My mind: initial resistance, I don't really wanna do it. Whatever I started it. Okay, focus on the circle. Wow this feels like it's taking a while. Oh I wonder how other people would react to being presented this. Some people would probably expect it to be some sort of scare jump prank. Back to focusing on the circle. What was the page called again? eyes go to URL bar Oh right, one minute focus. This is distracting I'll just start counting. 1, 2, [...], 42. Oh it finished.
Perfect! Your experience is the exact experience hoped for.
Many people give up on learning to meditation because they cannot clear their mind for X minutes straight. Their mind runs away, and they must bring it back to focus. They see this as failure.
Yet, this is exactly what is expected. How else to learn the invaluable skill of refocusing after distraction. If staring at a circle was so stimulating you never got distracted, then you would have no chance to build your focus muscles.
Note: this comment is mostly about the first steps into meditation. I learned this idea from Shinzo Young.
Some people give up because their brains simply don't work that way.
I decided to start going to a therapist for some issues I've encountered over the years. He took my background information and immediately dove into an entire diatribe about meditation. Without addressing a single thing I actually said. The thing is, I've attempted meditation over the years. Not only had I already read all of his recommended source material AND watched the videos he recommended, but I knew other sources that I rattled off to him as well, including entire books on controlled breathing. I spent 2 years with it and never got anywhere.
It does not work for me and I'm not putting myself through it again. I've got three or four separate trains of thought going on at all times. It's impossible to put a cork in all of them, it isn't helpful, and it's about as useful as prayer is to an atheist.
Asking someone who has been abused as a child to instead stare into the abyss is a cop-out. Meditation as a solution to depression and anxiety doesn't bring me calm. It makes me angry.
Yes, this. There's almost an inverse "no true Scotsman" element to the way mindfulness and meditation are taught and spoken about. No such thing as failure, no such thing as doing it correctly, doing it at all is better than not doing it. All based on the unproven premise that it's a positive thing for everyone and/or that everyone will be able to get stronger at it with practice. Seemingly no consideration to divergent neurotypes, psychological trauma, physical limitations, or deep cultural differences.
It reminds me of: years ago I came across a book profiling the journey of a young western Jewish man seeking a path in Zen Buddhism, studying under gurus with other seekers in monasteries. As he progressed through his meditative practice he couldn't avoid feeling unsettled by the sense that none of it was "working" for him no matter how deeply he understood and how much he practiced. The gurus all just kept trying to help him improve his practice. Until he came to the most enlightened and compassionate guru who basically let him off the hook, saying, in essence, that this stuff will never stick to him and that he's just meant to practice Judaism.
For those who think this is a cop out; it is known that for most people the ability to learn new languages changes around puberty. The ability to learn, recognize and pronounce phonemes changes when kids are very young. Babies brains are flexible and can be shaped in many ways. Adults, not so much.
It is not impossible for all to learn this type of 'skill'. It is more difficult for many, and impossible for some.
My personal belief is that we retain the ability to learn new languages. The issue is that modern schooling has trained us to try and learn in counter-productive ways.
I believe we can learn languages by (1) concentrating on mimicking and (2) learning by speaking with others and being continuously corrected by others.
The problem is that is requires a tremendous amount of work for learner and teacher.
Think how a baby or child learns and do as much of that as possible.
Initially absolutely avoid all reading, and totally avoid learning any rules.
Improve your general ability of mimicking skills e.g. by copying singers and songs, by copying famous people in the foreign language, mimicking accents or people in your own mother tongue.
People with English as their mother tongue have some advantages - we actually recognise a huge variety of vowel sounds because various English accents contain them - we also have familiarity with a variety of grammatical constructs. We also know pronunciation and writing are completely disjoint: anyone coming from a language where you say what you read has a big disadvantage.
Much of my belief comes from talking with people that have English as their second language, and looking for their successes and failures. Some people learn English well and it's interesting to look for why them? Some mistakes are common to particular groups and it's interesting to look for the root cause.
I have applied some of the above to teach myself conversational Spanish. To test my beliefs I'm definitely keen to move onto something more difficult ( I'm middle aged): the block is that I will need to dedicate many months of effort living in another country.
