
The effect of meditation on brain structure (2012) - idclip
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3541490/
======
Medicalidiot
>Meditation training can enhance various cognitive processes, such as
emotional regulation, executive control and attention, particularly sustained
attention

> Most of regions showing thicker cortical thickness in meditators are related
> with emotional processing

Anecdotal experience: I started meditating years ago and what I've noticed is
that my emotions are more ephemeral now. Instead of being angry or sad for
minutes to hours it's seconds. Also, I feel like I'm able to connect more with
what's going on right now instead of what was or what will be.

There has been a significant amount of research already demonstrating the
benefits of meditation and this adds to it.

~~~
akudha
Do you use any app, follow any particular style? Any recommendations for a
beginner?

Also, how long do you meditate in a day? And do you meditate daily?

~~~
evil-olive
> Do you use any app, follow any particular style?

I've tried all of Calm, Headspace, and Insight Timer. I liked Calm's guided
meditations; when I started the guiding helped me a lot. I'm currently using
Insight Timer purely as a timer without any guidance.

The style I follow most closely is vispassana, often translated as "insight"
or "seeing the world clearly" or the trendy term "mindfulness".

There is no "best" app or "best" style, only what works for each individual. I
would caution against falling into a paradox of choice problem where you keep
trying different apps or different styles in a search for the "best" one. Much
like exercise - the best exercise is whichever one you can do consistently.

> Any recommendations for a beginner?

This will sound counter-intuitive, but lower your expectations. You'll hear
lots of stuff from experienced meditators about how life-changing it is, and
I'll echo that sentiment. But it certainly doesn't _feel_ life-changing at
first. If you go into it with high expectations, you'll very likely get
disappointed and frustrated.

> Also, how long do you meditate in a day? And do you meditate daily?

I've done 10-15 minutes a day, every day, for the last 800-something days.
I've also done two separate silent meditation retreats, of 2 days and 5 days
respectively.

There are 1440 minutes in a day. If you meditate for 10-15 minutes a day,
that's just 1% of the day. Something that helped me establish my daily
practice was a commitment that I can do _anything_ if it only takes up 1% of
my day.

~~~
wowtip
Could you do it on a 30 minute commute, or is a (most of the time very
peaceful) bus trip too much external distractions?

~~~
Fjolsvith
I think one could do it on a bus trip after you have been practicing for a
while.

I got to where I could meditate in a noisy open dormitory.

------
asperous
Disclaimer I am not a medical scientist: but I'd like to understand more about
how they found the participants. It strikes me that people who perform
meditation might be different than whatever controls they were able to find.
The fact they re-used participants from previous studies also strikes me as
worrying.

Preferably they would take participants at random and have half perform the
meditation for (12 or 24 months) and look for changes. Using self-selection
might be more difficult to prove causation.

~~~
raziel2701
The book Altered Traits goes over a lot of the scientific results, I think
it's two chapters of the book that cover this stuff. One of the studies they
cover studied people who had never meditated, people with 10,000 hours and
people with about 36,000 hours of meditation if I recall correctly. This last
group is the one that exhibited altered traits, and it's not easy to find
people with this many hours of practice, hence why they reuse the
participants. All other participants exhibited some of the altered traits but
only during intense meditation periods, the master meditators exhibited them
all the time.

The results from the book are/study are hard to interpret, something about
sustaining gamma waves for long periods of time and having younger brains in
those that practiced meditation a lot. They also recovered from pain faster,
and wouldn't develop anxieties about it.

Since these subjects are very interesting, it makes sense to study them again
with different techniques or reproducing previous results.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
> it's not easy to find people with this many hours of practice, hence why
> they reuse the participants [...]. Since these subjects are very
> interesting, it makes sense to study them again with different techniques or
> reproducing previous results.

That's fine as far as it goes. It helps us confirm that a phenomenon _can
actually occur_ and perhaps tells us something about its general shape. But
when studying a population of known outliers, it's not credible to assume how
the results will or won't apply to a broader population. This isn't an
abstract epistemological concern; scientific journals are absolutely packed
with exciting preliminary findings that vanished into insignificance when
somebody did a larger or more rigorous study (but nevertheless might be
cherry-picked for a pop-science/self-help book based on the "revolutionary"
findings).

------
loblollyboy
There were only forty something controls and forty something meditators, and
if you look at the variance within each group it is way more than the
"increase" of the average due to meditation AND some of the brain regions are
thicker on average in the non-meditators group. I haven't taken bio since
highschool, but it seems like you can't draw a conclusion from this. Am I
missing something here?

Also, this is something I've always wondered, and I guess the only way to get
a real answer would be to try meditating. But as a distance runner, I have
always wondered if that is a form of meditation. It seems like I have all of
the effects described by meditators, and in this study, they described a form
of meditation which was movement and paying attention to the physical
sensations - which is basically most sports. Any endurance athlete meditators
out there who can explain the difference?

