
100 Days of Meditation - duncancarroll
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1umv8MDX3ahdybOV0iis31t34Nw0weoAOnMJ8Fqogy5o/edit
======
kozikow
If you don't have access to meditation center book "Mindfulness in plain
english" seems like not newagey introduction to the subject. It describes
Vipassana. It's almost like Zazen, but slightly different. In my understanding
Zazen is Mahayana buddhism version of Vipassana, which comes from Theravada
buddhism, but I am just a begginer so I can be horribly wrong.

I started meditating recently after reading MIPE. I'll try to find a teacher
as soon as I can. What got hooked me up was some research that it improves
cognitive performance:
[http://www.gwern.net/docs/dnb/2010-zeidan.pdf](http://www.gwern.net/docs/dnb/2010-zeidan.pdf)
. There's some evidence that long term meditation changes structure of the
brain and improves mood and attention outside of meditation practice:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_activity_and_meditation#C...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_activity_and_meditation#Changes_in_brain_due_to_prolonged_practice_of_meditation)
. This post seems like good encouragement as well:
[http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38947/is-
prac...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38947/is-practicing-
meditation-a-good-or-bad-thing-for-programmers) .

One thing which I notice the most is increased ability to deal with
distractions and staying focused on boring subjects . It is essentially what
one practices during meditation. Dealing with distractions is very important
skill for programmer: [http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-
interrupted/](http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/) .
What's more it's kind of skill, that is hard to develop without active
practice. I can't think of better way of developing it than meditation.

~~~
greenyoda
"Mindfulness in Plain English" is available on-line here:

[http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html](http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html)

(Scroll down for the on-line version.)

------
loceng
Good stuff. Sitting still for 60-90 minutes has the purpose of eliminating the
distractions from paying attention to your body. This practice also has the
benefit of hopefully allowing the ego to settle some, and perhaps even
allowing the baseline level that the ego is engaged to be less - or start
towards that path anyhow. As you said, stress still maintains the same - it
actually will feel potentially even more vivid, though that is likely counter-
acted with the ability to process things easier. Learning other things, and
doing deeper guided meditations and breath work, like yoga nidra - is a good
way to lessen that. Physical movement, asanas - or yoga as a whole, meditation
being a part of yoga - is a good way to help physically-caused stress and
baseline stress reduce; There's a biofeedback mechanism: tight muscles tells
your mind you're stressed, you being stressed tells your muscles to be tight.
"Nice" little loop there.

~~~
duncancarroll
Thanks--I will try out Yoga; other people have also told me that it has a
similar effect.

~~~
funkjunky
my thoughts as a yoga practitioner: Yoga is, first and foremost, a meditative
practice. What separates it from sitting meditation is that the "hack" it
employs not only combines breath awareness, but an ACTIVE breath/body/mind
awareness. By moving through asanas, still using the breath as the "guide",
one's awareness becomes on breath, on muscle, on bone, on gravity, balance,
and all the subtleties of the mind and body's reactions. For example, one
begins to "feel" what it is like for the subconscious to instinctively tighten
muscles under slight distress, and learn how to gain increasing control over
these subconscious processes as one's awareness becomes ever more focused and
relaxed. Another example is one learns to feel "losing their breath" when they
have lost attention to it and their body, and are stressing themselves out.

An interesting TED talk describes the seat of awareness as a primitive network
of neurons in the brainstem and body, the network that gives one a sense of "I
am" and experiences the rest of the neurological processes.
[http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/70236306?strkid=1954165956...](http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/70236306?strkid=1954165956_0_0&trkid=222336&movieid=70236306)

If true, meditation and yoga can be thought of as techniques that
progressively still the later evolved "higher" thought processes, and turns
one's awareness back into the experiential parts of the mind. Yoga is simply a
very active and tactile meditation hack, that provides strong stimulation
responses through the nerve network that one is training to become more
actively connected.

------
Su-Shee
For those interested in the science/medical side of things:

* "Zen and the Brain" (written by a meditation practising neurologist)

* "The Buddha Brain" (about the neurological/physiological background of a couple of buddhist principles)

------
tehwalrus
In keeping with others who are mentioning / linking to books about non-new-age
meditation, try the book by the Psychologists in the mindfulness movement:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindfulness-practical-guide-
finding-...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindfulness-practical-guide-finding-
frantic/dp/074995308X) (Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a
frantic world, Prof Mark Williams and Dr Danny Penman)

It's a great book that leads you through the first 8 weeks of meditating, and
contains meditation aid audio clips for various scenarios. The most useful
I've found is the 3 minute "breathing space" meditation, particularly for that
noisy bus - you need good noise excluding ear buds though.

If you don't like the speaking audio, and/or you've practiced enough not to
need the prompts, you should check out Simply Noise:

[http://simplynoise.com/](http://simplynoise.com/) << they also have apps for
phones.

I've found it equally helpful for rendering words unintelligible, which makes
mindful awareness much easier.

------
summerdown2
It certainly seems like you got a lot out of meditation. My own practice is
similar (20 mins most days for a few years and 130 days consecutively now),
but I think in a different Zen tradition.

I've found in practice that I have most success when I treated emotional highs
and lows as irrelevant. The books I've read all suggest that the point is to
focus on ordinary life, not search for ever deeper trance states, and my
experience has been that trance states are transient while ordinary life goes
on always. Taking my meditation in that direction has tended to make it
gentler, lower-impact, but longer-lasting. At least it feels that way.

If you ever meditate differently, it would be interesting to see you contrast
any new effects with the ones you've already experienced.

I found your essay fascinating, by the way, particularly your precision in
analysis. It's what I might call first-person science :)

------
ph4
I've been meditating 45 minutes per day for 4 years now, happy to answer any
questions.

