I don’t know if this has changed for younger generations, but a lot of people, particularly those in intellectual pursuits, suffer to one degree or another from thinking of themselves as a brain being carried around as a meat sack.
We are learning more about mind body connections and this is very not true (the ways the vagus nerve can totally fuck with your mental state is terrifying, and there are people with dysfunctions that are five times worse).
Any exercise where you think about your body as “you” helps with the dysphoria, and being integrated helps with a whole lot of other things.
Especially for men, who are conditioned to not give themselves permission to have feelings and sensations affect their behavior (and then surprise! Are affected anyway, with zero attempts at healthy coping skills).
The thing that made me transition from a mindset of “I have a body” to “I am a body”, was actually Zen meditation. This was surprising to me. Before I tried it, I thought of meditation as a purely mental thing, I didn’t expect that the first really noticeable effect of regular meditation would be a changed relationship to my body,
Much later I discovered contemporary dance, quit my phd in machine learning and became a professional dancer, which really deepened my body awareness and transformed my relationship to being a body even more.
I remember, in the beginning of my dance career, after a three month dance intensive I applied to a (Haskell) programming job again to finance my dance education and went to a computer science conference. It was a bit of surreal experience. The people at the conference were very nice and intellectually curious people and I liked them, but the contrast to the environment in dance communities was very strong. I felt like almost everybody there thought of them-self as a brain, piloting a body like a big mecha. In the dance environments, even during lunch breaks etc., it always felt like there was a lot of subtle awareness in everybody about their own body, the other bodies in the space, the distances and empty space between bodies, a non-verbal channel full of quiet energy and information. In the computer science conference this channel was just dead.
"The thing that made me transition from a mindset of “I have a body” to “I am a body”, was actually Zen meditation."
Checks username... yeah that checks out. ;)
Something that struck me years ago was in the documentary about Philip Glass - Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts. He did a weekly physical class that is meant to tie mind and body together (I forgot the name, I watched this like 15 years ago). As he said he did it for like 5 years and felt like he got nothing out of it but did it regardless, until one day it just all synced up and he 'got it'.
A similar thing happen with me over the years, the more I got out and moving, the less I found myself involved in the realms of high intellect. Not in an 'ignorance is bliss' kind of way, but not identifying with it as much. It went from "why dance, lift, walk etc - it achieves nothing" to, that is it. It is the flow of the world. It doesn't achieve anything because it doesn't have to, it is a happening, like all life and the universe itself is but an happening. I have had a very similar experience to you with these conferences, it just feels kind of dead in a way, or more you can sense the lack of potential.
That disconnect between the bring and the body is something I have seen many times with those that partake in Buddhism and its many flavors. It was Ajahn Brahm said when he was in university and beginning his path, that one day he was talking with other students and professors and suddenly realized that he did not want to be like these people and that the same path as them, to be a brain and nothing more. He is now a Theravada Buddhist in Western Australia.
I'm not sure what sort of yoga you practice, but if it is more based in Hinduism then this would be one of the major differences between it and Buddhism. [1] In all schools of Buddhism there is the teaching of anatman, that there is no self or soul. [2] So the attitude around 'I' is a bit different, mainly that there is no permanent 'I' to identify with. Still, you're right in that 'I am a body' isn't quite right either.
From a non-spiritual, non-religious perspective, as an atheist I don't believe that souls exist, I don't subscribe to any religious teachings and I don't do any kind of meditative or spiritual stuff.
That said, weight training completely transformed my relationship with my body. You can only lug a big hunk of iron into the air so many times before you start thinking about how much we really have in common with a gorilla. Yeah we grew opposable thumbs and a much more active prefrontal cortex, but 96% of our DNA is the same as theirs after all. By the pound we're mostly monkeys or something like them and it's a bit conceited to imagine otherwise.
If you're a knowledge worker who sits in a chair and thinks all day it's easy to believe you're nothing like a monkey, but strenuous exercise dispels that notion because it recruits all of your body's monkey systems and makes all of the parts of you work together. In retrospect it shouldn't be surprising at all that letting most of your anatomy wither away is unhealthy and puts you out of balance. It's like getting your car serviced but telling the shop that you only want them to look at the electronics.
> I don't subscribe to any religious teachings and I don't do any kind of meditative or spiritual stuff.
It sounds like you're conflating meditation-the-exercise with spiritual and religious approaches.
Fundamentally they are unrelated. Taking it to the extreme one can consider the mind to be a process produced by the brain+, no soul involved. Taken that way, meditation is no different than weight lifting. The same way a muscle+ specialises itself depending on training (endurance vs strength vs explosive vs volume) the brain (and thus the mind) also specialises in whatever it gets most exposed to. The same way one can lay out a physical workout plan for a specific desired outcome (including rest), one can lay out a mental workout plan for a specific desired outcome (including rest). The latter is meditation.
Meditation may exist in religious contexts, e.g Buddhist or Zen, but even then many forms are in practice detached from any religious belief, with no koan or mantra. e.g Ānāpānasati (sit, and simply watch the breath) and Sōtō shikantaza (meditation with no objects, anchors, or content, striving to be aware of the stream of thoughts, allowing them to arise and pass away without interference). These are fantastic tools to unlearn bad (sometimes traumatic) mental habits, just like one learns to have smooth but effective muscle action instead of being tense and twitchy and forcing it through.
+ I'm using "brain" as a shortcut for a system that is vastly more complex, just as I use "muscle" for a system that is equally as complex.
This is a completely off-topic tangent, but as a fellow non-religious person I'm sorry: Being non-religious and being an atheist are mutually exclusive positions.
Being non-religious means you are apathetic to religion thereof. God(s)? Souls? Afterlife? Commandments? Nope, you don't care about anything concerning religion one way or another.
Being atheist means you believe in no god, no souls, no afterlife, no commandments, and so on. This is, ironically, a form of religion. You care about believing in no religion.
This distinction between non-religious and atheist is new to me and sounds like an Americanism. Over here in Europe if you don't believe in a god you're an atheist, simple as that.
Some people are agnostic, meaning they are religious but don't subscribe to a particular god or doctrine. However no one makes the distinction between atheism and non-religious that you're making here. It may have something to do with the fact that society in the US is so pervasively religious that the only way to escape it is to explicitly identify yourself as an atheist.
You're confusing agnostic with what is usually termed spiritual in the UK. People who are spiritual sort of "pick and choose" whatever they fancy, or just feel there's some greater being but don't think any religion gets it right. Sometimes it's monotheistic, sometimes polytheistic.
Agnostic means you believe it's impossible to know whether god exists or not.
I do agree with what you're trying to describe, that many people in some European countries just don't care one iota about religion. I don't think Americans can really understand that without living in a secular society. It's such a non-thing in our lives that, non-religious, agnosticism and atheism, etc. all tend to get mixed into one.
Society has become so secular that those technical definitions have become essentially meaningless. God doesn't exist/I've given it no thought/I don't know if a God exists/I don't acknowledge the existence of supernatural entities all are essentially the same position because it takes up so little of our time or brain power and has so little consequences on our lives.
I stress "some" countries as some European countries, or just small parts of those countries, are still fairly religious.
Uh no, not in 'Europe'. Where I am in Europe, 'atheism' is being convinced there is no god. Agnosticism is not knowing whether there is a god at all. Not that you're religious but not to a particular god or doctrine like you claim - I've never heard of that concept before, how can you be religious but not knowing what it is you believe in? I'm not much in the know on the exact nomenclature, but your definition of 'agnosticism' is not in any way supported by the way Wikipedia describes it, and the way I've always understood agnosticism is what is called 'apathetic agnosticism' on Wikipedia - and that is, from my perspective, the predominant understanding of it in 'Europe'.
I'm Japanese(-American) and thus have that perspective on it, more Japan than America.
Being non-religious means you simply aren't concerned. Are there gods? Great. Are there no gods? Awesome. Jesus is the one God? Okay. Zeus leads his pantheon of gods? Nice.
Atheism meanwhile is a deliberate belief in no religion. It's different from simply not caring about religion at all, because you do care about religion insofar as to not believe in it.
Implicit atheism is still concerned with not believing in religion.
The way I see atheism is that a belief in no religion is, by its nature, a religion. Joe is a christian and believes in Jesus, Bob is an atheist and believes no god; both are merely two sides of the same coin. You can't call yourself non-religious if you believe in a religion, whatever the specific form.
Being non-religious means you don't care; it's not that you don't believe, you simply could not care less one way or another. Wikipedia appears to call it apatheism[1] and more broadly irreligion[2], but semantics aren't the focal issue here.
While the phenomenon you describe is certainly real, I think that you may also have been misperceiving part of it: Having a deep belief/understanding that your self is your whole body does not require having a highly-trained body or a strong kinesthetic sense. There could have been many people at that conference who shared your belief, but had not taken the years of physical training to make that externally apparent.
That sounds like a fascinating journey that I'd love to read; have you written anything about it? I'm a born-and-raised software engineer (read: meat mecha mindset), but I recently became interested in dance when I moved to Brazil as many people there have this unconscious connection with dance and their body that I envy. In my case, I'm dimly aware of that non-verbal channel you mentioned, but I struggle to comminicate on it and - if I'm being honest - doing so makes me feel vulnerable and awkward.
A great thing is when you can mobilize your vulnerability and akwardness to some degree. What’s important if you may decide to say something like dance is to find a community and teachers who are supportive and in a way able to vulnerable as well. So choose “wisely” in that regard.
I did a lot of teaching of yoga and my primary responsibility was giving people space to be that.
It was tai chi for me, but I started that after Buddhism and zen. I could never get comfortable. Not as in 3 out of 10 pain scale, but 7.5-8.5 out of 10. Having people tell you to ignore the pain is unhelpful when they imaging paper cut and you’re feeling knife wound.
Tai chi has a warmup that’s an easy shift into standing meditation.
I don't feel I can achieve this in my flat therefore instead of switching my whole career as you did, I'm trying to move to a big peace of land we're I can be / have to be more active.
I do think so that IT is growing more in a less super nerdy (I don't move) area.
Plenty of my friends got more active over the years
My 3 sports are mountain biking, climbing, and snowboarding. I always describe them as managing panic under fatigue and high cognitive load. I need the focus and problem solving, it tickles some part of my brain in a good way.
> suffer to one degree or another from thinking of themselves as a brain being carried around as a meat sack
This was me for most of my life.
Yoga has been life changing. Cultivating full body awareness and presence opened my eyes to states of being that I didn’t know I was capable of experiencing.