~~~
evil-olive
> But as a distance runner, I have always wondered if that is a form of
> meditation.

The way I think about this is that there's an important difference between
_meditation_ (as a noun) vs. _meditative_ (as an adjective).

Meditation, when you're doing it, is the _only_ thing you're doing, or at
least attempting to do.

I've gone on multiple-day camping trips on my motorcycle, when it's just me
and my bike out in the middle of nowhere. I find that very _meditative_ , in
what I imagine is similar to what you feel with long-distance running. There's
a part of my brain engaged with controlling my body and four limbs, but also a
part of my brain that's not really engaged at all and is free to wander.

That's meditative, but that's not meditation. If I closed my eyes for a few
minutes while riding my motorcycle, my happiness would decrease significantly.

This isn't to say that one is better than the other. You could meditate and
never do any meditative activities, or you could do meditative activities
without ever once meditating. The best option, as usual, is probably a
moderate mix of both of them.

~~~
agumonkey
Anybody ever noticed running a lot better when your mind is fully away, as in
totally immersed into an idea or a memory. I realized that in those times, my
rhythm is stable, my movements are smoother, my heartrate is a bit lower..

But the minute I sense it, the bubble breaks

------
cbanek
I think it's interesting that they say all the participants are right handed.
I'm guessing left handed people (like me) would make it complicated to compare
brain strcutures since the structures are cross-wired and therefore slightly
different for left handed and right handed people? But not all structures are
reversed.

Kind of like the medical literature focusing on using males for test studies
[1] it makes me wonder if left handed people would have some kind of different
result in these types of brain studies.

[1]:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4800017/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4800017/)

~~~
frereubu
If they were selected that way on purpose, they're probably just trying to
control for confounding differences to try and make it easier to distinguish
the signal from the noise in the statistics. Same reason that "there were no
major differences in sex, age or years of education between meditation
practitioners and control subjects."

Edit: They say "handedness was measured by Annett Hand Preference
Questionnaire" which suggests that this wasn't deliberate.

------
SZJX
Can anybody actually explain what the result implies?

> Meditators, compared with controls, showed significantly greater cortical
> thickness in the anterior regions of the brain, located in frontal and
> temporal areas, including the medial prefrontal cortex, superior frontal
> cortex, temporal pole and the middle and interior temporal cortices.
> Significantly thinner cortical thickness was found in the posterior regions
> of the brain, located in the parietal and occipital areas, including the
> postcentral cortex, inferior parietal cortex, middle occipital cortex and
> posterior cingulate cortex. Moreover, in the region adjacent to the medial
> prefrontal cortex, both higher fractional anisotropy values and greater
> cortical thickness were observed.

I don't think a non-professional could have any idea what this passage
actually means, without knowing what each above-mentioned brain area is
actually responsible for. Apparently some areas got thicker while some others
got thinner. Is it unconditionally a good thing?

~~~
jumpi
can't explain, but I can point to the discussion section of that paper, where
that sentence is expanded and some of the mentioned cortexes (cortices? I
don't know) are associated with presumed body/mental functions.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Variously I've heard those who work on brains (physically and mentally) say
that locating function in a particular area is akin to Phrenology and has no
place in modern scientific understanding of the brain. As an outsider that
seemed wrong as brain functions are always described in pop science as being
located strongly, but presumably the individual brain's adaptations make this
something that can't be generalised too broadly?