~~~
crassT
2 questions if you don't mind.

Firstly, why do you think it's worth it and do you notice a substantial
difference in your life when you stop for whatever reason?

Secondly every time I read something like this, or talk to people that
meditate, it seems extremely unscientific and filled with subjective analysis.
Can you point me to something that would convince me that it has real world
benefits, past that of taking a nap, or stopping for 45 minutes to think about
your day/life.

~~~
funkjunky
try doing your own experiment and just do it, I'm pretty sure you can find 20
minutes a day to set aside for it. The first thing that you will notice is
that it is TOUGH, but after several weeks you'll start to gain moments of
clarity and eventually it will "click" and you'll get it. Or it wont, and you
can just move on

~~~
crassT
Actually since this thread I've been doing 30-45 minutes a day as an
experiment. I have done meditation before alone and with a group, but never to
this extent. While it's far too early to comment on how it's going without
bias, I can say I have noticed several personal improvements that I believe I
can attribute to the meditation. These mostly stem from applying mindfulness
to my everyday life, which seems to be different to your experiences, but then
again it has only been 2 weeks.

So far I find it more than worth the time investment, and at this point the 45
minutes flys by.

------
nrs26
Thank you for putting this together and sharing it. I've been flirting with
the idea of meditating more seriously for the last few years, and I always
find myself making excuses not to continue with it. A 50 or 100 day challenge
seems like a manageable experiment, and a better way of deciding if it's
worthwhile to continue.

