call for different measures.

So now we know what distracts us and we have a strategy to refocus. And this is all written down for easy reference. Hopefully you also keep your notes with you. So every time you get put off, you need to whip out your book and see what to do. We need to practice doing this because something just put you off your game. You may not be thinking straight at this point, or you're distracted. You need to be able to go "I'm not 100%, I need to refocus" rather than getting caught up with what put you off in the first place.

It's important to note that the aim is to get into the state of mind where you perform best. Some people like to be "pumped up" (like Rocky). Others do better relaxed. Whatever.

Also interesting, is that visualisation of what you want to do, can be better than no training. Useful for when you can't train (stuck on a plane). Note, this does not replace the need for training. That's just complete rubbish. A good example is competitive archery vs kyudo. Kyudo is more of meditation and art. Competitive archery is all about points. A competitive archer is more accurate than a kyudo practitioner any day. Sakyong may indeed be a good long distance runner. But guess what? He did this by running long distances.

Yes, I did practical sport psychology because I was a competitive athlete. I would also like to see someone meditate and then pick up a car.

[Dextrose]

Yeah, I think I got misunderstood there, that was my point with the Sakyong, that he does the kind of training you need to do as a long distance runner, he doesn't ignore his other physical responsibilities simply because he is a meditator.

And no, the learning to breathe thing isn't bunk; basically what I'm going to say here is, if you're going to say this stuff doesn't work, then you're going to have to provide an explanation as to why, because we accept the kinds of notions meditation is based off of in other aspects of life as true without really needing to "study" it, simply because we understand that's how the brain works. There's nothing really spiritual about the practice of meditation itself - I think there's a lot more to it than the basic physical upkeep one ought to do for oneself, but I'm talking about it here for that reason only, there's no reason to make this a thread about Buddhism. Because frankly, Buddhists aren't the only people who meditate; I'm just speaking from that perspective because I am. In fact, the Buddha character isn't the first or last person to suggest this practice or something like it in the history of human spirituality. Christ was a Buddha figure - if you look at the salient/sane parts of the bible where Christ speaks, he's basically the same guy, just in a different place at a different time.

Sidebar: I don't believe Christ or Buddha were actually ever real, just because the written record is so insanely inaccurate back that far, but Buddha nature is something real that I think more people should recognise. It's not "spiritual mumbo jumbo," and too many atheists (a group to which I belong) suffer from the idea that, if a spiritual leader said it, it's probably wrong, without actually investigating it in full. Those are the people who I believe give atheists a bad name, so I'll ask politely: Please don't declare something a lie until you've figured out why it is, or else you're throwing away all the work humankind has ever done to better ourselves inwardly.

Now, on the subject of Buddha nature, basically all that means is having your mind work at its best, unfettered by unimportant or detrimental thought processes, with clarity and consciousness. None of us do that, and that's actually one of the factors here - complacence doesn't help you become any better than you are, and there's always room to improve yourself. So stop trying to shoot it down and try to think of ways it can help you, instead.


Back to meditating.

No, they're not. You're simply wrong here. If you think that, you clearly don't understand what, exactly, meditation entails.

Nope. Blacksails is pretty much right. He can indeed get the same benefits of traditional meditation by lying down and listening to music. If this is what does it for him.

I'm...really not sure how to respond to that. If I rearrange those sentences, you've basically said, "If Blacksails is right, Blacksails is right." Saying something like "meditation does the same thing as laying down and listening to music" is in clear denial of everything that we know about how the brain learns and how to practice anything. I could say, "Sitting on a piano bench does the same thing for you as practicing your scales for twenty minutes," and it'd be just as bullshit in exactly the same way. The purpose of meditation is not to relax the mind, it is to engage the mind; listening to music is actually working toward the opposite goal.

And honestly, I don't understand how you can say "what you need to do is be aware of what puts you off your game" without also acknowledging the converse, that you need to be aware of what puts you on your game and how to keep yourself there. That's why you meditate. I'm not saying your ideas are bad, they're not, but you're throwing meditation out the window for...really no reason at all. Sitting down to really centre yourself (and believe me when I say that you won't be 100% on even after a few hours of this if you choose to, the mind has, well, too much of a mind of its own) and being aware of that feeling when you're done meditating is what will help bring the same feeling into your daily life. There's no study you need to prove this, unless you seriously never listened to any of your teachers through the end of high school. That's just the way shit works, meditators are just applying a practice technique human beings have been using since we weren't even human beings yet to the idea of being aware, calm, rational, happy and healthy. There's really not that much to understand here, just as long as you accept a few basic things about yourself and work with them accordingly.

