I despise it. But it’s the new thing, and there’s a lot of promotion of this “mindfulness” nonsense. Yeah, it makes you feel better, which is a good thing, but so does prayer, and acupuncture, and petting a puppy, and taking long walks on the beach. That something might have subjective effects is useful — we all do things that are enjoyable, and we should — but that’s different from claiming it causes material improvements in your physical state.
I was told I had to read this study, Harvard Unveils MRI Study Proving Meditation Literally Rebuilds The Brain’s Gray Matter In 8 Weeks, but just reading the title fucked up my brain so much I’m going to have to go into a mindfulness retreat for a couple of months to repair it, except that those don’t work. I had a nasty reaction to practically every word in the title.
“Harvard”…nothing wrong with the university, except that it has become a magic word to the lay public, and is routinely invoked as short-cut to authority.
“MRI Study”…uh-oh. The new phrenology.
“Proving”…you do know that word doesn’t belong in any scientific paper, right?
“Meditation”…there seems to be a few hundred brands of this mystical practice out there. Which one? It’s a vague practice presented vaguely.
“Literally Rebuilds The Brain’s Gray Matter”…christ, what bullshit. Nothing rebuilds your gray matter, literally or otherwise. You have a mostly stable population of neurons in the cortical gray that can modify their connectivity in subtle ways, but “literally rebuild”? No. That makes no sense at all.
I’ve tried to find out exactly what they did see (the original authors, for instance, do not claim that it “proves” anything, nor do they make this “rebuilding” claim). It’s not easy.
The participants spent an average of 27 minutes per day practicing mindfulness exercises, and this is all it took to stimulate a major increase in gray matter density in the hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection. McGreevey adds: “Participant-reported reductions in stress also were correlated with decreased gray-matter density in the amygdala, which is known to play an important role in anxiety and stress. None of these changes were seen in the control group, indicating that they had not resulted merely from the passage of time.”
So they took 16 meditators and 17 controls and put them in the magic MRI machine, and got great big messy sets of measurements of the whole brain, and then analyzed the heck out of the data to find some things changed. I’ve participated in some brain imaging studies (in animals, not people), and one thing I can tell you for sure is that complex imaging data has a lot of wobble to it, and the only way you can extract sense from it is to focus, focus, focus on one feature and standardize every single parameter you can. These data are so highly derived and dependent on a variety of conditions in the subject and the apparatus that it’s incredibly easy to get all kinds of artifacts. I see a study with small n’s and vague objectives and extravagant outcomes that have not been confirmed (the study was from 2011), and I say…noise.
Did you know that it’s far easier to get your noise published if you come from Harvard?
They don’t even have a mechanism to explain how you could get significant changes in the quantity of gray matter — it’s in the pretty, highly processed MRI images, so it must be true. I tried finding a review to summarize the state of this kind of research, and here’s a positive 2015 review by Tang, Hölzel, and Posner, who are involved in these MRI studies. The best I can say is that this is an honest review that tries to make a good case, but still has to admit to deep flaws in the field (emphasis in this quote is mine).
Interest in the psychological and neuroscientific investigation of mindfulness meditation has increased markedly over the past two decades. As is relatively common in a new field of research, studies suffer from low methodological quality and present with speculative post-hoc interpretations. Knowledge of the mechanisms that underlie the effects of meditation is therefore still in its infancy. However, there is emerging evidence that mindfulness meditation might cause neuroplastic changes in the structure and function of brain regions involved in regulation of attention, emotion and self-awareness. Further research needs to use longitudinal, randomized and actively controlled research designs and larger sample sizes to advance the understanding of the mechanisms of mindfulness meditation in regard to the interactions of complex brain networks, and needs to connect neuroscientific findings with behavioural data. If supported by rigorous research studies, the practice of mindfulness meditation might be promising for the treatment of clinical disorders and might facilitate the cultivation of a healthy mind and increased well-being.
May a thousand weasel words bloom. The current crop of studies are piss-poor and lack an underlying mechanism, and tends to exaggerate their results, but meditation might change the structure of the brain, and we need more research. Maybe. We just don’t have good reason to think so, yet.
I do like that last sentence. It could be used by every quack in the world. IF supported by rigorous research studies, X MIGHT be promising for treatment of clinical disorders
. Substitute any X you might like — homeopathy, magic herbs, trepanning, brain removal therapy — and it’s still a totally true statement!
