
Ask HN: Do you meditate? - mattbettinson
Why? What benefits has it brought to your work and life?
======
WhitneyLand
For those considering trying meditation, yes it's great for stress reduction
but there are also benefits that are not obvious until you try it:

\- If you sit long enough you'll not just be relaxed, but also feel another
mode of consciousness as the waves of your thinking quiet down. It's nothing
mystical but it's pretty unique to meditation. For me it takes about 15
minutes to get that point.

\- Just like regular excercise actual changes your body, regular meditation
actually changes your mind over time. So there are really two levels of
benefit. Extending the analogy, If someone starts jogging for a week they
might say "I already feel great", which is true but is actually only the start
of the benefits that come with months more of training. It sounds strange but
it's pretty easy to try and find out.

------
Red_Tarsius
I don't know if it's proper meditation, but right after waking up I sit on the
floor and repeat for 20 minutes:

 _“Watch your thoughts, they become words; watch your words, they become
actions; watch your actions, they become habits; watch your habits, they
become character; watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”_

It's like a mantra. I'm not even sure about the original source of this quote.
It may sound a crazy thing to do, but it helps me focus throughout the day.

~~~
icebraining
Just curious: how do you know it helps you focus? Sorry if it sounds
demeaning, but it's easy to convince ourselves if not careful. Have you tried
measuring it in some way?

~~~
Red_Tarsius
You're not demeaning and raise a very good point! It's a daily practice
tailored to my weaknesses. There's no physical benefit in itself to it. I
think the key to a successful life lies in self-discipline, which must be
practiced and reminded of every day.

Let me quote Admiral William H. McRaven:

> _" If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first
> task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will
> encourage you to do another task and another and another.

By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many
tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little
things in life matter.

If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things
right.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that
is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow
will be better."_ – [http://goo.gl/IxK2p5](http://goo.gl/IxK2p5)

Meditation is _bed making_ for my mind. It's an incredible speech and I highly
recommend it.

It's difficult to measure its effects because I started this routine as part
of a complete change of lifestyle. However, I definitely get more work done
now than 2, 3 years ago. It's not about being delusional, but embracing your
own potential.

------
milesf
I pray for the same reason the late C.S. Lewis prayed:

    
    
      "I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m 
      helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all
      the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God,
      it changes me." - CS Lewis
    

I know it might tick some people off that I mention prayer in a thread about
meditation, but I respect a person's right to believe whatever they want. All
I ask is they respect my right to believe whatever I want.

~~~
jwdunne
I think there's a bit of crossover with prayer so it wouldn't be fair to give
you flak because of the association. For example, if you're reciting a typical
prayer, e.g the Our Father, you're focusing your mind on one thing. To
dedicate to the prayer, you can't just shut other thoughts out, you must
acknowledge and return to the prayer. I can some of the same benefits. In free
flow prayer, I guess you're also acknowledging thoughts as they come and
focusing on doing that. These may be thoughts that come from deep-seated
emotions, perhaps thoughts that you typically wouldn't or couldn't discuss
with others.

I don't practice meditation religiously, nor do am I dedicated to prayer, but
I have done both and both have been therapeutic.

It seems wrong to find fault in what you're doing because of your beliefs when
the process is essentially very similar, if not the same.

~~~
milesf
I know Christianity is a very touchy subject for many people. It's easy to
find lots of examples of the gulf between orthodoxy and orthopraxy in many
people's lives. But I'm not so much interested in where a person is at in
their lives, as much as I'm interested in the delta - the change - over time.

Prayer, over time, changes me. I need to change.