Not so sure about that. For example, I noticed it takes a bit of effort to get native English speakers to pronounce the ы sound, or to get them to hear how the ь letter affects pronunciation.
I don't quite agree. I come from a language where the spelling is almost phonetic (so, not totally disjoint from pronunciation), and it's very easy for children to learn reading and writing, which means they quickly move on to more important things. Meanwhile, children learning English as a first language are stuck memorising spelling and obscure rules and exceptions just to be able to write correctly. And conversely, when they hear a new word (or name) they need to look up how to spell it. I don't see an advantage, it's just a waste of energy.
It was relatively easy for me to learn the spelling of English words because I already knew a reasonable amount of French, so it was quite intuitive to spell "restaurant" or "renaissance". But for someone with English as a first language, I suspect it would have involved a lot of memorising.
But you are saying English speakers can learn it? How do Romance language speakers do? I'm just making a generalisation, which is not universal and there are plenty of vowel and consonant sounds English speakers really struggle to learn.
Absolutely: it is a serious downside of English and plenty of adults never learn to spell well. I have seen the advantages of saying it like it is spelled in Spanish. But that isn't relevant to my point that English speakers have a natural understanding that spelling is disjoint from pronunciation. It maybe doesn't help much - hearing English speakers saying words they have learnt from books is painful!
Secondly, many English speakers often try to pronounce foreign names correctly - another habit that teaches us pronunciation (a little!)
Agreed. I was pressured to meditate throughout childhood / adolescence. I’ve even spent a couple of weeks in a friggin’ ashram. It just doesn’t work for me. That’s fine, I have plenty of other ways to get into flow state, think deeply about things, be aware of my body, etc. It gripes, though, to be told yet again by random internet posters that I’m doing it wrong or ‘just haven’t tried hard enough’. People are different and different things work for different people, but meditation is way up there with lisp in its ability to attract people with sanctimoniously superior attitudes.
To you, what does it mean to “not work”? Or what would it mean for it to “work”?
I’ve meditated on and off, and find it sometimes helpful, but I can’t conceive of what it would mean for it to work, or not work.
I really appreciate George Haas as a meditation teacher. He specializes in those of us who are "f*cked up the most" (i.e. attachment disturbances)
Not trying to get you to try again, but I used to feel that way about meditation until someone pointed out the goal was not to be empty and not have thought. When you have a thought you just observe it and make note of it and go back to your breath or experience or body scan. Sometimes you will just have a billion thoughts and you can’t get past that. Other times, and the more you have a practice, this gets easier. Ultimately it’s not about meditation but being mindful as you go about your life, and that’s what you’re ultimately practicing when you are meditating. Good luck!
I'm sorry you've had that experience. It's not necessarily for everyone. And I kind of feel like with trauma therapists should do a better job making sure you've processed the trauma enough to face the darkest recesses of your mind in silence. So it sounds like that therapist wasn't the right one for you.
But for others who maybe have struggled with it but haven't entirely sworn it off, I wanted to offer the following thoughts.
I know you know this given your background, but for others reading, the point of meditation isn't to silence your mind. It's one of the most confusing things about meditation at first, and it often sends people into an anxiety feedback loop. People notice their mind isn't being silenced and start to feel like a failure for not silencing it, which makes their mind less silent etc. I have an anxious kid, and this fear feedback loop is the hardest part.
But really, stripping away the traditional/religious background, IMO the main thing is activating the parasympathetic nervous system in a controlled way. Putting aside relatively abnormal cases, if one is angry or anxious then one hasn't successfully activated the parasympathetic nervous system, even if one is sitting in a meditation posture and trying to focus on the breath. So this it's pretty easy to tell whether you're deploying this skill successfully.
From trial and error, I've found that asking people to breathe out slowly is the least error prone method to get people to successfully activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Sometimes it helps to take a breath, hold it for a few seconds and then breathe out slowly. Other methods, like telling people to take a deep breath I've found to be less effective and more prone to errors. (For example, some people try to breathe hard or fast or even hyperventilate).