~~~
en-us
The left brain / right brain thing is wrong, but different functions of the
brain are definitely localized. This is seen in studies of people with unusual
brain damage, and sometimes when sticking an electrode in a certain part of
the brain has an effect.

------
thegabez
Anyone else feel like meditation puts them back into the headspace they were
when a child pre-k ish. Most notably right before I fell asleep as a child I
remember being so relaxed and calm. I'm not sure when I lost that feeling but
meditation brings it back for some fleeting moments.

------
shekharshan
I don’t know whether the meditators used in this study were training under
Buddhist methods or something else.

Buddhist teaching focuses on three aspects: sila (morality, but not in
Abrahimic sense), samadhi (concentration), and panna (wisdom).

Each of these form a feedback loop into each other. Meditation is just one
third of that. Meditation without morality and wisdom can turn you into a
psychopath. You cannot understand or study meditation without understanding
morality and wisdom.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Aside:

>sila (morality, but not in Abrahimic sense) //

Would you care to expand on that, specifically the "not in [the] Abrahimic
sense" part. I'm not particularly familiar with Buddhist teaching of what
morality is but it sounds from wikipedia as if there is a large overlap in
form to Abrahamic teaching.

What would you say are the main differences?

~~~
shekharshan
Different as in the reason for morality. Why is morality important? It is not
because a soul will be judged for violating 'thou shall' commandments. It is
explained more in terms of Karma, the intentions your mind generates (karma)
will be the forerunner to future states of your mind. Think of it in terms of
causality in the context of plasticity of your mind. Your mind becomes
conditioned by intentions it generates. The intention for greed will lead to a
more greedy future state of the mind. Here is a short explanation of 'sila'
(morality)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VBbQvM4CBY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VBbQvM4CBY)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Thanks for the link, I'll check it later.

Looking at Wikipedia though: Karma, 5-precepts, sounds the opposite of what
you're saying.

Also, fwiw, the Mosaic "ten commandments" are supposedly "thou shalt not"
rather than "you must not": ie "if you walk closely with God you won't find
yourself doing these things". The Hebrew is _hayah_ in Exodus 20, so like "it
will come to pass that you won't murder".

The idea in Christian terms, further expanded in the New Testament, becomes
that your mind should be "renewed" leading to not, eg, being greedy.

------
crispinb
The title is, to put it mildly, overblown. It's a comparative study of two
small meditating & non-meditating populations, with no attempt to investigate
causality. As usual with studies of this type, there's a disclaimer to that
effect in the Discussion, essentially contradicting the paragraphs it follows.

What's more, it's not even a study of 'meditation' per se, but of one little-
known practice:

> The recruited meditation practitioners were individuals trained with BWV, a
> meditation practice that combines ancient Eastern philosophy with modern
> scientific methods to elevate human awareness

So at most this shows some small brain structure differences between two non-
randomly-selected populations. Despite a heroic attempt (figure 3) it doesn't
even find a dose response of note.

~~~
themodelplumber
Oh no. Is it a BWV promotion attempt of some sort? Or calculated to prop up
the commercial promotion of the activity? That would be disappointing...

~~~
monkeycantype
The authors are associated with the Korea Institute of Brain Science. (Hover
over their names in the paper) Ilchi Lee is the president of the institute and
the owner of 'Brain Wave Vibration'
[http://www.brainkibs.org/About/Greeting.asp](http://www.brainkibs.org/About/Greeting.asp)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_%26_Brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_%26_Brain)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilchi_Lee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilchi_Lee)

~~~
themodelplumber
Thanks for the info...that seems pretty disappointing. No conflicts of
interest? I would say the idea has little validity on its face.

~~~
crispinb
Well you can also just read the paper yourself in 10 minutes and see that it's
not up to much. It still wouldn't be up to much even if all the authors were
the squeakiest of clean Nobel Prize winners.

------
SirensOfTitan
One book I’d heavily recommend on meditation is Daniel Ingram’s amazing
Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. He really cuts through the fluff
and gets to the core of how meditation taken to mastery changes how things are
perceived. It’s an absolute tome but so worth it.