I have a question. Could you explain "The Deep" in a little bit more detail?
What happens to your body and your mind? What is going through your head?

~~~
duncancarroll
Thanks; feel free to join the group and start posting.

The Deep is sort of a 2nd plateau, the first being basically just an awareness
of your mind being (very) noticeably stiller, ie "Hey, my thoughts have
stopped--cool." The 1st plateau would occur usually at the 30 minute mark.

The Deep would occur a bit after that, usually at the 45-60 minute mark,
occasionally sooner, and it is like the 1st plateau, only much more so--almost
like if you were actually scuba diving and you had gone deep enough into the
water that you could just barely see the light of the sun above you. The first
plateau is characterized by stillness, but The Deep is a profound stillness,
stillness to the 2nd power. It struck me, because I realized I had never
experienced a stillness like this before in my life.

Body and mind are secondary and not thought of--in fact nothing whatsoever is
going through my head, except the awareness of the stillness and calm.
Breathing is barely perceptible, heartbeat not felt. It is a significantly
refreshing experience.

------
enkephalin
when i see the words 'challenge' and 'meditation' being used in the same
sentence, an alarm goes of in my head. i'm too tired to go into details right
now, but if you're interested in where i'm coming from, or in meditation in
general, i highly recommend giving this book a read:

[http://www.amazon.com/Meditation-Without-Gurus-Clark-
Strand/...](http://www.amazon.com/Meditation-Without-Gurus-Clark-
Strand/dp/1893361934)

the first review sums things up nicely:

 _Clark Strand cuts right to the heart of meditation, without dogma, gurus,
religion, beliefs, or any of the other gunk that gets in the way of sincere
and honest practice. In a beautiful style reminiscent of Thich Nhat Hanh,
Strand has created the ideal meditation companion and guide. While Strand is
probably among the few teachers who would never invite a following, he most
certainly deserves one. If you read no other book on meditation, read this
one. If you have other books on meditation, put them on the back shelf and
read this one. If you have never meditated before and want a book to teach you
how, read this one. This is the only meditation guide you will ever need. It
is superb!_

~~~
duncancarroll
I know what you mean. I probably should have called it a "personal challenge."

------
scrrr
I was in SE-Asia and went to a few temples to meditate. One time I reached
that deep state very quickly. I suppose it had to do with the sound of falling
water nearby.. If you ever go to a Buddhist country I suggest you visit a
course. It's quite cool. There was one teacher that has shown us how to
meditate while walking. It was surprisingly good and I didn't walk into any
walls or pillars while doing it.. ;)

~~~
duncancarroll
It's interesting that the environment you're in could have an effect on how
long it takes to get to The Deep; I believe it.

Meditating while walking sounds interesting but it also seems like it could be
quite hard to control heart rate. Of course, maybe that's not as big of an
issue as I make it out to be. In any case I'll have to try it sometime. Do you
have a link to any further source of information about it?

~~~
vidarh
Why would you want to control heart rate?

If you are so out of shape that the walking causes you discomfort, then walk
slower. Same if you feel your heart rate is too quick to allow you to stay
calm.

Other than than that, there's no reason to worry about heart rate.

~~~
duncancarroll
Only because it seemed to be closely tied to entering The Deep. But of course,
it's possible that reduced heartrate is an effect rather than a cause of the
meditative state, so I'll certainly try it out.

------
duncancarroll
Also, for anyone who's interested, we'll be doing a second "100-day challenge"
over in /r/meditation beginning January 1:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/1swxn2/the_secon...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/1swxn2/the_second_annual_rmeditation_100day_meditation/)

------
holyjaw
Very interesting read. I practiced meditation for a couple of months, but only
for 15-30 minutes a day. I haven't researched too much, but the idea of "The
Deep" as you describe makes the challenge seem worthy. Side question: how did
your wife feel about you taking on a lengthy challenge that forced celibacy?

~~~
duncancarroll
Thank you. Getting to The Deep made a big difference, but it took around 30
days before I got there.

My wife was remarkably cool about it, but of course, if you read the end of
the article, you can see that I didn't quite make it all the way. =) What she
didn't like so much, was that between 6-7pm I was not available to help out
with making dinner.

~~~
vidarh
"The Deep" sounds to me like the first or second Jhana from your description.
But note that there are also a number of blissfull states that are generally
seen as you being "sidetracked". If your goal is the bliss, then that is of
course fine. If your goal is continuing to deeper meditation states, it is not
a given that focusing on re-entering that state is a good idea.

As for your "forehead catching fire" that sounds like it could be related to
concept of the acquired sign or counter sign (basically "images", though they
need not be visual, that come to signal certain mental states), though for it
to persist outside of meditation sounds odd.

~~~
duncancarroll
The bliss seemed like a side-effect; it was nice but I wasn't trying to elicit
it as much as it was generated by the calm.

Yeah, the forehead-flame was/is really bizarre. I did some Google searches for
it and didn't find much of anything that didn't seem like pseudo-science (look
up "Ajna chakra" and you'll see what I mean...)