Once you can do that reliably and habitually, then you can start promoting other skills, like watching your mind without judgment. But I'm not sure it helps to, for example, non-judgmentally watch yourself have a panic attack. So IMO the ability to step back from the brink should come first for a lot of people, and then the harder skills should be built on a foundation where you know you have the ability to intervene if you need to.
actually, meditation can bring the buried emotions to surface. perhaps you have buried your anger and it tries to surface. maybe do Osho's dynamic meditation. Not alone, it needs a group. I did all kinds of stuff and read books, years and years. And after I invested to group sessions it got 100% more efficient
This is what we say to our students. It'll run away. Just bring it back. It's OK.
The tool is great, BTW. Congrats. My only small gripe is the pulsation is too fast (for me). My relaxed breathe is 5 seconds inhale, 5 seconds exhale.
Was it my imagination or did the rate change? It seemed to slow down a bit at the end.
If it doesn't, that might be a good feature; a progressive slowdown and perhaps a config to change overall rate.
Yes, the rate slows down, but I start with 5/5 directly. I think it's a result of meditating for a long time.
Are we supposed to syncing breathing with the pulsing? Or are we just assuming that based on similar apps for breathing?
I think the pulsation is there to help regulate the breathing. Many people take fast and shallow breaths, esp. when they are stressed out.
Because evening out the speed and taking deeper breaths help calming down with a couple of mechanisms.
It seems to me it starts off a bit too fast. But I like the rate at which it slows.
After reading James Nestor's Breath, I went through the Oxygen Advantage certification for fun. Lots of studies that show that the 4/6 or 5/5 cadence (ten second round trip, leading to six breaths a minute) strongly improves heart rate variability and engages the parasympathetic nervous system.
OP had a cool idea -- wish it hit the 5/5 cadence.
Yes, this is a real block for lots of people. When I was teaching my children to meditate, I tried to head this off a bit by telling them "you'll probably find that your headvoice will keep chattering away at first. Let it. Don't really fight it. Just acknowledge without judgment, clear your mind again, and keep meditating. Your mind will grow quieter on its own as you practice more."
If I let my head voice chatter away, I never get the opportunity to clear my mind. The entire meditation session would simply become a sort of internal monologue, jumping from idea to idea.
What I meant by that is more "don't fight it", as in "don't let it dismay you, bring you stress, and don't judge the fact that it happens." That it happens is not a failure at all. It's normal. Just acknowledge and recenter.
When people first start meditating, they often find it very difficult to get a "quiet moment" and think that's a sign that they're doing something wrong or something isn't working. Neither of those things are true, and while you might get just a few seconds of "quiet" at first, as you practice more, that time will expand.
The basic point is that it's part of the normal progression (of anything, really). When you're doing anything new, you're going to suck at it at first and improve as you keep doing it. It's counterproductive to feel bad about the stage where you aren't good at it, and giving those judgemental feelings power can cause an unwarranted discouraging force.
The most useful analogy for me is that it is similar to lifting weights. You don't go to the gym and just hold a weight in tension for 60 minutes. You lift for a moment and relax for a moment, over and over and over. In meditation you're not (often) purposely "letting go" the way you do while lifting, but your brain will do that anyway. That's fine. The important thing is you engage again. Each time you detect your attention drifting and you bring it back to your practice is another "rep" of the workout. Hold it for as long as you can, and when you detect it's drifted again (as it will), you've already started another rep!
I'll share my ship trick.
This is for those of you that live by the bay. Needs a clear day but no Otis Redding song necessary.
Where I live it takes about a 20-30 mins for a ship that left the harbour to disappear over the horizon. As it leaves I can see all the details, the name of the ship, the containers or people. Lots to think about and observe. I don't take my eyes off it. Gradually it turns into a smaller and smaller square, and eventually a dot. All that it is, all the people and cargo and funnels become an ever smaller world. Somehow that grabs and keeps my focus.
Actually started to do it as an exercise for vision from too much screen time. Apparently it helps to focus on a distant object and I think... maybe... hmm... maybe it helps. But anyway, after a half hour of watching a dot vanish over the horizon, it leaves you with a _good_ feeling. Like I used to get from astronomy before moving to the city. YMMV.
Who is Shinzo Young? I just did a Google search for that name and this comment was the first thing to show up.