~~~
agota
Is it written from a Buddhist perspective or from a secular perspective?

~~~
abhinavsharma
Not sure about MCTB but TMI was written after this and is a well regarded
secular resource [https://deconstructingyourself.com/best-meditation-
books-201...](https://deconstructingyourself.com/best-meditation-
books-2019.html)

------
ericsoderstrom
Any memory you form, skill you learn or experience you have will change the
structure of the brain. Changing structure isn’t in itself a good thing.

~~~
frereubu
They're not claiming otherwise. Last sentence of the abstract: "Our findings
suggest that long-term meditators have structural differences in both gray and
white matter." They also talk about _where_ in the brain there are structural
changes and what kind of changes they are. Your comment reads like a criticism
of some kind, but it would only be valid if the article was just the title and
nothing else.

~~~
ericsoderstrom
My comment wasn't meant as a criticism of the article. The authors are careful
in the claims they make. My point is that they are for the most part
uninteresting claims. And articles like this are shared predominately because
"changing brain structure" is mistakenly read as "provably does something good
for your brain."

------
thoughtpalette
There's a new show based on the Netflix "Explained" series that's "The Mind".
They have a great episode on meditation and go into studies involving monks,
etc. Highly recommend if you're curious about meditation.

~~~
abhinavsharma
+1. This episode is a great 20 minute primer on mindfulness meditation
[https://www.netflix.com/watch/81062191](https://www.netflix.com/watch/81062191)

------
ninkendo
Are there any apps out there that can help get me into meditation, which don’t
require any of my personal information?

I almost tried headspace, but the first thing it did was make me create an
account, so I deleted it. I’m willing to pay money, but I don’t want a
continuing relationship with a meditation app.

Edit: and I just tried calm, and same thing. Doesn’t let you do anything until
you create an account with them. Why does a meditation app need an account?
Why does it need to be some VC funded growth hacking startup nonsense? Can’t I
just buy a thing and use it?

~~~
caltrain
What you are asking for is a timer. Not an app. [https://www.amazon.com/Uigos-
Digital-Kitchen-Magnetic-Backin...](https://www.amazon.com/Uigos-Digital-
Kitchen-Magnetic-Backing/dp/B01L8XF7AK)

~~~
ninkendo
I mean sure, but I was hoping for something that could guide me through it for
the first few sessions at least.

I suppose I could just listen to a guided meditation album, but why is it so
rare for there to be an app that doesn’t need you to sign up and give them
your personal information?

~~~
qwerty456127
> I mean sure, but I was hoping for something that could guide me through it
> for the first few sessions at least.

Try Muse. It's a hardware EEG headset + 2 apps: one for pure EEG monitoring
and recording and one for guided meditations.

Seeing an objective confirmation of the fact you actually are doing something
and progress helps a lot. Being able to influence the plot on the screen with
your will alone is an awesome experience too.

> why is it so rare for there to be an app that doesn’t need you to sign up
> and give them your personal information?

That's sad indeed. If you are afraid somebody can misuse this data - just go
to YouTube. There are enough of great buddhist teachers (e.g. Tenzin Wangyal
Rinpoche) who explain everything and guide you through meditations there.

------
cryptozeus
Meditation is great but lately I have been thinking that it is a great fix for
the side effects of the original issue. If you have stress in your life then
meditation can help reduce that but it will by no means fix the original
issue.

~~~
joncrane
Well it can't hurt.

Making me better at dealing with stress is a win.

Giving me enough space so that I can recognize the source of the stress is the
next win. Having the space to determine the best next course of action is the
next win after that. This usually involves consulting with others. Finally,
having that little oomph to put in the work to make the change is the big
tipping point.

But it's totally worth it even if all you get the the first win.

------
bane
Not a brain surgeon here...some of the comments appear to just assume that
whatever this means it must be good. Is it? Or are long term meditators doing
irreparable brain damage to themselves? My gut feeling is that meditation will
strengthen portions of the brain that control impulses and emotions, but I
don't know enough about the brain anatomy referenced here to understand what's
going on.

~~~
taneq
You'll see this on HN every time meditation comes up. Apparently a fair
proportion of posters here are convinced that meditation is self-evidently and
infallibly beneficial.