It's always hard to convey to people that it was very different from a mental
image / thought / feeling in that it actually feels tactile, in the same way
that if you had a rock in your shoe, you wouldn't confuse it for anything else
--I just don't know what this "rock" is made of; it could certainly be a
creation of my mind, but it doesn't present itself that way. It's easy to
ignore, so I ignore it.

~~~
Estragon
In certain forms of Theravadin practice, the bliss is the "engine" which
motivates the concentration on the target object. Fostering the bliss does
tend to make it much easier to settle down, particularly when the mind is
disturbed.

[http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/painhe...](http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/painhelp.html)

------
jds375
Interesting read. Based on the author's findings, I'm not sure if I could
justify it. I feel like there's probably something better I could do,
especially if the effects of meditation aren't as noticeable outside of your
meditation period as the author suggests. Still worth a shot at some point I
guess.

~~~
michaelochurch
_I feel like there 's probably something better I could do, especially if the
effects of meditation aren't as noticeable outside of your meditation period
as the author suggests._

Not to diminish the OP's accomplishment, but he only meditated for 100 days.
Even if you're as disciplined as he was, you're only scratching the surface at
3 months. If you want the perennial peace of a monk or a master, that takes
years. But it's about the process and the work as much as the result.

Most of us have decades of conditioning in a high-stress, competitive society
(and, if you believe in karma, possibly eons of difficult karma). We're also
evolved to survive in a much harsher environment than the one we're in now.
You're not going to undo all of that in 3 months, but you can make a
surprising amount of progress.

~~~
krsunny
To me, meditation seems like an entirely self serving activity. As an analogy
(and probably not a very good one) what if electrons began to meditate 60
minutes per day? They lose their charge and basically do nothing? Or what if
birds and bees began to meditate? I think the result of all that would be
pretty obvious.

~~~
michaelochurch
Your first error is assuming that meditation is "doing nothing". Meditation is
an attempt to get past the shallow chatter of mostly negative thoughts that
drains us, and closer to the deeper nature of mind.

Perhaps the electron, which fulfills its physical contract perfectly, is
already in a state of pure meditation. Who knows?

As for whether animals meditate and what would happen if they did, I have no
idea.

------
abhayv
Meditation is best learned with a good teacher. I highly recommend Bhante
Vimalaramsi at [http://www.dhammasukha.net/](http://www.dhammasukha.net/) I
recently did a 5 day retreat and it was life changing. He makes meditation
practical, fun and rewarding.

------
ollieglass
Interesting read, thanks. I'm curious about meditation not helping with
everyday stress, outside of your "force field" time. Do you have any thoughts
on why there wasn't a halo effect?

~~~
duncancarroll
It's hard to say--I definitely expected there to be more of an after-effect,
so it was a little disappointing to realize that that wasn't going to happen.
I think a lot of it has to do with the setting in which I live and work--big
cities simply have a lot of stressors in them: noise, crowds, cars, etc., that
are all triggers for me. At the time I was also managing a group of co-
workers, and the responsibilities that came with it also were stressful.

I think I would have been able to persist the state longer if I lived in a
suburb where I could avoid those things more readily.

------
duncancarroll
(Pardon the fact that it's a Google Doc; I haven't had time to write it into
HTML yet and the Export function is not quite cutting it.)

~~~
jwrobes
I've been practicing meditation for a long time off and on. I've gone months
with sitting every day. I've had stretches where I sat an hour a day. I've
participated in mediation retreats. One new concept that I'm trying to put in
place relates directly to the point about how just sitting every day doesn't
change the stress level at work. It's the idea of trying to break away the
practice of awareness from the cushion and spread it out during the day. It's
really simple, but I've found it very difficult to practice. It's 5 "moments"
a day you remember to "meditate." Basically this moments should lass from 15
seconds to a minute, and you just try and gain awareness of whatever is
present in that moment.