I can feel the subtle changes in strength each day, or a touch of soreness, or the exact spot that anxiety has settled into in my gut.
Gaining the level of focus needed brought with it a deeper and broader awareness of my emotional states, and the realization that I have some separation from them, i.e. they != me. This in turn helped me unwind some big things I’d been dealing with in therapy.
In retrospect, it makes so much sense to think of my body as an integral part of who I am and how I feel.
But that’s a mode of thinking that I was certainly never introduced to as a kid, and never experienced by default.
I should also mention that I’m only 6 months in, and I can only imagine what a decade of practice brings. I know there is still much to learn, but I wanted to drop this here for anyone wondering if it’s worth the time investment. I knew I’d stick with it within a few weeks. 2-3 weeks was when I started noticing some definite changes in strength. It just gets better from there.
It took me years, but I eventually got to the point where I could legitimately do the standing splits to full extension, lol. I'm now working on conquering the handstand.
My brain is still "me" more than the meat sack I use to to ice skate, lift weights, and ski. I just think of my body more like a mech I can learn to pilot via telepathic control interface that gains sensitivity over time.
I'll never be one of those athletes who lets go of conscious control and runs off muscle memory, but I've really enjoyed learning enough about my body that I can use it the way it was designed. It feels good when you go from "some part of me is always hurting" to "every step I take recruits muscles from foot and ankle to upper back because I learned how to use all of them against gravity".
> I'll never be one of those athletes who lets go of conscious control and runs off muscle memory
A lot of people feel this way, but the reality is that we already do almost everything without conscious control, we just don’t tend to notice.
Not to mention the majority of the systems in our body are also beyond conscious control, and for many, beyond awareness completely (e.g. the nervous system).
The book “Flow” is a really interesting read, and describes how one’s approach to daily life can lead to something closer to that athlete’s state.
There's a whole sub-discipline in UX that talks about the difference between looking at the available information and making the wrong choice, versus making the correct choice but then performing the wrong action anyway. One is a failure of cognition, the other is a failure of the motor cortex.
It's reaching for the green button and hitting the red one instead. It's driving to the store near your office and ending up driving to your office instead. It's forgetting to drop your kid off at daycare.
I have been trying this with ice skating because you mentioned it, letting my legs go loose instead of lining up every push, and it's actually kind of fluid and fun.
> I don’t know if this has changed for younger generations, but a lot of people, particularly those in intellectual pursuits, suffer to one degree or another from thinking of themselves as a brain being carried around as a meat sack.
The prevalence of psychotherapy perpetuates this approach with promotes talking over countless problems with some pseudo-science witch doctor while having a horrible lifestyle that will cause endless ones to appear.
Throwing blame on "the prevalence of psychotherapy" into this conversation, writing it all off to "pseudo-science" and emphasizing "lifestyle" (as in "if you exercised more you'd be better off", I guess) reads like a just-so story from a brain in a meat sack that's missing the substance of the conversation.
Just like "meditation" is many different things, and "exercise" is many different things, and "healthcare" is many things, and "thinking" is many different things, "psychotherapy" is many different things.
One of the first things by current therapist asked me was more or less how embodied I was. I suspect of all the relationships with other people in my life, the one with my psychotherapist is the one that's most likely to be help me build out a fuller relationship to my body in the way the grandparent comment is advocating.
The therapist before that focused on behavioral "lifestyle" changes when feelings came up, in a way that I guess superficially follows the "I am a body" model, but really felt like it only added distance and abstraction to my relationship to myself. I guess that approach was grounded in a scientific evidence base that those kinds of interventions are what moves metrics.
I don't think that it's unique to the mind body connection either. It's very popular for people to try and look at things in isolation, to try and "scientifically prove" that what they are doing is efficacious, to distill to first principles.
In an academic context this is absolutely the correct thing to do.
But for our lives? You are a human being - you evolved to think, to make love, to run, to get outside and touch grass, to labour for things, to... well, we are general intelligences - generalists.
There is something to be said for accepting that and not looking for the "efficiency hack" that allows you to minimise what it is to be the thing that you _are_.
Our society has suffered massively from this disconnect. I honestly do feel like our computer and avatar-oriented society is fuelling it. Like the benefit for men you mentioned, I think women have a unique benefit too: a lot of women's healthcare knowledge has been suppressed, and developing these skills of bodily awareness helps with self-knowledge of those things.
Here[0] is a blog post by someone who identified it as playing a part in a severe case of selective mutism that deeply impacted their professional ambitions. The description is interwoven with a narrative of their time at some sort of week-long retreat, but there are sections (mostly in italics, as they're memories) that describe the mutism, their efforts to identify its source, their learning about the vagus nerve interactions, and the takeaways about the vagus nerve and its role in their experience.
A lot of people feel like “they” are somewhere inside their head. They look out at the world through eyes that are windows. The world is out there, “I” am in here. In this undefined black hole of “me”, mysterious, but definitely separate from the world and what’s “out there” past one’s eyes.
They feel like their bodies are just the mechanical thing that carries them around. They don’t think of the systemic impact of things that affect their body and consequently, their brain and mental states. E.g. gut health plays a major role in mental health, but this is not an intuitive concept for many people.
Some have argued this is an outcome of Judeo-Christian thinking, e.g. my soul is not of this world, this body isn’t my best body, my soul passes on when I die, etc. These ideas are deeply ingrained from an early age, during the time in which one is forming their concept of self.
One really cool question for people is, where do you feel 'you' are - where the core of you are physically. For many people 'you' is like a tension point in your head just behind the eyes.
For me it is more in the middle of my chest. This is considered odd in the western world but it is not unheard of. I am not my mind, I am not my ego, I am but a wave in the universe, it comes - it goes it will pass - enjoy it for a while.
That's a reasonable belief, but some people do not feel that way.
If I had my foot amputated am i still me? If i had my mind transplanted into a different body am I still me? etc. I doubt there are any good answers that are more logical than "I feel this to be true".
> I don't understand your reference to the western world
Some religions believe that people have a soul that is separate from the body, which contains a person's essence (And say, goes up to heaven when they die or otherwise continues on after death). Even among people who don't buy that, it sets the stage (even perhaps just subconciously) for other dualist beliefs where the body is separate from your "essence" (however you want to define that)
Try to think of it this way… if we had brain transplant technology and you swapped brains with someone so that your brain ended up in their body and their brain in your body… which one do you think would be you?
I’m not sure there’s any clear answer to this as it touches on so many known and unknown unknowns. But, the assertion is that there most people (especially in western intellectual traditions) would consider wherever their brain is to be them (see also the concept of “brain in a vat” etc). This may or may not be true for you specifically.
There are two of you now. And two of the other. There are tons of brain-like networks of cells in the body, no? In and around the heart and such and I'm certain we'll find more in the next few decades. The fun part begins in how capable either of you and the other will be in establishing a functional union.
What's gonna happen when "your brain" recognizes your old body in with another head? Will "it" get horny? Jealous? Angry? Happy?
Phantom pain and stuff like that comes to mind and the question of how many dimensions (not levels on scale) of consciousness there are in this physical world/reality ...
From my perspective, the belief that the soul and the body are totally separate and that the body is lesser is not actually a Christian belief, but rather a Gnostic one. Unfortunately a lot of the Christianity of America has a twinge of Gnosticism present. The "C.S. Lewis" quote that gets thrown around, "You don't have a soul; you are a soul. You have a body," was never actually said by C.S. Lewis. I actually got a better connection with my body from listening to an Eastern Christian priest talking about how if you think you can separate your body, mind, and soul from each other, you've created a false sense of self.
Yeah agreed, CS Lewis has said a lot about the body and the soul, a few come to mind from first Mere Christianity and then a quote from Screwtape Letters
“And let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral /…/this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, /…/ It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution–a biological or super-biological fact. There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.”
(Screwtape gives advice to use a “body doesn’t matter” philosophy as a way of making the human distracted or ineffective)
“At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.”
The Catholic Church continues to teach that human beings are body and soul and both are essential to the human person. While Lewis wasn’t Catholic, his theology basically was.
Whatever its origins, it’s what the baptists who raised me believed, and it was a view of self and body that was prevalent in the Christian circles of my childhood.
And to your point, it has permeated Christianity more broadly, and arguably western thinking even broader still. I left the church in my teens. My conception of self didn’t shift until decades later after many years of intentional deconstruction. It’s a powerful illusion.
When I was a young distance runner I was in such good shape that, when not tired from a workout, moving around the world was essentially effortless. Its kind of like playing a first person shooter and very easy to feel like your body is just some abstract tool. In contrast having a minor injury causing you to limp or something is very grounding, forcing you to focus on walking carefully and not have to hurry for anyone.
Another +1 here for that argument being distinctly not Judeo-Christian. Orthodox Christians in particular are of the belief that you worship with your whole self- mind, body and soul.
As a child of fundamental baptists, all of the circles I grew up in saw their bodies as temporary shells.
They also saw their bodies as created by god, and thoughts/emotions as having metaphysical sources and consequences. Setting aside any specific doctrinal positions, the broader claims and beliefs of the church push one to think of themselves in some rather odd ways.
If certain thoughts and feelings are temptations from the devil, actually believing this explanation short circuits the systemic explanations for those thoughts/feelings, and leaves one to conclude that the body must not have anything to do with it.
I believe the Christian worldview involving a creator god more broadly points people in this direction not necessarily because of specific claims, but as a downstream effect of the broader philosophy.
> thoughts/emotions as having metaphysical sources
Maybe this is a Protestant or a reformed thing? Yes, the devil is a temptor, but pretty much every sect agrees that there is no way for man to redeem himself but through faith. It is our nature to sin, and thus we are perfectly capable of it without the devil's help.
As an adult, I can appreciate the nuance of the positions of these various sects (though to be clear, I consider myself an atheist at this stage of life).
But as a young child required to learn about how the world functions according to these ideas during the critical period of self-formation, such nuance was lost, and many foundational/implicit beliefs were formed and ingrained.
More broadly, I think it’s interesting to consider whether some of this is an unintentional side effect of the teachings, even if the texts technically communicate something else.
I know that for me personally, when I first encountered other schools of thought on the mind/body connection and my concept of my own self/body started to shift, all I could think is “holy shit, this is the opposite of what I was taught”.
Let's flip this around: once you learn to drive, and then drive enough for it to become something you do unconsciously, is the car now part of "you" too?
If not, then I wouldn't use the embodiment/integration argument to define where "you" is, as the brain can learn to turn just about anything into extra limbs or senses, if you use it frequently enough.