~~~
emptysongglass
Rather than driving by with some shade, you could see for yourself. It is
self-evidently beneficial but that requires putting the "self" in the self-
evidently. This casual scorn does nothing good for anyone least of all you.

~~~
taneq
I feel like you're making my point here.

------
abhinavsharma
Some resources on meditation that the HN community might find helpful,
generally ones with a scientific, skeptical and secular perspective.

Apps

Meditation is somewhat inherently incompatible with the late stage venture
funded scale based defensibility model of doing business. You actually become
less dependent on paid resources as you advance in the skill. For this reason
I think the mainstream apps like Calm and Headspace really help in the
beginning but plateau you at a level you will continue paying at. That said,
don't let this stop you from using what works for you.

\- My favorite for getting started was 10% Happier. The format is an interview
between a skeptic and a usually well trained meditation teacher, usually a
founder of the IMS, which started the whole Buddhism in the West movement.
Same business model as Calm and Headspace so some of the same problems. [1]

\- Once past a threshold, most meditators use Insight Timer. They are a much
leaner operation and the business model is designed to avoid the pitfalls of
having to scale to recoup heavy investment.

Books

This list. Everything in here is generally high signal/noise ratio, and very
little that you have to take on faith.
[https://deconstructingyourself.com/best-meditation-
books-201...](https://deconstructingyourself.com/best-meditation-
books-2019.html)

Tools

I found that wiring myself up to a low-price EEG and looking at the raw data
over a few months was a good way to convince myself all of this works. I use
Muse but not their own app, someone out there built an app to chart the raw
data called Muse Monitor that's much better.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX-4rpCegjk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX-4rpCegjk)

Places (mostly aware of US only)

Insight Meditation Society (MA) and Spirit Rock (CA) are mindfulness
meditation centers that are a good place to start. If you want something
lower-priced Dhamma.org is a much-lower-price (both are donation based but the
suggested range varies), worldwide set of spaces but the teachers are less
adapted to a western context.

[1] [https://www.tenpercent.com/](https://www.tenpercent.com/) [2]
[https://insighttimer.com/blog/something-magical-is-
happening...](https://insighttimer.com/blog/something-magical-is-happening-in-
the-meditation-space/)

~~~
egypturnash
“Once past a threshold, most meditators use Insight Timer”

What is this threshold?

I’ve been meditating regularly for this whole year and I just use the standard
iOS timer with one of the gentler alarms.

~~~
mcculley
I was using the standard iOS timer for a long time. I didn't like the noise
knocking me out of my session. I built an app
([https://quantifiedsit.com](https://quantifiedsit.com)) that gently taps me
on the wrist using the Apple Watch at the end of my planned session. That way
I don't have to stop the timer.

~~~
egypturnash
Nice if you’re s smart watch sort of person, I guess?

~~~
mcculley
I wouldn’t suggest that anybody needs a smart watch in order to meditate. I
get a lot of value out of it myself. I enjoy keeping metrics such as heart
rate and using reminders and tracking the time I’ve spent meditating. Your
mileage may vary.

------
natmaka
As the study points it out ("cross-sectional/longitudinal design") there may
be a fundamental flaw in any conclusion one may draw from it: which part of
any difference between observed populations is a "cause" (leading the subject
to meditate), and which is an effect of it?

To illustrate the point let's say (as a maybe slightly contrived hypothesis)
that meditation is interesting for you, or maybe even that you can only
tolerate practicing it seriously, _iff_ (if and only if) your brain has the
adequate structure, or is predisposed to evolve towards it.

------
igammarays
Better emotional regulation may be a clear positive, but it’s not without it’s
isolated effects. I, for one, found it more difficult casually socialize due
to my calmer demeanour and non-engagement in risky behaviours like late
nighters or excessive drinking. I’m not just saying that being “too
responsible” can affect your social life, but it can also affect your ability
to connect with “common folks” due to your (perceived?) existence on another
plane of being.