To me this could promise some powerful benefits, beyond just sitting every
day. But thus far, I've found it very hard to do this 5 times a day. Anyone
ever try this?

~~~
michaelochurch
_To me this could promise some powerful benefits, beyond just sitting every
day. But thus far, I 've found it very hard to do this 5 times a day. Anyone
ever try this?_

This sounds really interesting.

Something I'd like to strive for is more purity in experiences. What I mean is
that when I go swimming, I shouldn't be thinking about work. When I'm at work,
I shouldn't be thinking about my next swim.

I'm far from qualified to opine on this topic, but it seems to me that the
"most meditative" practice is to do whatever you're doing well, with intent,
and free of pollution from other influences, i.e. "when I sleep, I sleep; when
I eat, I eat".

The Deep (to me) is a lot like being in a coding flow, or that blissed-out
feeling you get an hour or two into a long bike ride or a swim.

~~~
jwrobes
Now to bounce off this. I think that there may actually be a difference
between what this practice can do for you and the experience of being in the
flow. However, I think they are closely related. My idea of what it means to
be the flow, you are, in a sense, not acting from your conscious "I" mind, but
just kind of acting without acting. This is the whole Taoist Wu-Wei concept.
But really, you are coming from the space from which thought arises, rather
than the thought itself.

So when you are in the flow with coding, swim, or bike ride, you are in the
midst of an action that granted you access to this state. But you did not
actually consciously enter this directly state by choice.

But the I think the trap can be that you can only access this when you are
doing things that lead to being in the flow. What about being able to enter
this state when you are really upset about something or when things are going
badly, or when you are bored, or when you are doing something compulsively.

The practice I believe is trying to access this state at random times of the
day, and especially in those times when you are not engaged in an activity
that lends itself to this awareness, but actually engaged in activities that
do the opposite (such as being annoyed at someone).

The idea is that you are building this muscle that allows you to access the
"flow" more and more and eventually maybe realize that in some way can always
access the space from which thought arises, because that space must always
exist.

But again, this is theory. Practice is hard. I'll take a moment now.

The concept for this came from this ebook. I've only skimmed it.

[http://www.greatfreedom.org/Gallery/ShortMoments.pdf](http://www.greatfreedom.org/Gallery/ShortMoments.pdf)

~~~
funkjunky
I believe the flow state is essentially an active meditation. One accesses it
by stilling the blah blah thought mind and ego enough to allow the
subconscious to freely flow into action. There are plenty of ways to do this,
in fact I've found boring repetition is great for it (I play piano). Above all
else though, meditation is probably the best practice, since that trains one
to be still enough to allow deeper parts of the mind to "flow" freer whilst
maintaining enough focus that one isn't derailed by every possible distraction
that could arise. And I also agree with you on the "muscle" training
throughout the day. This state is always available, and the trick to being a
baddass at life is to be able to find it NO MATTER WHAT else is going on. The
only way to train that is to do in distracting situations. This is why I like
yoga, because there's a bunch of other crap going on that I have to "overcome"
with focus and stillness of mind. Only then will the asana make sense and I'll
access that state, and that same training makes me better at it for rest of my
daily activities. Kind like how doing math also makes you good a solving
problems in general, or reading/writing literature makes you more emotionally
intelligent.

------
jamgraham
Thanks for the inspiration Duncan! - I've added this to my goals for 2014!

~~~
duncancarroll
Hey, thanks James! Maybe an Om-themed Top Coat is in order? =D

------
mobitar
Why did you stop meditating from April through December of 2013?

~~~
duncancarroll
I probably got a sit or two per month in after that, so I didn't stop
completely, but I slowed down mainly because I got a new job that I liked and
so I let myself get completely sucked into it and ended up working later
hours.

I also wanted to continue to be social and that meant going out and having a
beer every once in a while. Those two things really crowded out the 6-7pm time
slot that I had for sitting.

I wish it were easier for me to sit in the morning, but alas. I'm hoping to
restart the practice with the 2nd Annual /r/meditation sit this coming
January.

~~~
manmal
Have you considered using a daylight lamp in the morning (with about 10k lux)?
Looking into it should stop melatonin production and give you nice caffeine-
free mental kickstart. I use mine for 10-20 minutes every morning and I think
it has helped me staying off the caffeine (it even seems to increase my blood
pressure which is quite low without caffeine).

~~~
duncancarroll
Oh, I'd never heard of that--that sounds really intriguing, I'll definitely
give it a try. Thanks for the reccommendation!

