
What a Sensory Isolation Tank Taught Me About My Brain - DiabloD3
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/opinion/sunday/whos-in-charge-the-body-or-the-brain.html
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captn3m0
If you are interested, Richard Feynman has written about his experiences (the
physicist) in Sensory Depravation Tanks. You can read the entire post at [0],
and it forms one chapter of "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman", which I highly
recommend.

[0]: [https://www.dmt-
nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=51786](https://www.dmt-
nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=51786)

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anotheryou
I just did it once and found it underwhelming, like quickstarting meditation,
but not much more. After sometime salt started to crystalize at the water
line, which was rather worse than lying in bed meditating.

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justinpombrio
> like quickstarting meditation

Meditation is hard, so quick-starting it could be valuable, especially for
someone who doesn't know how to meditate well.

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rbanffy
It's interesting the writer didn't get sensory deprivation and, yet, still
wrote about it...

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rwc
He can't get his $89 reimbursed by the NYT without at least churning out some
clickbait.

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somberi
One related talk that might be of interest.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness)

Edit: Added Speaker Bio.

[https://www.ted.com/speakers/dan_dennett](https://www.ted.com/speakers/dan_dennett)

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remir
I've tried it once. It got interesting only after about 45 min, but the
session was only 60 minutes. Not enough, in my opinion.

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desireco42
I bet if you went second time, you would have even more fun.

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DoodleBuggy
These have become very trendy.

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chris_st
Wow, you gave me a flashback to the 1970's (the good kind :-) when they were
(first?) trendy.

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arc_of_descent
I'm not sure about these Sensory Deprivation Tanks, simply because I haven't
tried them, but it all seems a bit too much hocus pocus.

Richard Feynman (as one post mentions) tried it, felt good, had some
experiences, but once out of it he quickly realized that it was just another
perception. We all perceive, if there is no sensory input, the brain will fill
in the blanks.

I've been practicing mediation (Vipassna, which is also minfullness
meditation) for around 6 months now. I highly recommend it. The mind-body
complex is what its mainly about. You have to observe your bodily senses and
your thoughts.

As quantum mechanics demonstrates, observing changes the thing being observed.
(Like the wave function collapse, I'm no expert). But you can surely change
your mind by meditation.

Happy New Year!

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sudshekhar
Isn't Vipassna basically the 10 day meditation retreat? Do they have their own
meditation techniques that you can follow post those 10 days?

Also, did you complete the full 10 days? I've been thinking of doing this for
some time, read a lot about it but there's a mental block stopping me.

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arc_of_descent
Thats how its marketed. But no, Vipassna is a form of meditation practice.
There are many others.

And to be honest its not the real stuff. What are 10 days? You are going to
learn absolutely nothing. Mediation is a 24 hours a day practice. And it takes
a lot of time to just get used to it.

For example, in one form they only tell you to focus your mind on an object
(like breathing, or your abdomen). In Vipassna, the idea is focus first, but
the next step is to observe your thoughts (mindfullness). Observe, never
reject, whatever it is. Happiness, Lust, Greediness, Anxiety. Observe, and let
it go. The mind is a crazy machine. More precisely, our chattering monkey
mind.

Please read this book if you haven't already. I can't recommend it enough. It
has changed my life.

Mindfulness in Plain English - Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

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fredoliveira
Everyone keeps recommending Mindfulness in Plain English, including people I
have a deep admiration from. But I went into it thinking it'd be a no-bs
exploration of meditation and closed the book once the author mentioned how
some meditators experienced "talking to their ancestors".

I'm sure that you can be objective and cut through that type of statement but
meh, I couldn't do it. Maybe I'll try again at some point but that one really
put me off.

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arc_of_descent
I somehow agree with you, but I especially found the book great since it has
little or no mention of Religion or gods.

Although spiritual experiences can occur if you think of them as
hallucinations due to the state intense meditation can get one into.

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edem
How can I get past the paywall?

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athenot
This is not the answer you're looking for but this worked for me: I bought a
subscription to the NY Times.

(To answer your question: use the _web_ link next to the article: it takes you
to Google; then click on the matching result.)

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jyriand
Rather difficult read. Not sure what the author is doing with his language,
but even after rereading some of the paragraphs I still fail to grasp the
point.

An example:

> "Hardly a week goes by, it seems, without an enthusiastic report in the
> popular media about intriguing neuroscience research linking some human
> behavior to the function of a particular brain circuit."

These things that he "learned" seem to be quite trivial and shallow. It seems
he first came up with the title and then tried to fit his experience into this
title.