C.S. Lewis was a hero of mine. An Atheist for a good chunk of his life, he
became a Christian and went on to write a lot of great stuff. The fact that he
and J.R.R. Tolkien were friends is pretty cool too :)

~~~
philsnow
G K Chesterton was also a convert (edit: to Catholicism) and extremely
prolific writer, be sure to check out his work if you haven't had a chance
yet. I re-read Manalive every year or so.

------
machinshin_
Yes. I do a lot of different ways of it though, whatever strikes my mood. Much
of it is the many variations in chinese martial arts:

(either no music, or mild music, like rain patter, nothing w/ lyrics)

I find meditation is a lot about your breath, so you can do all of these
either with normal breathing or these variations:

1) n/n*2/x breathing. (i'm only at n=3 atm) 2) full lung & empty lung
variations (this link does a decent job explaining :
[http://www.yogaindailylife.org/esystem/yoga/en/020200/exerci...](http://www.yogaindailylife.org/esystem/yoga/en/020200/exercise-
levels/the-full-yoga-breath/) )

The different types of mediation i do are:

1) moving: Tai Chi

2) standing: holding ball (from tai chi)

3) sitting : Grand Circle of Heaven (found this link which explains it well :
[http://ymaa.com/articles/martial-grand-
circulation](http://ymaa.com/articles/martial-grand-circulation)) (imagine the
energy flow in a circle though your body as you breath)

4)(This one i think i made up on my own) : any of the above while having
having pink noise playing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXtimhT-
ff4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXtimhT-ff4)

------
fierycatnet
Yes. I used to do Zazen with not much luck until I switched to Anapanasati
meditation, completely blew my mind. Most of the Buddhist texts started to
make more sense. Jhanic states and so on. With proper meditation technique I
went from 15 minutes to sitting for an hour, easy, effortlessly. Mediation was
pretty life changing for me.

~~~
krazemon
Out of curiosity, which jhani states have you reached and what specific
anapanasati technique do you use (focus on breath at nostrils, breath
throughout the body, kasina, etc). I'm working to achieve first Khama
currently, but getting a bit stuck in access concentration.

~~~
fierycatnet
I've used Shaila Catherine books for guidance and instructions. It's hard to
say which jhanic states exactly because I practice alone with no teachers. I
would guess from first to third but not for long periods of time. I have
experienced piti and after that entered 'equanimity' jhanic state, subtle but
alert and content concentration.

I highly recommend the book Focused and Fearless, I haven't seen such clarity
on meditation anywhere else, except maybe Buddhist texts but they can be
cryptic and poorly translated.

My technique is comfortable freestyle sitting (as opposite to lotus that gives
me pain and takes away from concentration) and breath counting from 1 to 10
and 10 to 1 until I reach more relaxed breathing, then I switch to counting
1-1 on inhale, 1-1 on exhale, repeat until 10 and backwards, this reduced
mental activity and keeps me on a) breath at nostrils and b) concentration
with counting. After 15-20 minutes I usually start hitting Jhanic states with
piti coming in first and then going away to enter more subtle higher
absorption.

But yeah, get the above book, I am not much of a guide, I was actually lucky
to hit piti within several days of Anapanasati meditation and Jhanic states
within a week. I hear that some people struggle for months.

------
__xtrimsky
Yes, it changed the way I view the world.

Sometime during my teenage years, I started not caring about the world around
me, and just tried to improving myself. Think faster, go faster, multitask,
get things done. Although improving these abilities are cool, they focused my
life on getting more money, getting promoted. Not really focusing on what
really matters: being a better person, being happy, enjoying life.

Meditation changed my view. I try to spend more time with family. When I take
out the trash I enjoy the path I am walking on, the stars in the skies, the
wind.

All this sounds a bit "hippie", but I am more happy now than I was before.

I highly recommend meditation to anyone. I am meditation using the
iphone/android app "headspace". It is really helpful for anyone that is
beginning with meditation. It guides you through all the process.

------
moubarak
i do non secular meditation. each session takes around 10-15 minutes at
regular time intervals; dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset, and night, which also
serves as a tiny yoga exercise. i'm also obligated to eat something (a date or
full meal) at each interval. these are what people refer to today as muslim
prayers.

since i started doing this everyday, i became less addicted to work. after
each exercise i look forward to the second, and my work is now divided into
the time slots in between, rather than one shift of 8 to 5. the biggest
psychological impact this had on me was that material matters don't matter to
me anymore, and it made sort of a minimalist.

