

Ask HN: Does meditation work to cultivate genuine Happiness? - shire

Is there science or research behind it?
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WorldCitizen
Just see it as a time to "declutter" your brain. Especially working in
programming it's been so helpful and basically it will free up new space for
inspiration / thoughts / ideas / whatever.

Don't worry about science behind it. Take some good headphones, listen to
nature sounds and just try to wind down. There is no magic behind it, you can
try hypnosis on YouTube. It is just guiding you to focus on simple things and
your brain will relax. I like to use Thunderspace app or youtube hypnosis or
just every hour programming I have 5 minutes sitting outside doing nothing.

That's what meditation means to me, doing nothing :)

So long answer cut short.

If you have your space to relax, wind down the mind then you will naturally be
more happy and more productive and inspired.

Like a memory clean

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rudimental
There's a lot of science or research related to meditation. I like mindfulness
meditation. Meditation definitely seems to reduce negative emotions, and also
cultivate positive ones (or at least make space for them).

"Mindfulness meditation programs improved multiple dimensions of negative
affect, including anxiety, depression, and perceived stress/general distress
... the effects were significant for anxiety and marginally significant for
depression at the end of treatment, and these effects continued to be
significant at 3-6 months for both anxiety and depression"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness_(psychology)#Overal...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness_\(psychology\)#Overall_findings)

"[Loving-kindness] meditation practice produced increases over time in daily
experiences of positive emotions, which, in turn, produced increases in a wide
range of personal resources (e.g., increased mindfulness, purpose in life,
social support, decreased illness symptoms)."

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3156028/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3156028/)

A recent meta-analysis:

[http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=18097...](http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1809754)

Meditation is pretty easy, and definitely cheap- definitely worth trying
yourself :)

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percept
Have you tried it? (In the Pali canon of Buddhism, different levels are
referred to as "jhānas.")

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ilyaeck
Rather, it works to minimize unhappiness.

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nodata
Work for what? and which kind of meditation?

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shire
changed the title. I'm new to idea just been hearing a lot about it and how it
can change the brain to become happier.