~~~
mordechai9000
I dislike the idea that not engaging in risky drinking somehow cripples your
social life. I think there are opportunities for much more healthy and
meaningful socialization when it isn't centered around alcohol and late nights
on the bar scene. And you can meet a wider range of people, and engage in
varied and interesting activities. I suppose you are less likely to find
casual hookups, but there's an app for that now, anyway.

------
hanniabu
Anybody have any links for legit on meditating? All I ever find are bogus
nonsensical ones that say you need to light candles and get into some funky
position and whatnot.

~~~
ta1234567890
Try the app HeadSpace. Super easy to use and very clear instructions. No
candles or funky positions.

Also, I would say, the most important thing about meditation is not the
technique but the habit.

There must be over a hundred or a thousand different meditation techniques,
but if you don't practice them regularly, they are all worthless.

The most simple one for my taste: sit down (whichever way you want, ideally in
a quite place where you won't get disturbed), close your eyes and count your
breath from 1 to 10; once you reach 10, start over from 1. If you get lost (I
know, sounds impossible, but it happens a lot), start over from 1.

~~~
wallace_f
>count your breath from 1 to 10; once you reach 10, start over from 1

Thank you for this. I have been trying to count to 10 without any other
thoughts entering my mind. Some reflections:

1\. I can't get to 10. I always start thinking of something and my minf
wanders on about that.

2\. How desperate, addicted my mind, body has become for constant stimulation
and gratification. It always wants to make the pain insidd myself go away

3\. How extremely tired and burned out my mind is.

Unfortunately I have particularly hard traumas and hate in my life to deal
with, which might make my experience unique. But after just 20 minutes of
trying this it has helped me. I have tried meditation before but this method
made it a new experience for me.

Maybe this last part sounds unusual, but I just focus on letting the oxygen
absorb into my brain without using it back up. And also trying to get outside
of my mind -- to kind of transcend it and get into third person. I know I am
explaining nothing more than feelings and psychological phenomena, but in
there is some kind of truths that I dont know how better to describe at the
momdent.

~~~
ta1234567890
Counting breaths from 1 to 10 is not that easy, especially if you are tired or
burned out. Personally, how far I can get from 1 to 10 is a pretty good
measure of how exhausted or how good/bad I'm feeling at that moment.

> Maybe this last part sounds unusual, but I just focus on letting the oxygen
> absorb into my brain without using it back up. And also trying to get
> outside of my mind -- to kind of transcend it and get into third person. I
> know I am explaining nothing more than feelings and psychological phenomena,
> but in there is some kind of truths that I dont know how better to describe
> at the moment

That's great! One of the main goals of meditation practice is being present.
When we are present, we start perceiving the stuff that is always there but we
ignore.

The things that you describe are important, I'd encourage you to keep
exploring them. Everyone's journey is unique.

------
exdkv
My personal issue with meditation is inability to be non-judjemental. I am not
aware of the variety of meditation techniques, the only few that I've tried
were simple body scan and focusing on breath. The common advice from all of
the guides that I've followed so far was 'concentrate on a thing (breath or
body scan or whatever) and if your focus has switched to some arbitraty not-
connected thing, just recognize that and move your focus back, not blaming or
judging yourself for losing focus'. This last 'not blaming or judging' is a
real problem for me. I just cannot stop thinking of myself like 'hey, you've
failed to keep focus again, shame on you'. As a result, to the end of the
session I feel even more nervous, distracted and generally worse that it was
before the session. This used to be different for me a number of years ago,
when I've just started trying to meditate. I remember that my first attempts
really allowed me to relax and stay away from the daily stress. But this first
streak lasted not more than a month, and the latter ones worked worse with
every other try. Have anyone ever felt the same? What would be a good solution
for this problem?

~~~
awgm
Find a good teacher

------
tasty_freeze
I've often read of the benefits of meditation, and I don't doubt many find it
helpful.