~~~
deanotron
When I meditate I often combine it with tiny yoga exercises - not formal yoga
poses, but just stretching and going where my body wants to stretch. What's
funny is that I often find myself in a position similar to Muslim prayer (or,
if one were observing from the outside they might think that is what I was
engaged in).

[edit] I bring this up because whether engaged secular-ly or not there is
something very grounding about the experience.

------
392c91e8165b
I meditate, but only for 2 to 5 minutes at a time. When I do it much longer
than that, vaguely-bad things happen. (It would take a long time to explain.
Suffice to say that I am chronically ill, and if I were healthier, I could
probably meditate longer without these vague negative consequences.)

Usually I set a timer (about which more below) for 2 minutes, then right after
that, 2 minutes more. If I ever "flunk" a meditation session, I take that as a
strong sign that my mind is not working as well as it should be, and I try to
fix that. It is also a sign that more meditation is needed on that day.

"Flunking" a meditation session means I got distracted and forgot that I was
supposed to be meditating. For example, recently, some of my neighbors were
having an animated conversation in the courtyard of my apartment building, and
I was feeling lonely, so I went out there to participate. When I returned to
my computer (I meditate in front of my computer) there was a some text on my
screen put there by my meditation timer (which I wrote, in Emacs Lisp) which
is how I became aware that I had flunked a meditation session.

More detail: at the scheduled end of a meditation session, an Emacs timer
inserts "Timer finished: meditation " into an Emacs buffer visiting a file
that serves as a record of my meditation sessions. (Emacs also automatically
inserts the time and duration of every session into this file.) Since at the
end of a meditation session, I am in the habit of adding the letter "s" (for
"success") to the text, the presence of an instance of "Timer finished:
meditation " not followed by "s" was a sure sign that I had flunked the
session.

I've been doing these short meditation sessions with my "timer" written in
Emacs Lisp since Jan 2008. I do not do them regularly -- only when I remember
to do so, which (a quick look at my files reveals) was on 7 of the last 30
days.

I do not have unequivocal evidence that meditation does me any good. The main
reasons I keep at it is that so many other people report good effects and the
my understanding of some studies on "mindfulness-based stress reduction"
(which BTW found effects from very short meditation sessions).

~~~
westoncb
Hey 392c91e8165b, I think I can relate to your 'bad things happen' when trying
to meditate for more than a few minutes. You might check out this book:
[http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Wisdom-
Illness...](http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Wisdom-
Illness/dp/0739358588) Gave me some different perspectives on meditation
that've helped a lot with that sort of thing (assuming it's anxiety related).

------
fny
For five years now, I've struggled against torrents of thought and anxiety. I
meditated and prayed begging for some relief to no avail. About four months
ago, I found Ashtanga yoga, and to say that it has changed my life is an
understatement. Mentally, I have reawakened. I now think patiently and
deliberately with a discipline and focus I've never experienced. A child-like
enthusiasm about the world, despite its suffering and strife, relit within me:
hope and faith abounds. Occasionally, of course, I still do struggle, but I
struggle in peace and with confidence. The physical changes have been equally
striking. I've always had poor posture, mild scoliosis, and a hip imbalance.
Now, that's all gone: my posture is remarkable and effortless, and I carry a
sense of self with every step. I also kick way more ass at CrossFit than ever.
;) Unlike most other yoga, Ashtanga intensely focuses on the breath as well,
which has increased my aerobic capacity dramatically.

I'm of the opinion that meditation alone lacks the mind-body dynamic of
Ashtanga yoga. Ashtanga trains you to stay focused, keep calm, and breathe
deeply despite the intense (and sometimes painful) physical practice. The
physical aspect is also a beautiful reminder that mental and physical
transformation takes patience and time. Struggles with strength, endurance,
and flexibility serve as a tangible marker of one's progress and the work that
remains. Gauging the progress of one's mind is insidiously difficult,
particularly because you're using the very thing your trying to fix to measure
it! Also, if you're restless like me, the postures will keep just enough of
your mind occupied to allow yourself to explore yoga's meditative aspects.

Ashtanga is my answer to David Foster Wallace's remarkable speech, "This Is
Water".[0] The mind is indeed an "excellent servant", and I can proudly say
that I am its master.

Fun fact: When Sri Pattabhi Jois, a great Ashtanga guru, was asked by a
student asked him why he would not teach him "meditation", he is said to have
replied: "mad-attention".

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhhC_N6Bm_s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhhC_N6Bm_s),
[http://www.metastatic.org/text/This%20is%20Water.pdf](http://www.metastatic.org/text/This%20is%20Water.pdf)