[lanicita]

This thread is now officially about tips for and questions or information about meditation. NOT its validity, usefulness, or definition. NOT for personal attacks. From here on, meditation will be defined as anything that 1) the poster considers to be "meditation," and 2) has to do with being mentally or physically fit. If you break these rules you will be banned from Fit Club.

[Nath]

And no, the learning to breathe thing isn't bunk; basically what I'm going to say here is, if you're going to say this stuff doesn't work, then you're going to have to provide an explanation as to why, because we accept the kinds of notions meditation is based off of in other aspects of life as true without really needing to "study" it, simply because we understand that's how the brain works.

(Ninja'd by the mod, so I've removed some questions I had about this bit.)

I think part of the confusion might be because 'meditation' refers to such a wide variety of practices, with vastly different goals: emptying your mind, letting your mind wander, concentrating on something specific, and so on. Am I correct in guessing that the original poster had some specific kind of meditation in mind? If so, could you define your version and/or point to some place I could read more about it? (Those videos were a good starting point; thanks.)

[Izawwlgood]

High reflex games are great for meditation.

ALso, I've heard of people running ultra marathons and falling asleep for portions, only to wake up about 5-6 miles further into the race... THAT is meditation.

[Dextrose]

Wow. Seconded. Falling asleep, or going into a trance? I can really see both happening....

[theamberkey]

I'm not great at meditation; and I've done everything from 10-day silent Buddhist courses to 5-minutes-before martial arts quickies, of varying styles (western and eastern). That being said, I really do recognize the benefits of meditation in the realm of awareness, both internal and external (and I can very easily see how awareness can lead to a healthier life).

A tip, based off of my own practice: It might be much easier for some people to start a 'moving meditation' practice such as Tai Chi or Chi Gung. These practices teach many of the same things (awareness of mind and breath), and you also get to move your body, albeit slowly. It's especially helpful if you have some sitting meditation practice that you can apply once you get the basic movements down.

Tai Chi and such are also a great way to begin to loosen up in preparation for stretches and subsequent work outs. It honestly just feels good to move your body slowly in that way, especially if you push it hard regularly. It's a bit of a treat for a body that normally spends its time working hard/fast or at rest. A middle ground.

[Barbie]

A tip, based off of my own practice: It might be much easier for some people to start a 'moving meditation' practice such as Tai Chi or Chi Gung.

I agree. I've done yoga for years, and the focus on control and mindfulness gave me a taste of what meditation should feel like. If you have mental chatter while you're trying to balance, you will fall. It's a good way to get your mind in check.

This week, I started my sitting meditation practice using this book. I really liked it, because it's a step-by-step approach, and it has a few pre-meditations to get you into the mode. It's also written in the context of a Western lifestyle. I walked out to the beach to try some of them. The first pre-meditation was to practise observing sights, sounds, and tactile sensations without mentally commenting on them. I was surprised that I couldn't do it! My mind: "That man's cane reflects the sun while he walks, the sand is sure sparkly, those guys look like thugs, where did I put my camera?, the man with the flashing cane is closer now... I wonder why he's swinging his cane instead of using it to help him walk, I need to remember to tell Richard about how pretty it was at the beach today"

I'll keep trying

[justaman]

I think that all of us have some forms of meditation, despite not having been trained/taught how to meditate. I have never been part of a religion or taken part in martial arts classes, but I think I still have some of the aspects of meditation in my daily life:

I run, sometimes just for the fun of it, but if I want to train some aspect of my run, whether it be stride length, breathing rates/depth, speed, foot fall pattern, whatever, I focus on that aspect as hard as I can for as long as I can. From the definition of meditation these are meditative acts and I have found them to help with my running and wear and tear on the body.

However, at work (mol bio lab), many of my tasks are long (sometimes over 6 hours with no breaks) and involve many steps that have to be performed within a time limit. If set my mind to it these are easy to do, but if I haven't had any mental preparation, they are protracted and very tiring, just mental focus.

I dunno, perhaps meditation is more common than we think, it just isn't labeled as such.