If you’re doing mindfulness meditation, this doesn’t mean you need to stop. It probably does have subjective value in helping you feel better, if you really enjoy it. When I was a child, I remember hanging out with my great-grandfather and grandfather when they would get together regularly to play cribbage. They were focused and concentrating and thinking, and while it was a mysterious and arcane game to me, they clearly derived a benefit, and were able to relax and find quiet pleasure from, the simple exercise of their brains. Perhaps I need to start an atheist cribbage-playing cult, do a few MRIs, and make grand claims for the neuroscientific power of a weekly game.
Or maybe everyone should just back off and recognize that human beings can be happy when they have the leisure to think quietly, without also demanding that it do powerful things to their cerebral cortex.
Here’s another critical response to meditation claims:
Not surprisingly, she said, attempts to measure meditation’s neurological effects with brain-wave monitors, positron emission tomography, and other techniques have yielded widely divergent findings. Meditation has been “prodded and poked by a variety of technological apparati, with inconclusive results,” Andresen commented. For every report of increased activity in the frontal cortex or decreased activity in the amygdala, there is a conflicting finding.
Investigations of meditation’s therapeutic benefits have been equally inconclusive. Meditation has been linked to a dizzying array of benefits, including the alleviation of stress, anxiety, high blood pressure, substance abuse, hostility, pain, depression, asthma, premenstrual syndrome, infertility, insomnia, substance abuse and the side effects of chemotherapy. But many of these studies have been poorly designed, Andresen remarked, carried out with inadequate controls or no controls at all.
Andresen noted that meditation has been linked to adverse side effects, too, including suggestibility, neuroticism, depression, suicidal impulses, insomnia, nightmares, anxiety, psychosis and dysphoria. In an implicit reference to the cultish context within which meditation is often taught, Andresen added that meditators may become vulnerable to “manipulation and control by others,” including “unscrupulous or delusional teachers.”
I wonder how meditation compares to a good wank.
Huh? My psychiatrist has previously explained mindfulness to me as a form of relaxation and a way to reduce anxiety, not a magical brain-regenerating thingy. What gives?
Much like Lumosity claiming that playing their games will increase your intelligence and cure senile dementia.
I must say however that Mindfulness Meditation was quite therapeutic in my recovery of Brain Trauma, and the course I took billed itself as a form of Stress Reduction. To conflate it with anatomical restructuring is uncalled for.
If you find it relaxing, it’s relaxing.
The problem is all these people who have to inflate the claim into something grossly untrue.
Lots of things are relaxing and anxiety-reducing, and reducing anxiety is a good thing. I don’t find mindfulness at all relaxing — Sam Harris tried to lead the entire Global Atheist Convention in a mindfulness exercise a few years ago, and I found it tedious, lazy, annoying, and stupid, which, if the claims of the mindfulness proponents of direct cerebral effects were true, probably means he damaged my cortex. So it’s another subjective phenomenon with fans trying to tell the world that they must join them in prayer… I mean, meditation.
“mindfulness exercises, and this is all it took to stimulate a major increase in gray matter density in the hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection”
The question is why Sam Harris is such a sociopathic jerk despite having meditated for so long? From what I saw, I personally think mindfulness shifts the focus to oneself and detaches oneself from reality (hence LESS care and compassion for the other). I need more evidence for that claim though.
err in 3:
recovery
offrom Traumatic Brain Injury …@Kreator, #2,
It’s probably because your psychiatrist is a competent medical professional. Or maybe their chakras are out of alignment.
Mindfulness always sticks out as a red flag for me on atheoskeptic podcasts. Remember who used to go all soft about meditation? Sam Harris is who.
“Used to”? Still does. This is his new gimmick, leading talks centered around his latest book which are all about meditation. He’s become a racist guru.
Haven’t you read his latest, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion? I got as far as the first chapter before puking all over my iPad.
Is it just my bad luck in my reading selection or is the quality of science coming from Harvard graduates startlingly poor?
Mindfulness is prone to woo, probably because it takes some of its techniques from Buddhism. The “official” mindfulness has little to do with religion though, and even seems to have some benefits other than placebo effect. (Sorry, no links to scientific publications, so don’t take my word for it.) I followed a mindfulness course a few years ago and quite enjoyed it. I was careful enough to search for an instructor who showed as little woo as possible.
I like meditation. It’s really good for my anxiety. Umm… pretty sure it hasn’t done anything special to my brain, though. Other than chill it out a bit, that is.
If you want to find a simple way to relax and de-stress? I absolutely recommend meditation.
If you want to find out deep truths about yourself? Uh… sure… maybe? I guess? Try it. Who knows?
If you want to find out deep truths about the universe? Yeah, no.