~~~
bauer
I checked out the wikipedia article for Ashtanga yoga and I'm a bit put off by
the reports of frequent and somewhat severe injuries. Mind sharing your
personal experience there?

~~~
fny
I had the same fear, and thus far I've had no problems. I think most of the
injuries come from teachers being too ambitious with their adjustments and
students being too ambitious with their practice. Just listen to your body. I
only push myself to the point of discomfort and stop when I feel pain.

------
obulpathi
I am doing meditation for a year regularly (almost every day) and did another
2 years (once or twice a week). Keeps me calm and focused. Next month, I am
going to this 10-day course Vipassana Meditation:
[https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/vipassana](https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/vipassana).
Looking forward to it.

------
daenney
Yes I do, usually twice a day, 15-20m. Before I leave home and when I get back
from work. If it gets especially crazy at work I lock myself up in a room and
mediate there for a bit too.

It's mostly a way of dealing with stress and all the inputs that you get on a
day. It's a lot, of thoughts, of things, stimuli and I find that dealing with
them while meditating helps me clear my mind.

It brings me greater focus since my mind isn't constantly off on twenty side-
quests and helps me sleep better at night.

I tend to use the same breathing exercises in moments when I'd normally get
annoyed, like a super slow moving queue at a supermarket. Helps me keep my
"sunny" disposition, keeps me happier.

------
ponyous
I did meditate a lot when I was in college and I had only shower but no bath.
When I had bath I was in it for 30-60mins few times a week. It helped me to
clear my mind, I guess its similar to writing blog posts for some people.

------
deanotron
Yes, simply because I like the experience. "It feels good, man".

There is a lecture by Alan Watts where he denounces the idea of "meditating on
an idea" as well as meditating for personal gain - ie benefits to work / life.

I think it's very similar to orgasm (in form and function). Yes, there are
health benefits and stress benefits as a side-effect, but the experience
itself should be the main draw.

[edit] Alan Watts @11:38:
[https://youtu.be/26971uJuQuk?t=11m38s](https://youtu.be/26971uJuQuk?t=11m38s)

------
joelberman
I learned to meditate in my late teens (I'm 68 now), to fight depression and
low self esteem. It was very hard for me to meditate, and I still sometimes
have trouble getting into a meditative state. But I usually spend 20-30
minutes meditating during the day, or before bed. It helps me clear any
depression I feel. No idea how or why it works, but for me it is very helpful.

------
omgbear
Yes -- I try to do tai chi style standing meditation, focusing on posture and
breathing every morning after the gym. I can feel my thoughts slowing and
becoming more focused, rather than the rapid jumping from idea to idea that
sometimes happens otherwise.

Whenever I'm stressed, I'll close my eyes and focus thoughts inward, just to
clear my head and reset my thought patterns.

~~~
jrometty
how did you get started?

~~~
omgbear
A friend of mine I respect had been extolling the virtues of meditation for a
while. When another friend started tai chi and taught me some of the basics,
it just sort of clicked. I think the idea of slowly pushing thoughts out of my
head is the key, I try the same for earworms with some success.

My mind often races and I usually use some sort of high BPM music to help
focus. I find meditation helps bring down clutter of thoughts in my head and
gives me more control over my thoughts.

------
rboyd
15-20 minutes of meditation before an important meeting or negotiation does
wonders for me. I've experimented with an iOS app "Headspace" which was pretty
decent, but the patter became a bit repetitive before my trial was over so
didn't extend. I do like the Oprah/Deepak 21 day challenge guided meditation
series.