But do the benefits apply to people who are naturally calm and not tense? An
often a cited benefit is feeling calm and being able to let go of tension and
anxiety, and having a clarity of thought. But I rarely feel tense/anxious so
the investment of time has never been attractive to me.

~~~
nprateem
"Just relax". For me, this was the single most useless piece of meditative
advice I ever heard, and everyone parrots it. I thought I _was_ relaxed. But
then periodically over time I'd discover "oh, my neck has just relaxed", "oh,
my breathing diaphragm has relaxed", etc. Then I'd fight to recreate the
relaxation in another session and had literally no idea how to relax before
meditating to counter the stresses of daily life. I tried body scans,
alternately tensing and relaxing muscle groups - nothing worked for me.

Having recently been able to become truly, deeply relaxed by actually learning
how to breathe correctly (right into the pelvic floor) it's miles away from
just not feeling obviously tense in my daily life. My breathing rate drops to
a crawl (I inhale, hold without strain for around 2 minutes then exhale and
naturally hold air outside for a minute or two). The whole body tingles with
relaxation. The effects are truly noticable.

> But do the benefits apply to people who are naturally calm and not tense?

As a Type B personality myself, I would say "definitely".

------
stochastic_monk
[2013]

~~~
Bootwizard
Does that really matter? People have been meditating for thousands of years so
6 years is a very recent study.

~~~
cbanek
It's just standard HN policy to let people know it's not exactly new (but
still interesting), and many people, myself included, sometimes miss publish
dates. So anything that isn't this year gets the year in the title.

~~~
stochastic_monk
Otherwise, I’m inclined to believe that this is new because this is “Hacker
News”.

------
doubleunplussed
For anyone looking for a meditation app, Sam Harris's "Waking up" app may
frame things in a way more palatable to the average HN reader. No woo,
attempts to explain what's actually going on, clear demarcation between
helpful cues vs facts vs opinions. Other guided meditation instructors blur
these things a bit more liberally, and that can be distracting for some people
(including me).

------
dartdartdart
What's HN favorite guide get started with meditation?

~~~
avtar
The Mind Illuminated is a fairly comprehensive one.

~~~
nprateem
I must say I struggled with this. It seemed like it should have been a good
book, but I got lost in its various stages and its volume. I've posted my
favourite meditation book elsewhere. It just cuts straight through to the
core, but perhaps it just seems that way given my own experience. YMMV.

------
nicodds
It seems like the story of the chicken or the egg: do these differences come
from meditation or are they the reason that push people towards meditation?

------
logicprog
I don't want to come off the wrong way here, and if meditation helps you
absolutely totally complete YES THATS GREAT! I'm all for self improvement. But
when everyone lists all the benefits of it, I'm not sure I understand how it
would benefit me in particular. Let me explain.

Here on this page, so far as I can tell, the benefits of meditation are:

\- focused on the now. Less worried about past/future \- less long-term,
reason-clouding emotions \- more immediate focus \- less "head voices"

I'll start from the first one in explaining my question.

I'm very focused on the now already, it's as simple as that. I've had a lot of
people in my life, with all kinds of different experiences with me, notice
that I'm very calm and very unstressed. This is, simply, because I go through
what's happening right now, deal with it, and move on. I don't dwell on what
happened in the past unless there's something really important to be learned
there, and I don't worry about the future beyond keeping my options open (try
not to burn Bridges, etc). This has been a way of life for me, and it's
already very calming and rewarding without the need for wasting huge chunks of
my day.

My emotions are always extremely short. I can get angry and sad and what have
you, but to this day, I've never once in my life been any one emotion for more
than five minutes. Of course, I've still acted on some of them, for instance
if someone betrays me I won't be mad at them at all in five minutes, but I'll
still be wary. I've never been able to stay in any one particular emotional
mode, even if I try to psyche myself into it. I just get bored.

As for focus, for as long as I can remember I've been able to put myself in a
hyper-focus mode where all other thoughts, about anything else (including
bodily functions) just go away; where external distractions such as noise just
don't even register anymore. The longest I've been able to do this is eight
hours, where I sat down to work on something and didn't speak or eat or go to
the bathroom until I was done, in a noisy crowded room, completely unbothered.
This is something people seem to describe as a superpower you gain after
meditation but I've never meditated once in my life.