I believe it is Shinzen Young
Breathing slowly is a way to short circuit the mind.
Meditation in a nutshell.
Agreed. The powerful part is, “Back to focusing on the circle.”
And it's a bit like weight lifting. I started with just the bar. In several weeks I was lifting my body weight. You start with just one minute. Pretty soon it's effortless to calm your mind for several whenever you want.
That is an extraordinary rate of progression!
He could probably already lift that but was smart enough not to get hurt.
No I'm just very skinny. But in a sense also yeah I think I could have pulled that off without much training but yeah I'd get hurt.
Except I rarely think of goatsee when meditating
From Huberman's notes, I think we are suppose to match the expansion of the dot with an inhaling motion. The mechanics, iirc, is to increase oxygen to the brain by deliberate long inhales.
I hate timed controlled breathing exercises like that. The circle doesn't know the current oxygen needs of my body.
IMHO the whole point is your body also doesn't really know how fast it needs to breathe. Often when we're stressed we're taking fast, shallow breaths even if there's no real lion in the vicinity. By telling your body to breathe at X speed, you break the stress cycle
YMMV
My mileage does indeed vary. I always feel either oxygen-deprived or high on hyperventilation after.
Telling myself to breathe slower is fine. Just not at some predefined interval (or worse, whatever interval the yoga instructor feels like I should be breathing at)
This is kind of the basis of an entire field of yoga called Pranayama. Its translation varies, but can be roughly translated as breath control.
A lot of it is breathing slower, or faster than your body requires (including retention of breath, or holding with no air in the lungs), in order to elicit mental and physical states.
Another example of this is Wim Hof, where you over breathe intentionally and then hold the breath for extended periods.
Breath is a really interesting topic, being an autonomous system for the most part, but one which we can take voluntary control over.
If you are interested in learning more, I'd recommend the book "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art" by James Nestor.
Edit: After trying the meditation, I also found it was a little quick if I was trying to sync my breathing to the dot. It may be intentional if the aim is to improve focus and alertness for an upcoming task, rather than relaxation!
Thank you. Yes. I do too. I had asthma pretty bad as a child, and rate-limiting my air intake, or really in any way trying to ensure that my breathing is meeting some spec, is super stressful for me.
You can breathe deeper or shallower to control that.
Maybe that's the point. Because you have to follow a certain timing, your body is not on autopilot anymore, so you have to be conscious of your oxygen needs, maybe even adjust them (for example, by calming down).
My mind: (1) Open that page for about 3 seconds, (2) go back to HN, (3) skim through the comments, (4) realizing the irony, (5) commenting on that
Damn, i did the exact same...
Try it again, this time keep in mind that your previous record was focusing for 3 seconds. I try to convince myself an effort is precisely as pathetic as it sounds.
Aim to make it all the way to 6 seconds. Tell yourself this is a major accomplishment for you - a 100% improvement.
Then you need to take a break, have something to eat. Stretch your muscles, do some shadow boxing and see how far you can make it beyond 12 seconds.
Scream inside your head, YES I'VE MADE IT!
The other thought processes deserve to be mocked like this.
One of the biggest obstacles to any kind of mind-body practice is the sense that you NEED TO DO SOMETHING ELSE RIGHT NOW. It's a mental habit a lot of us build up over a life full of being busy with various tasks and concerns.
The way I get through it is to remind myself that the only reason to avoid doing anything is fear of death, and I know for sure that sitting here for 1 minute will not kill me, therefore I have no reason not to force myself to just do it.
I save comments from time to time that seem sort of obvious but still resonate with me, and this is one such comment. Thanks! :)
I was thinking about a potential jump scare during the process and it makes me wonder if that's relegated to a specific generation (young gen x and older millenails). The early internet was chock full of things that tried to jump scare you. lol
There's a countdown in light grey at the bottom.
Ha. I was bracing for a jump scare also.
The stream-of-thought reminded me of this depiction of meditation: https://www.sippan.se/_images/meditation.jpg :)
Basically how I felt in my ADHD assessments. ‘You won’t get me. I know what you are testing for. Hold the line. Hold. Oh, that’s why a sort is an expensive database function! Ooops’