Some would argue that we are deeply and intrinsically interconnected to the world around us in ways we seldom consider, and the idea that a vehicle could become part of “us” is not so farfetched.
If you keep going down the rabbit hole of looking for “you”, the only consistent answer that comes up is that there is no single or stable center, and that the boundaries of “you” are not so easy to find. Going deeper still points to the feeling of “I” being nothing but a useful illusion, and most importantly, just another feeling that you experience alongside other feelings like happiness or anger.
Some would argue that your whole world is you, and that our internal states and experience of the world are inseparable from the environment and people around us.
This is not a metaphysical claim, but a more broad statement about the systemic factors that influence what it’s like to be you.
> If you keep going down the rabbit hole of looking for “you”, the only consistent answer that comes up is that there is no single or stable center, and that the boundaries of “you” are not so easy to find.
I'm in agreement with that; in a way, it's a superset of the point I was making. What is or isn't "you" feels variable, fluid. An experienced driver might find that, when driving, their sense of self extends to encompass the car. I definitely felt this when getting into "state of flow" while playing some first-person videogames. The ideas of "state of flow", "immersion", "becoming one with something", all seem to point to, or in some cases be a case of, the fluidity of the sense of self.
> Going deeper still points to the feeling of “I” being nothing but a useful illusion, and most importantly, just another feeling that you experience alongside other feelings like happiness or anger.
Useful illusions is all we have. As for "just another feeling", I can entertain that thought, and I find it curious, but I haven't really experienced this frame of mind/perception yet. Or maybe I did, but I didn't realize it, so I don't have the memory associated with the phrases you used?
> This is not a metaphysical claim, but a more broad statement about the systemic factors that influence what it’s like to be you.
I appreciate you going for the more "materialistic"/non-spiritual take. I'm not denying the variety and richness of experiencing the world and one's self in it. I was just taken aback at both broad dismissal of "brain / body separation" and it being justified entirely by spiritual and experiential reasons. My point about driving meshes with my other comments (including this one) like this: we know the "sense of you" can be extended to and beyond the body. But if, instead of extending it, you try to contract it, then without crossing into metaphysics, you'll stop at the brain. This is what I believe makes the brain/body distinction meaningful: not what you can make part of yourself, but that which you can't take away.
> But if, instead of extending it, you try to contract it, then without crossing into metaphysics, you'll stop at the brain.
Dunno about the other poster, but I can promise you I will not.
I think it's kind of a pointless exercise to try to draw a physical boundary of what's "me" and what isn't, but carrying that exercise a bit further: How much of the spinal cord can I exclude in my "sense of me" before I "cross into metaphysics"? If I drop my eyes from my sense of "me", seems like I could also drop the neurons in the brain that are responsible solely for visual processing of input from them. Or is that a step too far and "into metaphysics"?
Heck, I think the classic nerd brain-in-a-meatsuit position doesn't really stop at the brain here either. E.g. I think it places an accurate simulation of one's brain running on different hardware on about the same level as the meat brain, and "you" wouldn't know the difference. That's just not a thing we can do (yet?). Does that position cross into metaphysics?
In practice, I "contract my sense of self" when it comes to my thoughts too, which (presumably) all happen in the brain. I often find it useful to ask "where did that thought come from?" and give an external account ("ah, I picked it up from X") and let that have some bearing on the next thought. I also have "intrusive thoughts"; the act of labeling a thought an "intrusive thought" is (arguably, partially) an act of contracting one's sense of self to exclude that thought.
I'm pretty sure this conversation had "crossed into metaphysics" by the time discussion about expansion/contraction of one's "sense of you" was happening; not when the contraction reached the brain.
Not the op but the first quote completely describes my approach.
I am me. The intellect, the mind, the person.
My body is what carries my intellect, not completely distinct from the way a car or bicycle or wheelchair might. I don't identify with my body as "me". I have at best a cordial relationship with my body.
> We are learning more about mind body connections and this is very not true...
We are RE-learning. Look at all the "new science" on psychedelics. Or gut bacteria. Etc.
I'm not sure what the bottleneck is...we did not evolve to sit all day, inside, at desk, gazing into screens. It really is *that* simple.
p.s. While nothing revolutionary new per se "The Comfort Crisis" by Michael Easter goes a solid job making the case for "this is where we came from, stop thinking where we are is compatible."
Fair point. I got accused of the “noble savage” myth recently in another post and I went the wrong way with it. In trying to be better stewards of the natural world we are looking at vestige civilizations that never lost it, but the fact of the matter is that if you watch history shows, one I’m thinking of was a recreation of feudal life in Tudor England, Western Europeans used to “know” many, many of these things too, but they forgot it all in the Industrial Revolution, then encountered civilizations that hadn’t forgotten, and ground them to dust, instead of remembering.
After hundreds of years of trying to solve problems with the same level of thinking that created them, there’s always a set of people who are asking questions about the trip we are on. There’s a fine line between pastoralism and compromise that we haven’t worked it out yet, and we don’t even always see it when it happens.
There’s a circumstantial chain of evidence out there that David Hume injected Eastern Philosophy into The Enlightenment. If that’s even a little true, this big philosophical Step Forward was really a step “back”, or maybe sideways.
And I think we still don’t know where the Stoics got their ideas from. Themselves, or Buddhism?
It is most likely that both the Stoics and Buddhism got their ideas from simple introspection. I didn't read Buddhism and have an epiphany, I came to it the same conclusion by myself and then saw that others had done the same.
I think there's even a plausible direct route to stoicism. The Ancient Greeks were entirely aware of the importance of having a healthy body to have a healthy mind. In Ancient Greece, a gymnasium is where one would go not only to train the body, but also the mind. Many countries, such as Germany, have retained this etymology with certain advanced types of schools being called gymnasiums.
And in the gym one can only make significant gains by effectively controlling and overcoming their own response to pain and the body telling you, 'no - stop stop stop!' Why would truly effective control and mastery of our minds be any different? And from there you're already 9/10ths of the way to 'inventing' Stoicism. Somehow this reminds me of a really old (and fun) Arnold interview [1]. His behavior, attitude, and responses there (and even in general, really) really hit on Stoic values.
This is why I think all the "meatbags" and "hardware running on software" analogies are actually really primitive and silly, even though I know some find them funny.
If we reduce ourselves to a bunch of "computers" there's not much left for the stuff that actually matters, like the actual awesomeness that is having a body, which is highly sensitive and able to experience amazing things.
> If we reduce ourselves to a bunch of "computers" there's not much left for the stuff that actually matters, like the actual awesomeness that is having a body, which is highly sensitive and able to experience amazing things.
This does not follow, except for stripping away the religious/spiritual part. Computers are amazing! So is hardware! And so is the dance of software and hardware that makes magic happen.
I've seen nothing so far in this whole thread that would convince me I should stop thinking about my body as the meatsack carrying my brain, as every argument I've read so far triggered my "religious/spiritual mumbo jumbo" detector quite hard.
This is not to say the body isn't an important and tightly integrated part of the experience. But the fact remains that a hand or a heart or a lung can be removed or replaced without loss of self. A brain can't.
> But the fact remains that a hand or a heart or a lung can be removed or replaced without loss of self. A brain can't.
Here's a related observation that tipped me a bit away from thinking about my body as the meatsack carrying my brain: cutting off a hand doesn't cut off the experience or sensation of having a hand. (E.g. people with missing limbs have phantom pain.)
Lots of emotions are at least partly "embodied". People feel love in the chest. Fear in the stomach.
Not sure about anybody else, but I feel frustration in my elbows. I strongly suspect that if my arms were removed, I would still feel frustration in my elbows. I don't think removing my physical arms would remove all the ways "having arms" is baked into my experience. Even if an external physicalist account accurately places those phenomena "in the brain" and not "in the arms", that's not really all that relevant to an internal account of someone actually having the experience.
As I see it, a human's brain-from-the-inside (mind? soul?) is "body-shaped" in a lot of ways. When I hear warnings against "reducing ourselves to a bunch of 'computers", I read them as prompts to recognize this. As warnings against recognizing and engaging with *only* the parts of one's experience that can fit into an "abstract reasoner" model.
> every argument I've read so far triggered my "religious/spiritual mumbo jumbo" detector quite hard.
Agreed. Sounds like a number of people have found a spiritual way to look at this, which seems a bit like a kind of quasi-religion, similar to the mystical aspects of Zen or yoga.
You seem worried people have found a deeper connection to their bodies and then, for some reason label it as “spiritual” or “mumbo jumbo” and go on trying to diminish their experience, why ?
Personally, the more I see of this anti-spiritual enforcement, the more I see intellectualism and science becoming the dogmatic religion of the Catholic Church when it was illegal to have unorthodox ideas. Interestingly, true mystics and fee thinkers have always been attacked.
If people like to think their more than just their brains, and instinctively they feel this is accurate, what’s it to you ? Why go on the internet and try tell people otherwise. It’s their business and if others want to share that view well that’s none of your concern. It’s also ok to debate the point sure, just be respectful?
None of these posters are hurting anyone by discussing their ideas or feelings?
I'm not enforcing or policing anything, or worried about anything, how did you get that from my comment? Please read it again.
> "It’s also ok to debate the point sure, just be respectful?"
Could you please explain where, in my previous comment, I wasn't being respectful?
I was simply observing that the way people often talk about these ideas, including in this thread, resembles spirituality and religion. Which is true.
> "Why go on the internet and try tell people otherwise."
This subthread started with you saying "This is why I think all the 'meatbags' and 'hardware running on software;' analogies are actually really primitive and silly."
So, in your own words, "if people like to think [that,] what's it to you? Why go on the internet..." blah blah blah.
You can dish it but not take it, apparently? You're making a much stronger attempt at policing than anything I said. Perhaps you're projecting something onto me?
In any case, you seem to be having a problem with a false dichotomy. It's not as though any of us are saying our bodies don't exist, or that there's no interaction between our bodies and minds. There's lots of well-established science on that. See the last line of the comment by TeMPOraL that I originally replied to.
> every argument I've read so far triggered my "religious/spiritual mumbo
jumbo" detector quite hard.
Agreed. Sounds like a number of people have found a spiritual way to look at this, which seems a bit like a kind of quasi-religion, similar to the mystical aspects of Zen or yoga.
You wrote that?
What I don’t think is healthy to new ideas is bashing anything seemed spiritual with rationality and science.
They can coexist just fine so long as either side isn’t too dogmatic.
Personally, I think it's too common that people conflate spirituality and religion with shady institutions, which exist just as much in science and engineering as anywhere else.