As far as the "voices in the head" thing goes, I hear this from people a lot,
where they describe their internal experience as if they have someone else
second guessing them or pointing things out, like a Freudian super-ego given
its own internal dialogue. In all honesty, I've never experienced this. I
don't really understand what people are talking about when they describe this.

So I guess my question is, why should _I_ , specifically, meditate? It sounds
cool, I'd be willing to try. Are there any other benefits?

Also; what the heck are the head voices people talk about?

~~~
sdfin
I guess the "head voices" mentioned in this context are simply thoughts,
judgements, and different ideas that pop as if "automatically" into people's
minds.

I'm somehow similar to how you describe yourself but I still practice
meditation. I think that you might discover some subtle feelings or some
tensions in your body if you do, even if you are naturally quite calm and
focused.

You might try meditating just once, as an experiment, and see if you find it
helpful or not. To do it you simply have to watch what appears in your
consciousness, without doing anything about it. You see an emotion, you let it
be there without trying to analyze it, hold it, or reject it. You see thoughts
and you do the same. And the same about physical sensations. If you notice
that you got caught following a certain chain of thoughts, you notice it and
go back to the watching. You might start practicing for 20 or 30 minutes.

~~~
logicprog
I'll try that then. It sounds interesting. I think my biggest fear is that I
wouldn't be doing it right and wouldn't get the benefits, but it's not like it
hurts to try!

~~~
sdfin
If you wish to share it, I'd find it interesting to know how it went. About
the fear and thoughts of not doing it right, they are more stuff to watch and
do nothing about.

I forgot to mention in the instructions only one thing: do it in a sitting
position. It's easy to fall asleep if you try to practice it lying in bed.

~~~
nprateem
I've had some of my most profound meditative experiences lying in bed...

------
codr7
The real benefit of meditation from my perspective is proving to yourself that
you're not the voices in your head. I mean, you can't be; since you're
obviously capable of observing them from the outside while they go on with
their business. What takes practice is staying aware and not feeding them
energy by identifying.

Once the spell is broken, the conserved energy and improved focus and control
changes everything.

The mind is indeed a wonderful servant but a terrible master.

~~~
c22
This is interesting to me because I don't meditate, but I also don't have
"voices in my head" most of the time. There is a "voice" that is present while
I am reading and I can summon it in order to work through something I want to
say or write, also sometimes I "play music" in my head where the vocals are
usually in the voice of the artist. By and large, though, my mind is usually
"silent". Do most people hear voices all the time? Most of the time? I was
under the impression hearing voices a lot was associated with psychosis and
not the default way brains work.

~~~
sdfin
I guess that what "hearing voices" was pointing at in this case were thoughts
and thinking.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Presumably those who meditate to "quiet their minds" are also seeking to drive
out remembrance of a scent or feeling, innate thought-feelings (like confusion
that's internal to the brain), imagery, and all the other ponderable facets
the brain creates?

Why not say "seeing movies" or "feeling emotions" or "imagining smells" or
whatever form a specific thought might take though? Seems weird to only
consider vocal thoughts.

There are other aspects to thoughts too, like links and non-picturable things
that one seems to grasp but aren't present in a sense-based way -- for example
a "hypercube that smells of snozzberries", you can't see it, it's not making a
sound that you've heard before, the smell is not something you know, etc., but
to some extent you still behold it.

------
insanitywanted
TLDR?

~~~
esquire_900
"Our findings suggest that long-term meditators have structural differences in
both gray and white matter."

------
visarga
What I would like to see in a study is the effect of meditation practice. Are
meditators living longer, accomplishing more, being happier?

I have seen many long term meditators and been one for 20 years and am not
convinced they are more fit for life. Instead of developing their lives and
careers they developed their practice and missed out on opportunities. Most of
them are alone at 45-50 y.o. with a lousy job, living frugally. What was the
benefit?

If meditation was such an advantage then societies where this is a traditional
practice should be more developed and happier, but this doesn't strike me as
being true. Being too detached and contemplative can have downsides. Is
hacking your brain to feel ecstatic useful for life, or just a shortcut to
rewards, like drugs?

~~~
starpilot
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood,
carry water.