~~~
stfu
I also tried my hands on Headspace but wasn't that happy about it. Are the
Oprah/Deepak similarly guided?

~~~
rboyd
These were a bit more useful for me. Each session has a specific mantra that
Deepak explains. Oprah's part is the intro, and it is pretty pointless except
so she can say she collaborated AFIACT.

Anything of this flavor comes with the obvious disclaimer. Gurus are human
too, of course. In Deepak's case, there's even a documentary from his son
Gotham ("Decoding Deepak") that shows that side of his father.

------
andersthue
I started after reading the book "10% happier", it gives me happines, calmness
and makes it easier to tackle everyday stuff. I have gotten a small window of
opportunity from when something happens until I react that makes it possible
for me to react more true to myself.

------
coderholic
If you're interested in trying it out but don't know where to start then you
might want to take a look at [http://calm.com](http://calm.com) (I work
there), or our mobile apps on android and ios (both called "calm").

------
bane
To control stage fright before a presentation, build up courage, etc. I
sometimes repeat the Litany Against Fear.

I find it does an amazing job of getting my mind to focus on the fear like
it's an emotional cancer and excises it pretty effectively.

------
codecondo
Yes, meditation is great, but I urge you not to fall for the utter crap that
is called "meditation apps" \-- find a cushion, or a blanket, sit your ass
down and simply breathe.

------
daocuong
Keep me calm, focus, fearless, creative, more love to people around me. Im
struggling to make free mobile app for helping people to do meditation by
themselves or together. Any ideas?

------
bfe
Yes, brief sitting meditation and running meditation every day. There's
evidence of physical and mental health benefits. It seems to help bring
calmness, focus, and new ideas.

------
pvaldes
Not. Not in this sense.

------
TACIXAT
I attribute a lot of my ability to think clearly to meditation. I attribute a
lot of my willpower to qigong. I should really do it more often.

------
staunch
I tend to meditate for 4+ hours per day, while writing code. I start feeling
mentally scattered if I miss more than a day or two.

~~~
stfu
Not sure if this is the same as meditating. I experience sometimes similar
states when really engaging with a research topic. But I would describe it
more as a state of "flow" i.e.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_\(psychology\))

~~~
westoncb
Meditation is basically 'flow' while just sitting. And in time, the idea is
that you can extend it to any activity.

------
dennisrthatcj
No, it's a waste or time

------
westoncb
Yes. It's a reminder that there's a non-conceptual aspect to life—a way to be
that doesn't involve categorizing or evaluating, just acting and experiencing.
'Body scan' meditation and breath watching are both great for this. It's like
some deeper, unseen part of mind chooses at any given point whether to exist
as that voice in your head, or your physical body. For me, exercising ambition
and over-focusing on intellectual pursuits for too long made it so that I was
pretty much exclusively identifying with the 'voice in my head.' It sounds
like I'm describing some inexact fluffy sort of thing, but I have something
very definite in mind with this description: my subjective experience is
starkly different based on whether I'm in the physical or mental 'mode.' And
this is not a special insight of my own; their are plenty of ancient and
modern treatments of the problem of thinking you are your thoughts.

And, I'm pretty sure that understanding how to move between these modes is a
key aspect to cultivating 'flow' in programming (or other activities).

I'm still relatively new to meditation (about 1.5 months regularly; over a
year reading about it and doing it occasionally), but I've reaped definite
benefits from the time I've put in. It feels like the descriptions in
'Flatland' of discovering there's a new dimension that you can move in:
without meditating it was like I was constrained to endlessly following up
whatever thoughts I started up, and now I'm getting better at simply stepping
aside when I can see it's no longer productive.

This has been especially important for me since I'd had an injury related to
using mouse/keyboard so that it became impossible to 'get out of my head'
while using the computer—was in the polar opposite of 'flow' whenever on the
computer. I spent a couple years like that, in one sense relieved since I
understood rationally that I wasn't damaging myself at the computer
anymore—but still having a terrible time at the computer because of past
experiences with it. There were a number of things that went into improving
this, but things didn't start reaallly getting good again until I started
meditating. The feeling is like learning an instrument though: I can see
myself slowly becoming capable of making music—but it takes time.

I don't think I'm really all that much of a special case though. People are in
their heads in an unpleasant way while coding because any number of things
causes them anxiety: anything from finding yet another bug in your code to
general unease from a built up habit of assessing your supposedly innate
capacity as a programmer. If you have no concerns, you just act: it's just the
code and the problem you're working on, everything else disappears, time
disappears. If you can do it with the breath, you can do it with code.

edit: for typos, expanded a couple parts.