I don't think ideas need to be bashed just because they seem spiritual, or are presented in such terms. The idea may be good, and my disliking a particular flavor of explanation could be like me disliking a particular physics textbook - the information is good, just the style doesn't resonate.
But it's a different case where you have a whole thread of comments that reject out of hand the obvious framework of thinking that yields good results and good predictions, to replace it with a more fuzzy framework of thinking that goes against observable evidence, and recounting stories of "getting it" after meditation or doing yoga for 5 years or such. It's one thing to enjoy and recommend different kinds of experiences of self, and we know the mind is quite malleable in that regard. But the brain/body split isn't just an experience, it's an actual model that's useful in dealing with objective reality. If someone is trying to replace that with some embodied wholesome "me is my body" or "me is universe" view, then that is pushing spiritual mumbo jumbo into scientific and pragmatic areas of life, where it doesn't belong.
And if someone bashes people for having that more mechanistic/objective model inform their perception of self, then... well... when did it become bad to look at the world with clear eyes instead of having your head in the clouds? Or is it the dreaded, bad, no-good "Western philosophy" again?
> If your brain is meat, which is squishy, how can it be hardware?
This isn't what those terms mean, but nice try :). A better argument could be built around malleability of the brain.
> Isn't your brain just software too then? Isn't it all software running on software?
Yes and no. "Hardware" and "software" aren't fundamental. Think about ASICs vs. FPGAs vs. emulation. Which parts are "hard" and which are "soft" and which are something in between, is a matter of convenience/economics. Fundamentally, it's all compute though.
For a fundamental appreciation of how the body affects mental state, see Robert Sapolsky lecture biology lecture. It doesn't talk of exercise specifically, but it leaves no doubt of the strong influence of the body on the mind (and vice versa).
I like this comment and am intrigued by your dance experience. Meditation, however has exposed to me that I am certainly not (just) the body.
To feel like I “am” something at all is both an assumption and the final hurdle.
Late reply, but I have a friend with panic disorder who has had attacks from her heart fluttering, or even just eating food that makes her gassy. It's a straight shot from the vagus to your adrenal glands. I heard a term for this somewhere but Google is failing me utterly today.
She's in some sort of program now that if I understand what they're actually doing, they're trying to manage the vagus response.
ADHD people who eat stuff they really shouldn't, their vagus nerve "starts acting up" (i'm too lazy to get my notebooks) and their ADHD-symptoms are amplified. same goes for a lot of food-induced conditions. different exercises targeting the vagus nerve help to alleviate (the) stress.
Please get your notebooks if you can. You have piqued my interest, and I have not read more information correlating the waxing/waning of symptoms of ADHD with food. The idea seems completely rational, but I am curious what foods make a difference, which should be avoided, etc..
A key unlock for me was doing exercise where at some point I was trying so hard and breathing so aggressively that I couldn't really think anymore, I could only focus on the task at hand. For me, that's been biking up steep hills. I like biking because I get to see a bunch of cool stuff and if I go up hills I get a dope view.
I joke that doing these rides feels like I'm re-boring my arteries because my heart pumps so hard. I feel great afterward. Recommend!
I have to agree with the other comment about intense cardio. I got into long-distance running last year and it was a big mental shift for me to go from fast to slow running. Before that, I had always approached exercise as if harder is better. I was surprised to learn that even elite runners are doing 80% of their training at a pace that's really slow relative to their race pace. Of course training plans will vary depending on the target distance, but I think this still applies if you are training for shorter distances. Training at max effort is a recipe for getting injured, and it prevents you from putting in the volume necessary to develop good cardio.
When I was trying to integrate a definition of “flow” that covered my many experiences, it wasn’t biking up hills per se, it was those moments where bad shit almost happened and I saw a way through and just did it. Riding through gravel, loose dogs, when the “fast guy” tried to drop the pack and found me on his wheel.
I think I agree with you that these experiences are pivotal, because they are moments when you just are without thinking. That constant monologue some of us carrying our heads is gone, and the universe didn’t end.
Taking that information and finding the spot halfway between the two is the real lesson, IME.
This is what mountain biking does for me. It's not hard, and it's pretty safe, but maintaining decent speed while navigating trails... it's a flow state.
Heck, a week ago I did a 100 mile MTB race, with the goal of finishing and being happy. While bits and pieces are there, some chatting with folks and things I saw along the trail, but I honestly do not remember most of the ~9 hours I was riding. It was just a thing I was doing, disconnected from most of the rest of the world, and content doing it.
(Note, I'm talking about XC/cross-country mountain biking, and to some extent trail biking. NOT the big downhill/jump/whatever stuff that comes up most often in media when sees mountain biking. It's still quite exciting, but far safer because it's really just riding bikes on hiking-ish trails.)
MTB has pretty much all the good stuff in one. You're outside, in nature, breathing fresh air, it's cardio and mindfulness on the climbs and flow and focus on the descent, add adrenaline to taste.
The community is pretty rad too, it has the atmosphere of surfing and hiking combined.
A typical ride starts at the trailhead where you meet the people you're riding with, or not (I ride solo a lot). Then you ride up a trail that takes you to the fun stuff, the decent trails. All trails are graded with a difficulty, so you pick one that suits you and start the decent.
They can be windy smooth trails through the forest, or rocky technical trails to test your bike handling, or gnarly steep downhill trails, or jump trails, the list goes on. You have full control over what you get yourself into, and I can just barely scratch the surface of the variety of riding available across all the disciplines and locations. The basics are the same, you and your bike on some trails.
You can develop your bike skills and challenge yourself on fast or technical trails, or you can just take it easy on flowy easy trails or cross country trails. You can dial up the adrenaline as much or as little as you want, and the terrain can be vary wildly from trail to trail so it's always new and interesting. You'll end up riding parts of your locale you'd never imagine and if you go travelling with it, there are trails in rainforests, deserts, mountain ranges, rolling hills, all over.
For the fitness side, you build strength and dexterity across your whole body as you ride more, and the ride up the hill will develop your cardio and often be interesting trails of their own.
Check out the Trailforks site/app to find trails near you, go rent a bike for ~$50 for the day from any MTB store. It's very easy to try without spending much.
The only equipment you need is a helmet, any bike helmet will do for your first rides. You'll figure out the rest of the gear as you go. Modern bikes are so easy to ride and have made it a crazy fun.
The ancestor comments are spot on. I just wish it didn't require driving. The good stuff is 10+ miles from where I live. Not that far, but it's still burning gas just to ride a bike.
I also suggest XC / blue / "intermediate" / rolling trails. They're less exposed and dangerous than steep descents, and better cardio. The MTB industry and press is increasingly downhill-oriented, but you can ignore that noise. Before you buy a bike, try renting a few, and riding them on your own local trails. It'll give you a better idea of what sort of bike and riding you want. If you don't have much singletrack nearby but you have dirt roads, consider a gravel or "all-terrain" road bike instead (like a Kona Dew, Kona Rove, or Hudski Doggler). It's not mountain biking, but still a lot of fun, and you cover more ground. (They're also simpler and cheaper than modern mountain bikes.)
Bike fit is important, take your time to get it right. Don't buy the wrong frame size! (I've made that mistake at least twice.) Find a shop (or experienced friend) to help you dial in the fit, and expect to swap some parts. This (and physical conditioning) makes the difference between riding kind of hurting, and being comfy on the bike for 2+ hours.
Obviously you can get hurt. MTB injuries tend to be less severe than road cycling, because you aren't riding in car traffic. But several years ago I tore out my triceps, going over the front of the bike in a rock garden and landing on my elbow. That was a surgery and slow recovery. I'm fine now, and even with that injury, cycling has been a benefit to my health and enjoyment of life.
It can be a gear-intensive hobby. I have a mostly-bikes room. It can also be an expensive hobby (though doesn't need to be). Still much cheaper than motorcycles, sailing, and so forth.
Sorry, one last thing. Be courteous to hikers. Yield to them by default, call out if approaching them from behind. Making hikers feel safe and respected is more important than carrying your speed. When riders forget this, angry hikers show up to meetings and agitate for closing trails to bikes.
Great advice allround, especially on gravel and XC. They still have all the same pros as MTB, different types of riding but very much adjacent.
I am lucky enough to live within riding distance of a trail centre, they aren't the best trails but having any trails nearby in a suburban area is amazing. It's a 10 minute pedal and I get out once or twice a week to those trails.
Something else, compared to road riding, is that most mountain biking is very safe. Typically you are riding fairly slow on dirt surfaces that you can stop on. Basic falls (falling over) are common, but increasingly rare as you get more experienced. There generally aren't other people posing you risk as there is in group or solo road riding, it's just you and nature.
It's the "flow", as with many other sports requiring very high levels of hand-eye coordination, whether climbing, martial arts, olympic weight lifting, fencing etc. You don't have time to see, mentally process, then do; instead you just think/feel and the body does, and somehow that is much faster than is possible by the physical measurement of electrical signals from your eye to your body.
I can barely think for a good few minutes even after heavy squats/deads.
I have found my biggest mistakes were all when I had gotten comfortable with a weight and ended up losing mental focus. Thanfully no injuries. It seems I have to be nearing my edge to be forced into focus. I am better at opting in to focus now thanks to lifting I feel. Similar to downhill riding, all my crashes have been on easy stuff as I lost focus.
Same same. Also when not biking bootcamp classes get me to the same place of only thinking about the workout / excercises at hand. 50 min - 90 min feels like the sweet spot in terms of time.
not really a fan of overly strenuous cardio. I am not sure how it makes you better. i tried it and it never did much for me. it doesn't even help for weight loss due to metabolic adaptation and increased appetite.
This is a can of worms for sure, lots of points could be discussed, but my main one is making sure you're somewhere you like doing something you enjoy. If you are on a spin bike in a smelly gym spin room to get your cardio that is definitely an acquired taste.
I also hate cardio but it is much more palatable if I'm on a mountain bike and climbing up for a descent trail.
Heh, that’s closer to my default state due to CPTSD and I’m quite comfortable/familiar with it.
But choosing to exacerbate that state when there are other options to achieve my fitness goals is counterproductive, and I’ve been advised to avoid it.
There’s an important difference between getting comfortable with hard things, and subjecting yourself to unnecessary/avoidable hyper-arousal states which can become their own form of health problem in the long run.
People injure themselves this way, and should pay attention to their bodies when exercising.
Not trying to convince you to chase strenuous cardio. There are many, many activities that can support living a healthy life.
That being said...