If you want to literally rebuild your brain? I think I’m gonna suggest becoming a cyborg first – it might not work, but at least there’s reason to believe it involves building a brain that belongs to you, even if you’re not in any position to use it anymore.
@Marcus Ranum, 1
It’s cleaner, and you don’t have to be horny for it to work properly? And if you use images to aid your experience, you’re far less likely to have cause to worry that they might be coerced.
Mindfulness is prone to woo, probably because it takes some of its techniques from Buddhism.
“The unexamined life is not worth living” – Socrates
I don’t think that its origin in buddhism is why it’s wooful; I think that its popularity emerged from a wooful population; the whole Beatles/Sri Rajneesh/Ram Das/Alan Watts/DT Suzuki/Timothy Leary crowd of proto hipsters. There was a lot of woo there and meditation was embraced – I suspect – because “mediation” was a pretty good way to describe “stoned drooling on the floor happy full of LSD or shrooms” At least that’s how I’d remember it, if I remembered it.
@me
Unless, like our unholy master, you find it tedious, lazy, annoying and stupid, in which case it won’t help much. In that case, I suggest cake. Mmmm, cake.
I was going to suggest trying both at the same time. Couldn’t hurt, right? But being mindful of the fact of your wanking in the present moment could become a distraction. At least, maybe I’m weird, but I don’t think that would usually be helpful for most people….
Honestly, it’s never been very clear to me what the claim is. Being “mindful” is being aware of stuff? Being aware of stuff is beneficial? Or if it isn’t beneficial to be aware of certain kinds of stuff (stuff that isn’t pleasant, perhaps), you should be aware of something else instead? What would that be? How is this giving anyone any guidance about what you’re supposed to be “mindful” about? If “meditation” is an important word too, then what is there to meditate about? Or are we supposed to take it seriously that somebody can in some meaningful sense “simply” have a thought or an experience or whatever it may be, without it having some kind of content? Or if it doesn’t matter what it specifically is, because the claim is basically that human beings are for whatever reason predisposed to thinking of the types of things that will more often than not end up being beneficial given their particular circumstances, then how is this kind of vague pointless “advice” supposed to help them do anything better than what they would’ve done without it?
Being “mindful” is being aware of stuff? Being aware of stuff is beneficial?
It’s better than being “empty minded” apparently. Unless your mind is full of worry and obssession.
@consciousness razor, 15
At least as far as I use it, what you’re being mindful of is the stray panicky little thoughts that turn into avalanches of anxiety that keep you pinned to your bedroom door, desperately trying to keep the (metaphorical) monsters from getting in so that you can deal with them while they’re tiny and easy, allowing you to pretend to be a functional human being when you’ve got company.
(I think some people are being mindful of the oneness of the holistic nature of quantum universalities on the spiritual level of the cheese grater but, you know, it’s not all bullshit.)
That’s apparently my problem (one of many). If so, it doesn’t sound like they can claim it relieves stress or anxiety, but maybe it means something completely different in those situations. Or maybe it’s not supposed to mean anything.
I’m going to try non-mindfulness. Obliviousness? Something like that. I’m going to have no head. I probably won’t worry about reporting my findings, if any. Why bother?
@consciousness razor – Mindfulness is indeed being aware of stuff. It is a state of mind in which one is fully focused on one thing, something that is here and now, and without judging. That’s all there is to it really. It is a very objective state of mind. It may be beneficial, for example when you tend to fret and have your thoughts run in circles. With mindfulness, you can learn to detect those thoughts in an early stage before they drive you into anxiety or depression. Also, you become better aware of the signals of your body, which may be helpful to people with chronic pain. Mindfulness is not a cure – anyone claiming that is a quack – but it does improve quality of life. Orgasms are best when experienced mindfully!
P.S. The opposite of mindfulness is not obliviousness, it is being distracted.
I agree that there’s lots of “woo” in Buddhism. On the other hand there are people who intentionally give the game away. Buddhism is a con, but it is a con that is trying to cure you of misunderstandings that aren’t helpful. Like the idea that you can “improve” yourself by meditating.
For instance, the founder of Zen in China said that sitting and keeping an absolutely still mind (presuming that anyone could) is really nothing more than trying to become a rock or a lump of wood.
And the central tenant of Mahayana Buddhism is that the fabled “nirvana” every Buddhist tries to attain is just the same as ordinary life. “Nirvana” is just the same as “Samsara” is the way they put it. But of course no one gets the clue and they demand that the “master” show them the way to enlightenment.
And just as long as they are willing to fall for that the teacher will keep giving them things to do that cannot possibly be done, hoping in the end that the student will finally realize that the whole thing is a con. You can’t do anything to make yourself “better” so just live life as it comes.