~~~
icebraining
I never really "got" meditation, so excuse for sounding tone deaf, but when
you say "stepping aside when I can see it's no longer productive", do you mean
thinking about your thoughts¹? Or something different, not thoughts at all?

I ask because I'm completely familiar with analyzing my own thoughts,
especially when I'm having a small hypochondriac episode, and I don't
understand why would meditation be necessary for that.

On the other hand, if it's not thinking about thoughts, how would you describe
it?

\----

¹ What Terry Pratchett describes as "Seconds Thoughts" :)
[http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/618907-first-thoughts-are-
th...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/618907-first-thoughts-are-the-everyday-
thoughts-everyone-has-those-second)

~~~
westoncb
Interesting quote—I like it.

The 'Second Thoughts' definition is useful because it is the exact opposite of
what you do in meditation.

I think it would be valid to say that meditation is training in understanding
what it really means to 'do nothing,' and that when you area REALLY doing
nothing—everything is great.

I see it like this: verbal/rational thought (typically involving the concept
of yourself) arises in order to figure out how to change some aspect of your
situation; with meditation you learn to understand "everything is okay, at
least for the next 20 minutes," and thoughts melt away, you smell things and
hear things and temperature becomes present, etc. Movies, books, people,
food—you name it, can all be super rich and interesting when you are just
doing this non-thinking, understanding there's nothing to do, letting life
speak instead of talking over it.

I think of it as training in discerning when you are 'talking over' your
experience versus JUST experiencing.

If you want some more, I wrote this very short story to exemplify how it is to
be caught in the '2-dimensional plane' of believing that various forms of
thought are your only possible 'actions,' while it's true that an utterly
simple third dimension exists. [https://medium.com/@westoncb/don-t-
worry-631ce63934c1](https://medium.com/@westoncb/don-t-worry-631ce63934c1)
That story describes less informed ways of getting oneself to stop thinking.
It's sort of like you are waving your hands wildly all the time and you'd like
to stop, so you keep trying different types of hand waving in order to stop
it—whereas what you really want is to just not do it, but you have to figure
that out!

If you're interested in trying it, and you've had any issues with mental
health, and you're a complete beginner, I'd strongly recommend this book:
[http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Wisdom-
Illness...](http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Wisdom-
Illness/dp/0739358588)

~~~
icebraining
I can _understand_ the idea from that story - the "second thoughts" just
amplifying the problem - but I can't actually _relate_ to it, since it simply
doesn't happen to me. If anything, when I'm anxious my "second thoughts" are
usually more balanced and even slightly disdainful of my anxiety episode, and
can help it end faster by making me realize the silliness of my anxiety.

I also understand the problem of thinking about what I'm seeing or reading,
preventing me from fully immersing myself in the story, but it's usually not a
problem; I identify it, go back in the film/book, take a deep breath and it
usually fixes itself easily enough.

I don't know, I think I find it hard to believe there isn't more to it. This
just sounds so simple and intuitive.

~~~
westoncb
Hehe: it is the most simple thing, though—nothing could be simpler, in a
sense.

I think the trick is that depending on your present situation it becomes more
easy/difficult to do the simple thing and, e.g., 'go back into' the film/book.
Meditation is just training to do that regardless of circumstances.

edit: Also, this part is really just personal opinion: I think the other part
of it is you begin to see that it's possible to be content with less than you
previously believed was required (because you enter a state of contentment
just by sitting each morning, even if, e.g., you don't have as much money as
you'd like, or you're having relationship trouble, or you don't like your
self-image—whatever.), and this starts impacting your outlook on life: you
start valuing experience more and evaluations of aspects of your condition
less.