I really don't know any serious athletes who enjoy going to practices or going to the gym to workout. In my opinion it's rarely about enjoying the moment. Rather, it's about the way it makes a person feel when they're done. Or, it's about reaching a long-term goal and the joy that comes with accomplishing something currently out of reach.
And, of course, that type of joy can come from a wide variety of activities - exercise, coding, music, arts, etc.
It works different for different people. For some simply slowing down can bring amazing results, I am somewhere in both camps. Slowing down most of the time plus also doing cardio has been amazing.
It probably helps that increased appetite never fazed me. I am hungry now, cool, I'm still not eating until dinner regardless of how I feel.
I’ve had major clinical depression for the last 15 years or so. The first 4 months of this year was the lowest I’ve ever been. During that time though I was going to the gym 6 days a week doing weight lifting and then I would cycle 50km a day on top of that. All of it was on autopilot however, my depression just wouldn’t allow me to focus on anything but it.
Luckily I had been building up the habit for years in advance but that was the most I had ever exercised and it was also the most I had ever been depressed. In my case I don’t think the exercise helped at all. Perhaps if I hadn’t of been exercising maybe I wouldn’t even be here now though… I’m not entirely sure. Finding the right medication and getting therapy has been what has really helped me. With those two I can see an almost day and night difference but with the exercise I noticed no difference at all. At least I had a great physique though!
Yeah, same here. I don't exercise as much as you - 3, maybe 4 times a week - but yeah, it doesn't help. Sure, it feels good right when you're doing it (sometimes, hah), but the feeling doesn't persist. Some days, I actually feel worse emotionally after exercise.
I agree with you about therapy and medication: in my experience, they are the only things that work. Expensive though.
As a side note, I sort of feel triggered by this kind of article.
Depressed? Have you:
- exercised enough?
- drank enough water?
- slept enough?
- meditated enough?
- gotten outside enough?
It's passed as "helpful advice" by well-meaning people but always makes me feel like I'm not "enough". If I've done all those things but I'm still depressed, I must not have done those things "enough". Does that make sense? I'm so tired of trying to explain how hard I'm working, I just don't talk about it with people for fear they'll bring out "the list" of things I ought to be doing, and I'll have to explain that, yes, I get 8 hours of sleep a night. Yes, I drink a gallon of water a day. Etc.
You could probably turn those questions right around on people: have they meditated “enough” recently? Are they getting 8 hours of sleep and going outside regularly? My bet is that they’re not, and yet if they’re not depressed… well maybe there’s something else going on!
I think the only people who think exercise solves depression are those that have never suffered clinical depression. Dopamine from exercise is pretty much a temporary relief. Just like drinking, smoking, or binging netflix - they provide temporary relief and let us ignore the root problems.
Therapy is what finally taught me how to actually process my thoughts and feelings, and let me make real progress against depression.
And now, when I go for an outside run or walk, I can spend that time focusing purely purely on my internal thoughts/feelings. Done like this, exercise can be a great therapeutic activity - but it's not the dopamine or act of exercise itself, it's creating the time for self-therapy.
The meta analysis linked in the article we're discussing wouldn't really agree with you.
> Physical activity had medium effects on depression (median effect size=−0.43, IQR=−0.66 to –0.27), anxiety (median effect size=−0.42, IQR=−0.66 to –0.26) and psychological distress (effect size=−0.60, 95% CI −0.78 to –0.42), compared with usual care across all population. The largest benefits were seen in people with depression, HIV and kidney disease, in pregnant and postpartum women, and in healthy individuals. Higher intensity physical activity was associated with greater improvements in symptoms
I think comparing exercise to drinking is pretty silly and doesn't suggest a wide berth of knowledge on the topic. I'm glad to hear that therapy was the silver bullet for you, but if there's one thing that's _abundantly_ clear about mental health treatments, it's that there's no one-size-fits-all solution.
> I think the only people who think exercise solves depression are those that have never suffered clinical depression.
What about the studies with clinically depressed people who treat their symptoms as effectively as SSRIs with exercise? I'm thinking specifically of a running therapy study that was done recently, I haven't read the study linked by OP.
I did pretty much the same during a longer dip. I guess it's a way of dealing with the always-on fight-or-flight mode, so you exercise way more than your body is able to recover from and only end up digging yourself further down.
Now that I am in a healthier state of mind, I find that exercise helps a lot more as long as I can do it in a healthy way.
Certainly can't speak for everyone, but the most effective form of exercise that I have found is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Couple of reasons. First: The deeper you get into it the more you learn its primarily an intellectual pursuit - its just hidden in a very physical endeavor. When I'm doing Jiu Jitsu, I have to actively think, engage my problem solving skills, I can't go on auto pilot as I do in other things - rowing machine for instance. Second: Anyone can do it, at nearly any age with any body type. If you're older and not super athletic, your Jiu Jitsu will be different than say a 20yo who is very athletic. But that in no way means your Jiu Jitsu or experience will be any less effective. First time posting on HN. Hope this helps someone.
I agree. BJJ brought me to a place of happiness that was amazing. I felt completely connected with my body.
Then I hurt my back three years ago doing weight lifting. I haven't been able to practice BJJ ever since, and I've been suffering with constant anxiety for the past three years. Every day since has been a struggle, with some really bad days, and some better ones.
This seems to be all the rage right now but there is a significant risk of CTE with BJJ. Concussions are normalized to an alarming degree among all BJJ practitioners I’ve spoken with.
It all depends on how you train. WRT CTE/Concussions, I can't speak to that. No one I've trained with has had that issue, maybe that's more of an MMA thing - ie striking. If you go 100% full competition all the time and never want to tap out - then yes I would agree there is significant risk of injury. But that's true with any physical endeavor. If you instead train with the long run in mind, pick and choose your rolling partners, and tap out when you're not in a good situation then you can mitigate those risks quite successfully. Having weight trained, ran track and trained BJJ, I've had far more injuries in weight training + track despite having far more time on the mats than weight training and track by a very large margin. We're taught in my academy - you are accountable for your own safety. Just tap, come back another day. Fully understand and admit not all schools are the same.
Two years into the sport and I’ve never had a close concussion call or seen anything close. Heads could hang into each other on a crowded mat I suppose but that risk is darn low if you are paying attention.
It is funny how there is this bell curve of intellect in the arts. At first you know nothing but this allows you to just do things without hesitation, then you learn a lot and it becomes all intellect and skills, but then you become a master - one that does something with all the intellect but without thinking at all.
Like when you see a master of some art, they do not stop and hesitate to do something, they just do it and it looks so effortless and yet it is an amazing thing they have done.
They do say that you learn more and more throughout the belt levels of Jiu Jitsu. But once you reach black belt, it starts all over again. So pretty much exactly what you're saying, just that the master has to find new ways outside of trained pathways to accomplish goals. In the end, its an continuum I figure. I've always viewed it - Jiu Jitsu - as a video game with infinite levels.
> Anyone can do it, at nearly any age with any body type
This is 100% false. I trained for about 3 years and the number of people that had to drop BJJ or stop training for periods of time due to injuries was high, including myself. It's a sport where you accumulate a lot of minor injuries, especially if you roll at a semi competitive pace. This doubled for people who would come in from non-athletic backgrounds (as in white collar professionals not on TRT)
That said it was the most fun i've had with sports in my life
if you're not male, or are an older man (like >35), or are a child, being a BJJ novice looks like it must be a fun and welcoming environment. I think back before the boom times it may have been fun and positive for everyone.
if you're a younger man, it's a much more competitive environment. since MMA has become popular, there are a lot of guys coming in who did high school wrestling or maybe a little combatives in the Army -- so purportedly novices but in fact already quite skilled and fit. some of these have big macho attitudes and enjoy kicking your ass if you're an actual untrained beginner.
Being a good jiu jitsu teacher doesn't necessarily mean you're good at handling this dynamic. Some gyms handle this well, and BJJ gyms often have informal ways of "encouraging" this kind of guy to cool off but I noticed people don't always bring them out on behalf of a younger guy getting slammed around. So you either have to be a very fast learner or willing to be knocked around and embarrassed a lot more than the other students.
I walk to the store when it's reasonable. I wasn't top tier at it, but the most exercise I could tolerate was playing DDR, because there was a game to it that isn't just physical activity.
These kinds of articles are always annoying because it invites a certain kind of person who will gush unendingly about how great exerting yourself is.
For me, exerting myself sucks, it is only something I want to do when it's attached to a game I want to play (and even that gets stale). It's only ever something I am either forcing myself to do (yuck) or doing for something besides the physical aspect of it (saving gas, playing a video game).
But instead of health advice being tailored to someone with my neurological makeup that causes this dislike of useless exertion, I'm just told that I need to "meditate" more or do yoga/X. If anything, meditation makes my body seem less like "me".
Just to add my contrarian two cents to a comment section that is otherwise mostly the former.
Meh, exercise is up to you to do it. Once convinced that there are benefits, I don’t know what other message you need beyond finding something that works for you.
This complaint reminds me of someone digging into a bowl of ice cream and going “still waiting for someone to convince me to eat healthy on MY terms.”
Your comment is contrarian since you presumably agree that there are benefits of exercise. Maybe you’re trying to convince yourself that your level or exertion is enough?
I mean that's one of the reasons keto is so popular. For a lot of people they manage to lose weight while being able to enjoy what they eat while they'd have trouble sticking to better diets. There's obviously draw backs and if they eat only bacon a keto diet isn't going to help them but if they do keto "right" it's an improvement for them.
Giving alternatives to marginally improve might be more useful than a tough love aproach of saying "Since you know the best thing to do, if you don't want to do it that's on you".
In that vein some things that may improve the amount of exercise you do:
Joining social sports club, the focus may be more on wining/improving skills/social aspect than exercise and so may help take focus off the unenjoyable part and a commitment to your group/team/opponent may be more motivating than a commitment to themselves for some people.
Walking/cycling desk setup. An initial outlay in cost but if it's there and you're doing it while concentrating on something else it might be a significant improvement.
Setting an alarm/timer to do a set of weights or squats every hour or so, stops your muscles atrophing if nothing else and will mean when you do purposfully exercise your not immediately discouraged by how sore you are 1 minute into it.
Any everyday routine you can more easily force into your day. Maybe a jog around the block/up and down apartment stairs before your morning shower. Or join the gym that is along your commute rather than the cheaper one that you need to purposefully drive/walk to. Maybe you listen to a chapter of audiobook while doing pallates as soon as you get home. Forming a habit has the highest initial cognitive load, quite often it's easier(not easy) to tie it to the begining of or end of another action you do everyday than it is to do something at a specific time.
I'm not in your camp, but I get where you're coming from. I used to be marginally active, trying to get a run in every now and then, but it sucked almost every time. I pushed and pushed and it still was terrible. Then I found sports / activities that I really liked. Hiking in nature, squash, rock climbing. The latter two feel more like games / puzzle to me, and while I am confronted with exertion, I get totally lost in the moment when doing them. I still run, it's still grueling, but I do it to be better at the things I love doing, which motivates me.
> tailored to someone with my neurological makeup that causes this dislike of useless exertion
Quite a lot to unpack here. I would argue the advice given is really good and valid for most people and so that's a good thing. I am sorry you feel under-represented and hope you find something valuable for yourself elsewhere.
Additionally I think lots of people find that they have to force themselves to start and finish a workout and only some eventually come to learn to like it. But for many it starts as a chore like preparing food or doing laundry or taking a shower. It costs time and effort and often hurts. And people can go for a while without any of those but it usually has consequences which are usually worse in the long run than the initial invest.
You seem to have a fairly static view of who "you" are. I used to be in the camp of "my body is just a vehicle for my brain" camp and did not understand why I would exercise at all since I was always skinny (but also super weak) and my mind was what I was working with. And then my grandpa told me: "A healthy mind likes to reside in a healthy body" and that took a few years to really sink in. And now I realize that pushing myself through regular workouts and making myself deliberately suffer exhaustion, fatigue and pain makes me more happy, stable and relaxed in general and I even think of myself as a fit athletic person now and made that part of my identity.
And lastly I am kind of curious about a thing: You said that you only want to do it when it's attached to a game. So if you share the notion that exercise is good and you already know that this is how it's easier for you to do it, then why not focus on exercises which are also games. There are so many of them. And for everyone else who does not need or want a game, meditating or doing yoga seems to be another great venue to start.
I agree that it's very annoying when people give you advice that you have no intention of following, and them being "right" only makes it more annoying.
For me, past age 40, it was transformative finding a neurodivergent personal trainer and getting into weightlifting (yes, this is a cliche, everyone is doing it). Having an appointment and working with somebody makes me actually do it.
It's not always euphoric. I would like to make the too-obvious point that exercise is often really tiring. But the feeling of power and capability can be really valuable at times, even if it's fragile and physically contingent.
I see where you're coming from. Over the past two decades, I tried different sports like going to the gym, jogging, swimming, body pump, etc. but never stuck because it was just a not fun. In the past 5 years, I've discovered at-home Yoga (on YouTube, I hate in-person classes), hiking on weekends, and going for 2-3 km walks after lunch each day.
What works for me might not work for you, but my broader point is that exercise != exercise. Try to find something that you like, and that you can fit into your schedule. Even if it's only a 15 min walk each day, during which you can e.g. listen to music or a podcast, reflect, do some people watching just or do nothing.
Changing your tires and doing an oil change also sucks, not doing it will suck way more in the long run.
I exercise, not because I like it but because it's the right thing to do. Whatever misery you feel while doing it will be a fraction of the misery you'll feel when your body will give up on you if you don't do it.
It's an investment in the future, probably the single most beneficial investment you can make actually
> Changing your tires and doing an oil change also sucks, not doing it will suck way more in the long run.
Even for those people who feel the "meat-mecha" disconnection, the mecha benefits from maintenance.
"For Case, who’d lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he’d frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh." -- Neuromancer, 1984 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/293994/neuromancer-b...
Well, investment in longer happier life, and for the guys the feeling of strength and full control of one's body is pretty significant upgrade too. It changes mental perspective on just about anything in long run too.
Yes, if the worst decisions in life can be ie smoking cigarettes or being lazy couch potato, the best is easily to work out somehow, anyhow.
I would recommend trying sport climbing or gym bouldering. I had a very similar mindset of not being interesting or engaging for a longer period of time, but bouldering for me finaly hit the right combination of a "gamified" excercise that kept my attention for years.
> Just to add my contrarian two cents to a comment section that is otherwise mostly the former.
Your comment isn't particularly contrarian, and agrees mostly with the article. It says consistently throughout the article that the type of exercise doesn't matter, and that people should do exercise they enjoy, and tailor their choices towards their own personal wellbeing needs.
If DDR is what gets you going, then have at it (dancing is specifically highlighted in the article as beneficial). If yoga doesn't work for you, don't do it.
I’m of the same mindset as you. I’m amazed at people who can tolerate even 30 minutes of “normal” exercise, because every time I try to lift weights or go running, my brain is screaming at me the entire time to please for the love of god find literally any other occupation. I’ve tried accompanying exercise with music, podcasts, books, TV to no avail. Anyone suggesting yoga or meditation for this does not understand the issue at hand—yoga is the worst offender!
Acknowledging my broken brain, I avoid taking my car anywhere that I could reasonably walk or bike, because having a destination makes the exercise easier. And I’ve leaned in heavily to DDR, creating a semi-permanent station for it in my basement, complete with balance bar. If not for those things I would have nary an ounce of muscle on my body.
Doing exercise for exercise's sake is difficult for me too. I'm lucky that my work is a half hour bike ride, and this is faster than catching public transport (though not quite as fast as driving). That's enough to motivate me to ride to and from work most days. Plus for me it's the most enjoyable mode of transport - the speed combined with the immediacy of your surroundings, being able to hear and smell everything. And it's mostly free (barring initial purchase and maintenance costs, which are minimal).
It gets my heartrate up, though I don't ride every day, so I'm not sure if I'm reaching the threshold for the recommended amount of exercise. But it's better than nothing.
Not sure if you are open to it, but try mountain biking at some point. Go rent a MTB somewhere with some good trails and see where it takes you. I used to be able to get myself in the gym, but now I can't stand it because it's boring to me.
I purchased both a Hybrid and MTB bike one year and haven't turned back. I use a lot of Strava - compete against myself, friends and strangers. My thirst for competition is filled, plus I'm in extremely great cardio shape.
What is the definition of “you”? If I may ask. if your identity is mostly mental, I can see why any bodily exertion might seem less “you”. This is coming from someone who was in his head a lot. Most people don’t even realize it that they are.
I feel very similar to you. Exercise is boring. And not the "I have to do the dishes and then the washing" boring. Real mind-numbing boredom.
So I've taken up hand tool only woodworking as a hobby. It keeps me active and allows me to trick myself into learning a new skill and having fun while making sure I won't die in 10 years time.
Exercise sucks, it really, really sucks. So work out some other thing that is exercise-like and try and trick yourself.
For me that's cycling and kayaking, alternating every day. I had tried running just because it's convenient and requires very little gear, but found it incredibly boring. But many of my friends absolutley love running. So asking others might help with some ideas, but ods are, you'll prefer something else.
Cycling and kayaking are great, but they don't deliver the repetitive impacts necessary to maintain high bone mineral density as we age. Have to add other sports to that mix.
Wait, the impact is beneficial? I've been worrying about running out of cartilage in my knees throughout my life. I had considered running to be a limited time thing that will just run out at some point.
The impact is beneficial and running won't damage your knees, at least if you're at a healthy weight. But other sports such as weight training, rucking, or certain martial arts might be more beneficial than running from a bone mineral density standpoint.
I am affected quite badly by ADHD and related anxiety/depression issues. Absolutely get out there and do some exercise. There are so many benefits it's untrue. I exercise every day and I think it's one of the most important things I do.
That said, don't expect magic. There are no silver bullets. I often see people asking about ADHD and related issues being told to go out an exercise. In my experience you'll be a slightly fitter, slightly healthier, slightly happier person with the same ADHD issues as before. Absolutely go do it, but keep your expectations realistic.
The article does not answer the question. (I don't believe there is a straightforward best answer but the article does not so much as make a conjecture beyond the most obvious prerequisites.)
It's burried in the article, but it's there: exact type doesn't matter, higher intensity / making you breath harder is better, dimminishing returns above 2.5 hours per week.
stronger than diminishing returns - negative returns
Depression
Four reviews42 44 57 58 presented analyses by weekly session duration (68 component RCTs, >5016 participants, online supplemental eFigure 12). The median SMD for ≤150 min/week and >150 min/week was –0.58 (IQR=–0.77 to –0.30) and –0.29 (IQR=–0.40 to –0.07), respectively.
Anxiety
One review58 provided analyses by weekly session duration (17 component RCTs, online supplemental eFigure 13). The median SMDs for <150 min/week and ≥150 min/week were –1.23 and –0.99, respectively.
I am inclined to agree with them. Things really started looking up for me when I was doing about 90 minutes of one exercise and 2-3 hours a week of a second.
I definitely got the impression that this was working better than when I rode 15-25 hours a week, and there were definite diminishing returns with walking for distance. Not unlike how the first few bites of a candy bar are most of your experience and then at the end you’re mostly just finishing it. After the second or third bite it’s all downhill.
15-25 hours a week? What the heck were you doing? The cumulative fatigue had to be insane, and if you were chasing a goal, it'd be easy for that to get in your head.
For me I find ~3 hours a week are what I need to feel good. As things ramp up (like they tend to in the summer) I tend to need those big rides, but if I do have to back off (say, winter) then as long as I don't go below an hour every other day, I'm good.
I get that, but that's like 3-5 hour days most of the day of the week. I ride a lot myself, but those numbers would start interfering with normal life stuff for me.
More like 10-14 hours on the weekend and 90 minutes a couple of weeknights (plus prep time, like riding across town to meet your club).
"Bicycle widows" is the term for spouses of cyclists who disappear at 7 am on weekends and don't reappear until after 1 pm, at which point they're stinky and exhausted, so they're useless until about 3 pm.
The thing with casual cyclists of a certain age (my club's demographic) is that they like to eat long lunches. So you might be making a respectable 16 mph for hours at a time and then a trip to a diner tanks your average mph. Club riders tend to go for distance, not speed. On a good day those guys would average 11+ mph door to door. Most days was closer to 10.
If you're prepping for a century, I believe the protocol we used for new cyclists was to ride more than 75% of the target distance on the previous Saturday and more than 65% miles on Sunday. And a lot of that is just ensuring your body can handle the amount of friction you're going to deal with in 100 miles. If it was just the serious members, it was more like 80/70. You're likely going to go slower on day 2, so however long it takes you to do 80 miles, it takes about that long to do 70 the next day.
I would not suggest anyone try to go much more than 100 miles (my longest day was 112, and my dad went out after to round up to 115). After I went to college my dad got into 24 hour challenges, which seemed properly nuts to me, and it turns out actually is. Ultra-endurance athletes can damage their heart, leading to atrial fibrillation, which he got. He's been living post-stroke for about 8 years now. He was volunteering some place and was fortunate the guy standing behind him when he went down was a retired EMT.
that's not how i understand the term "high intensity." jogging makes me pant, but i wouldn't call it high intensity, because i can do it for twenty minutes.
high intensity would be work you can do for only maybe a minute, not twenty, and as a result it won't keep your heart rate elevated very long.
so if they're basically saying 30 minutes 5 days a week, that's low intensity exercise.
Low intensity shouldn't involve panting at all, because low intensity exercises are designed for people with specific health issues where anything above slight exercise is dangerous to them. [consider: significant osteoperosis, serious heart disease, etc] Stretching is low intensity exercise.
Also, an exercise you can only keep up for 20 minutes at a time is pretty high intensity.
I like mountain biking on very technical tracks, I can't really think of anything other than the track, it requires full attention. I like that. Put me on a speed cycle (not sure what the English word is), it gets boring, my mind starts to wander, I don't even remember what route I took.
Exactly, there’s something about the forced attention. I’ve upgraded my flat-bottom touring kayak to a faster one that’s kind of narrow and tippy and it forces me to think about my technique and movement a lot. Compared to my older boat, the trips have gotten much less sightsee-y but at the same time more relaxing.
This sport didn't really click for me. I think I'm just not coordinated enough for it. No sport has left me bruised and bloody and just mentally broken like mountain biking has. I also didn't really enjoy the experience of having to sit on an extremely bumpy bike for hours on end. To each their own, though - I am jealous that folks get to enjoy a sport that takes them deep into the beauty of nature.
I live in the Netherlands, we still call it mountain biking because of the bike but yeah... [0]. Mostly it gets technical on single tracks. Not nearly as dangerous as in real mountains I presume. This is typical: [1]
I imagine that would be a little better. Last time I went mountain biking was in Sedona, AZ - extremely stressful. You're biking up narrow mountain passes, and if you fall, decent chance you fall directly onto a cactus. I'm a clumsy guy, and I prefer for the consequences for my clumsiness to be like spillage, not impalement.
No Semis, Brodozers or Soccer mom SUVs on mountain bike rides. Road biking is unacceptably risky. Not judging, it’s the other people on the road who I don’t trust.
For anyone looking to start exercising, try a rowing machine. It’s practically a shortcut to getting in shape and building muscle (when done with proper form and pushing yourself).
Even 5 minutes of HARD rowing a day and you’ll see amazing results.
Exactly! The best purchase of 2020 was the Concept2 after I was certain I'm will not go back to the gym for another winter due to covid.
It's very convenient, weather independent, joint-stress free, measurable with an app and multitasking-friendly! I just attach an iPad there, get the noise-cancelling headphones and row for an hour with my YouTube playlist that I fill regularly.
For Concept2, be sure to add additional cushions, my a.. hurts after 30 minutes without them, and after 1.5h with...
I do kind of the opposite and focus on 2-3 sets of 500m as hard as possible (with perfect form of course). My average is around 2:04, and the difference between that and even 2:14 is incredible. I could go for 1,000+m easily at a 2:14 pace but feel like I'm about to collapse after a single 2:04 set... It's helped me stay in incredible cardio shape and has built a lot of my leg muscle.
Agreed - with the start of Covid I manage to buy a Concept 2 (which wasn't easy - they were all sold out and you had to pay premium for used ones on Marketplace) but this is the best purchase ever. Since 2020, I managed to lower my hr, improve overall fitness for other sports I do and in general much happier. On my way to sub-20 min 5k, yay
Ditto! It's kind of an acquired taste. It's kind of tedious. But it's a full-body workout in one motion, more than running or cycling. It's a great way to dose yourself with exercise if you're short on time or the weather isn't good outside. I appreciate the mindful aspects of maintaining form, controlling my breath, and pushing myself to finish a workout. I basically never have a _bad_ day after rowing 5000 meters.
The last part of the article has the best takeaways IMO.
Start slow, find something that you enjoy. Escalate as and when you can.
Too many people think of exercise as like, get on the treadmill and run as hard as you can and make yourself feel like shit to the extent that you can't go again for a week. The vast majority of people, even people who train hard, don't do things like that.
Indoor climbers are all software engineers in some cities. In Seattle and San Francisco in particular, nearly everyone I meet there is also a software engineer. The gyms are so expensive that they are the only ones who can afford it with FAANG subsidies.
Outdoor though you're right, totally different demographic and very few of them are software engineers.
I climb, but I doubt 5% of hacker news does. In fact, among software engineers (few of whom rock climb in my experience), I suspect the ones who climb are less likely to be on HN
If all my joints worked the way I would like I’d be spending half as much time talking about my hobbies online. It’s what I do in the in between times.
A lot of people are saying Jiu Jitsu. I'd actually extend that to most contact martial arts. I wrestled in high school and it was fucking brutal. In fact, wrestling made me appreciate my life a lot more, because it's so much easier than wrestling. They call it "the most fun you never want to have again".
The grueling, daily, multi-hour practices... the extreme physical conditioning required to succeed... the extremely nerve-wracking matches, especially the lead up to them... honestly, my FAANG job is a total joke compared to the difficulty of this stuff. I think wrestling prepared me quite well for life.
Could the same be said for serious student-athletes (e.g. Division 1)? My understanding is that most Div1 collges have pretty stringent/strict minimum training schedules in order to maintain scholarships and team slots.
> Any exercise is much much better than sitting around for hours researching and reading articles about which exercise would be best.
This is true if you're going to exercise once. On the other hand, finding an exercise that's good for you and that you can keep with might be worth investing some time, because you can use this knowledge for years. Even a 10 hour research project is only .75 minutes per workout when amortized over 2 years of 4x per week workouts.
It's not exercise (outside the hiking) but ... camping is amazing and a great start if you're not inclined to do much. Limited responsibilities, and the responsibilities you do have (cooking, staying warm, not dying) help sort of reset some biological imperative that gets lost when you're entirely too comfortable at home on the couch.
Any form of cycling really clears my head. The sensory stimulation, the forced focus, the sense of freedom, it's wonderful.
When I was less wise, I remember suggesting exercise to someone suffering from depression.
Didn't go so well.
You reach an unfortunate point when depressed that makes it difficult to listen to actually useful advice. It's an unfortunate state of mind to say the least.
Someone tells you about something that absolutely commands their total attention.
It's of very little consequence to you. You suggest they try something /obvious/. It's reasonable to assume they might have considered it.
How is that going to be perceived positively as a suggestion? Do you think it possible?
For someone with major depression, maybe it's like suffering from major arterial bleeding and we suggest an band-aid because it "can help stop bleeding"
>It's always worth a try to encourage someone to take that first step.
Sure, absolutely. While keeping in mind it may not even be possible today. If it is the obvious way may be counter-productive. And the road to hell being paved the way it is, accidentally kicking the crap out of someone who is well and truly down is probably worth at least trying to avoid.
I am very sorry that you went through that. Your experience may not translate universally to those afflicted with the wide variety of ailments that are all referred to as depression.
The problem with advice is that it comes from someone in a different position. The depressed person might not be able to actually perform the suggestion due to lack of energy or other factors.
Encouraging someone who needs exercise to exercise is almost always met with a dismissive attitude from my experience. They view it as thinly veiled insult. Might as well call them fat or lazy or dumb. People can be incredibly sensitive.
I get inermittent extreme anxiety, for a reason I'm unaware of. However regular gym and running helps with it immensely. It's just difficult to sometimes go to the gym while being so very anxious...
I haven’t been able to get more than four hours of sleep a night for 50 years and it’s fucking agonizing. Whatever you think I haven’t tried, I’ve probably tried it, unfortunately. Sleep schedules, meditation, melatonin, light cardio, heavy cardio, lifting weights, reduce screen time, mask, manual labor, every sleep drug on the market, etc. About once every two or three years I get 6-7 hours and I feel like a god.
> The benefits of exercise might not be immediate, says Singh, but they should show up within weeks or months. Beyond that, the longer people engaged in exercise, the less beneficial it became for their mental health. This may be because they were sticking to the program less, due to waning motivation or, perhaps, injury. It could also be because the exercise itself began to feel less novel and more repetitive.
This is exactly why I use a Quest 2 / pro to workout. When you’re killing zombies, fighting ninjas, or boxing fighters, working out is almost always novel. I’m just playing VR video games, which is why it’s easy to keep a routine even after 3 years
I hope Apple Vision can provide this benefit to people who are still skittish about even trying the current generation of VR headsets
Les Mills Body combat - trainer guided workout where you can compete against player recorded avatars
FitXR - trainer guided workout where you can compete against player recorded avatars. Subscription only but has HIIT, boxing, and dance workouts
Ninja Legends - you’re fighting ninjas
Knockout League - Punch Out in VR with lots of variety
synth riders - music rhythm game that has a lot of variety on its own
Holopoint - shooting targets with bow and arrow. Lots of moving and dodging involved
Mothergunship forge - bullet hell shooter. Lots of dodging
Pistol Whip - bullet hell music rhythm game. Lots of dodging like Neo
Path of the Warrior - double dragon in VR
Until You Fall - slashing sword game
GORN - gladiator game
Creed - another boxing game
Punch Fit - minimalist boxing training game
Racket NX - racket ball inside a dome
Rezzil Player - lots of mini workouts like heading soccer balls
Stride - mirrors edge in VR
I tend to rotate these games, but I always try out new games for novelty.
There’s also a lot of games where you can walk or jog in place like Fallout or Skyrim that I didn’t count here. Not to mention a fighting game and soccer game with full body tracking that’s PCVR only
I do, but jogging the same streets and trails gets boring. It’s doesn’t have the variety and novelty that VR AR offers. It’s hard to understand this if you haven’t used it beyond 5 minutes.
In the Bay Area, we’re blessed with multiple nature preserves that are beautiful and stunning, but it takes me 20-40 minutes one way just to drive to one so those hikes tend to be limited to weekends. With AR VR, I can instantly just workout in my living room. It’s a big time saver
It’s also really easy to make excuses not to do it eg it’s raining, it’s too dark, the air isn’t good today etc…
How can you be so sure? You haven’t used current gen VR enough to even make that strong of an assertion, right?
Yes, I do enjoy the alternatives you’ve listed, but they are expensive in terms of time and coordination. I just don’t always have that time during the weekdays and even on some weekends, and neither do my friends and family.
There’s also the pollution aspect since not everyone has good public transit or lives close enough to a gym or court to bike
Also we might have the privilege of being able to afford a personal trainer, but what about other people?
Find a sport you like. Exercising shouldn’t be a chore. Even playing pickleball with friends will get your heart and lungs working, and wont require any willpower.
The benefits of exercise are abundant and I don't know many that would argue against that. If exercise is so beneficial to the whole being, why is it such a difficult thing for us to implement regularly on a long-term basis? Even during periods of life where I've been in a good routine with working out, there still seems to be some sort of internal resistance to going to "do the thing."
The brain tries to minimize energy expenditure due to evolutionary factors and only wants to expend energy if absolutely necessary. Therefore you need to trick your brain into doing the right thing.
Sure that happens to everyone at times. Even champion ultra marathon runner David Goggins talked about sitting and staring at his running shoes for 30 minutes before he could force himself to get out the door. I find it helpful to set up fixed schedules and create some sort of accountability to a coach or teammates. That way there's no decision making involved in the moment, you just go out and execute the plan.
I’d never seen “an overview of systematic reviews” before — I would have thought this was already common sense, but it should be now more than ever.
I was a little confused about the “less is better” part of the article. I think it just meant diminishing returns with more exercise, but it says that less is actually better.
Once you're exercising (training) a lot then it starts to feel like you need to do it, and you need to do enough of it and do it in the right way. I'm a cyclist, and I know that I'm grumpy/irritable/depressed if I haven't ridden. If I have a particularly tough session to do that day it can sometimes feel like a weight around my neck.
WHO recommends at least an hour of moderate+ activity per day which virtually nobody with an office job in the 1st world manages to do. The notion that you could accidentally do too much exercise is ridiculous unless you go all-in-gym-bro.
>virtually nobody with an office job in the 1st world manages to do
An hour or more of moderate activity per day? Dunno about that impossibility of one hour. Perhaps you're talking about some hectic Amazon-style working environmen,t or people that just had babies, or commute for 1 hours each way?
> Should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity throughout the week, or do at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity, or an equivalent combination of both.
> For additional health benefits, adults should increase their moderate-intensity physical activity to 300 minutes per week, or equivalent.
> Muscle-strengthening activities should be done involving major muscle groups on 2 or more days a week.
The statement was referring to mental health. The data is clear for things like cardio that more is always better. I’d never heard that less (read 2.5 he/wk) is a sweet spot for mental health.
I force myself to commute to work by bike. That is about 30 minutes one way. But I can not do it under bad weather conditions. Also not in freezing winter or hot summer.
I've read sudoku bing good exercise to avoid early deterioration as you age--use it or lose it. I find Go (board game) to be more interesting and develops a lot of cross-transferable skills outside of only games or memory. Playing StarCraft 2 is also a fun(?) way of maintaining speed.
Aji is my favorite concept from Go. In Go is it common for a failure to persist on the board. There are better moves, and some fights have to be won twice if you capture, so it’s better to leave them until the end.
But Aji is attacking near a loss, turning the loss into a win (very, very rarely, resurrecting the dead pieces). The existence of a failure on the board can put pressure on neighboring areas, and they can still sometimes be turned to a redemption story. Lose ten stones here but gain 8 nearby. Still a loss but maybe enough to win the overall game.
> The benefits of exercise might not be immediate, says Singh, but they should show up within weeks or months. Beyond that, the longer people engaged in exercise, the less beneficial it became for their mental health. This may be because they were sticking to the program less, due to waning motivation or, perhaps, injury. It could also be because the exercise itself began to feel less novel and more repetitive.
Not mentioned here that I think should be considered is how much of the benefit was just due to _novelty_. If the effect wears off over time then at least part of it may be going out and doing something different.
It’s a bit cliche at this point thanks to people like Joe Rogan, but Jiu Jitsu is, imo, the best possible form of exercise.
It’s not only physically exhausting, it’s also mentally very difficult. And not just because it requires deep levels of knowledge to be good, but it also resets any preconceived notions of strength. It’s not uncommon for a new white belt male that weighs 200lbs to get absolutely waxed by a 100lbs brown belt female. I see it happen all the time. Of course, as you belt up, and gain more understanding of the sport, there are ways to utilize a size and strength advantages. But that’s secondary to knowledge.
I kind of detest the sweaty grappling part of it all. It's what turned me off of Krav Maga and MMA. Personally I prefer exercising in solitude, so long distance running and weight lifting.
I keep trying to tell people this. Jiu Jitsu is like playing chess and your limbs are the pieces, it is a serious mental and physical workout.
Though don't discount other forms of martial arts, the amount of mental effort in kickboxing is still high, the coordination needed to be planning your foot work and balance out 2 or 3 moves in advance is non-trivial and that alone can take years to master!
(Also IMHO kickboxing is a more intense workout than rolling, my opinion consisting of a polar heart rate monitor strapped to my chest ;) )
Judo is even better, as you also learn how to throw people from your feet rather than starting on the ground all the time, and you pretty much have to lift weights off the mat to stay competitive.
BJJ does not start on the ground as standard, let alone "all the time". Matches start standing, and if you are only training from the ground you are missing out. That's not to say that stand-up and takedown training aren't much more in-depth in judo than in jiu-jitsu, though.
An ideal combo is submission wrestling combined with BJJ, you'll find MMA gyms train this way.
As someone who used to train at an MMA gym, going to a pure BJJ gym is weird because yeah, I'll shrimp out, get up to my feet, and my training partner is sitting there on their knees waiting for me to re-engage and my first thought is "this would be a great time for a kick to that completely unprotected noggin right there..."
Of course once on the ground, the BJJ peeps dominate, which is what UFC spent 3 decades demonstrating!
I'm on the unfortunate side of having panic disorder. Some exercise, like weightlifting can trigger panic attacks due to the sudden spike in adrenaline. Steady-state cardio is usually fine.
I recently stopped doing exercise in the morning. I found that it spikes my dopamine too high too soon which makes it harder to work. I wonder if anyone has studied this...
I’m in the same camp as you. I still exercise because I can’t see myself not exercising; plus I know it’s benefiting me physically.
For some reason I really dislike casual talk amongst people about this subject. When people causally give simple solutions to their depression I wonder if they were actually “clinically depressed.” Or they say X helped but forgot to mention they were also on drug Y and seeing a therapist Z many times a week.
My favorite internet depression cure is travel.
The only thing more consistent than the benefits exercise has brought to my mental health, is the strange irrational hatred some people have for the idea that it can help.
Yeah it's complicated. I guess an analogy could be like walking up to a fat person and shouting, "Calories in, calories out, bro!".
Simply, it's not helpful. Fat people know they're fat because they have a caloric surplus. They've tried eating less. They're not stupid.
I think the defensiveness people exhibit is a byproduct of their cumulative reactions to a bunch of unsolicited advice. My own (unsolicited) advice would be: don't give people advice, unless they specifically ask for it. I can guarantee you that every depressed person on the planet has heard that exercise is good for your mental health. Instead, you can say something like, "I'm very sorry that you're having a hard time. I want you to know that you're important to me, and if there's ever anything I can do to help, let me know"
2.5 hours a week is insanely low for any young person in good health. I'm positive that at least 8-12 hours of determined, physically intensive training compared to a measly 2.5 hours of "exercise" per week will do a hell of a lot better for anyone's mental health than treating the usage of one's body as somehow secondary to the "knowledge based" work we're all forced to do to make a decent living in modern society.
The latest recommendation is at least 16 hours of at least moderate physical activity per day. Basically, be moving from the time you wake up to the time you sleep, like our ancient ancestors. Turns out that's what the body evolved to optimize for.
>Higher intensity physical activity was associated with greater improvements in symptoms.
Haven't read the whole study, but i assume people with fewer symptoms of X are able and motivated to exercise more because they have fewer symptoms.. And the article is just inventing the most interesting causal link for a study that doesn't travel far from correlation?
Graduated high school almost at the bottom of my class, nearly didn't graduate. Working out changed my life. I recently graduated summa cum laude with my degree in data science while working multiple jobs, taking on a minimum of 18 credits each semester. Some of my best semesters were when I was extra consistent with my workout routine.
I never liked the gym, but I do three things in terms of exercise regularly: yoga, walk, and tennis. I like playing tennis way more than doing yoga and walk, and I look forward to it so much. But I'm only able to do yoga and walk daily, playing tennis has way more friction, so I can only do it a few times per week.
I would fully expect that exercise done socially would have direct mental benefits. Even if it is just having someone to exchange hello. Indeed, the suggestion of an "exercise buddy" seems lined up in that direction.
I am interested in knowing if my thinking on the benefits of socializing are out of date, on this.
It could be a factor, but it's also worth noting the full extent of the effects of the hormonal changes during and post-pregnancy still aren't well understood. Estradiol messes even with your body's usage of adenosine for petesake
Dunno, I was in Taekwondo as a kid and it made my anxiety worse, because I was always watched by my parents or had to do the moves in certain way. Could not do exercise on my own, and school was already lonesome.
Exercise makes me irritable and miserable. I've tried large amounts and medium amounts, obvs small amounts are included in daily life. My kids are similarly effected. One size does not fit all.
Not really a fan of most exercise . find it tiring and repetitive. but i tried windsurfing a long time ago and found it exhilarating.. maybe i need to try that again.
They don't say you needed to do a lot (in fact they say that you get best results by NOT doing too much). There's a bevy of feel good effects that fall outside of just being "too tired".
Did you read the article? It says 2.5 hours per weeks is the sweet spot. Spread between 4-5 session. Hardly enough to exhaust you to the point of not being able to have negative thoughts.
I think you are learning different skills as you explore different forms of exercise. As you develop those habits of exercise and connection to people, you are able to answer the call of depression with walking one day, running the second day, doing Yoga the third day, cycling the 4th day, communicating with people and so on.
It’s no that you won’t face depression and anxiety but now you have groked the skills in your body, you are able to answer it with action and not just give mental arguments.
They are complementary for me. The way my body recruited my lats when running hills taught me how to knit the top and bottom together when I squat. The mind-muscle that squats woke up in my hip flexors carried over to foot placement in ice skating.
We are learning more about mind body connections and this is very not true (the ways the vagus nerve can totally fuck with your mental state is terrifying, and there are people with dysfunctions that are five times worse).
Any exercise where you think about your body as “you” helps with the dysphoria, and being integrated helps with a whole lot of other things.
Especially for men, who are conditioned to not give themselves permission to have feelings and sensations affect their behavior (and then surprise! Are affected anyway, with zero attempts at healthy coping skills).