Of course, a lot of these teachers don’t understand this themselves and are conned themselves and that leads to “religion”
And in Christianity, Thomas Aquinas was, I think, a secret atheist. He said that if you hold to any conception of what “God” is your conception must be wrong because of course “God” is infinite and transcends all possible ideas about “him”.
Well, that pretty well give it away, doesn’t it? Because if any idea about “God” is wrong then the idea “God” is wrong too. Such a god is the same as no god at all, really. But he tricked the church of his day (and after) and instead of being burned as an atheist they made him a Saint!
News flash to these researchers: *everything* changes “the structure of your brain”, if you define that vaguely enough.
My understanding is that the brain is quite plastic and responsive in various ways to all kinds of stuff, so no suprise that one kind of thought mind might change something enough so that you think you can detect it. Yawn.
PZ: yeah, I saw the video of that silly exercise Harris did with you all at the conference (“Everyone take a deep breath”, so embarassing, as if he’d tried to lead you all in chanting or something) and I saw you try it, with the true spirit of an expermentalist, and I’ve always wondered what you thought of it! I couldn’t read your face at all, it seemed like you were waiting for the data, for any results to manifest themselves and be recorded, but I couldn’t detect your conclusions at all. I had to wonder, though! Thanks for clearing that up.
This puts me in mind of yoga instructors. Yeah, it’s a good workout and I enjoy it, but are they all contractually obligated to say something about “toxins”? I have heard instructors on DVDs mention toxins very briefly, and unenthusiastically, as if they said it just to fill a quota.
As for MRI studies, I still can’t believe PNAS published a paper about the difference between male and female brain “connectivity”. All I understood about it was that it was a data fishing expedition.
I don’t understand how that is supposed to help. I’m a musician, and I have terrible anxiety. If I’m mindful about the things that are interfering with my ability to function well, that’s just another layer of confusion piled on top of that bullshit which I didn’t want, bullshit which is still going on by virtue of the fact that I’m mindful of it. If it isn’t happening, then how am I supposed to be aware of something that isn’t happening? How could bringing it into my attention, when it wasn’t there before (or if it was already there and now I’m even more fixated on it), help me do a better job of pretending that it isn’t happening, much less actually help me in some way beyond superficially appearing to others as if things were okay?
What I do instead is not perform very much these days — I’m very content with writing and researching and so forth, although of course others wouldn’t be. But generally, the more you can take your mind off of those sorts of things and focus on the task at hand, which you’re well-prepared to do with enough practice and experience, then to that extent you’re legitimately able to function fairly well, with no pretending. And in a wide variety of other circumstances, it just seems like the wrong approach to “be mindful,” if we’re using something like ordinary English meaning of that phrase. The idea that you should just be aware of it, accept it, that there’s some kind of lesson to be learned by doing this, that you should let it wash over you and fill you with wonder and admiration of the rich tapestry of good and bad and whatever which is the totality of your life … that all just sounds like a bunch of vague crap from people who have no idea what the problem really is or how to do anything constructive about it.
Hey PZ, if you find yourself in Eugene again, look me up. I’ll challenge you to a game of cribbage. It’ll be restful, and can rebuild your grey matter, I promise!
Yes, I tried to get into the spirit of the spirituality woo at GAC. I do have my own personal meditation/mindfulness practice — I focus on one limb at a time, and consciously relax them, and work my way up through my body — but I use it as a sleep aid. It helps to clear your head of all those distractions, those residues of a busy day, and that’s all. In that general sense, I agree it can be beneficial, just not in a “it made my cortex grow 8 sizes larger!” sort of way.
But at GAC I was in a huge conference hall, expecting to learn and be challenged and all that interesting stuff. I wanted that interesting stuff. And here’s a guy droning deepities at me. Hated it. I could not clear my head of the thought that I was in Australia, at an atheist conference, and this is not what I want to be doing.
I haven’t played cribbage in 40 years, since I left home and didn’t have much occasion to get together with my grandfather (and my great grandfather died several years before that). I’d be hopeless at it.
@consciousness razor, 25
The “pretend to be a functional human being” thing is (mostly) just my sense of humour coming out.
If it isn’t happening, then it isn’t happening. You’re not summoning it up, you’re noticing it when it happens, and then, rather than allowing it to snowball into something unmanageable, you’re managing it when it’s manageable. That way, you can do the things that are hard for you and still hold yourself together, rather than simply avoiding the things that makes it happen (which, for me, includes things like stepping out of the front door, answering my phone, maintaining eye contact, speaking within earshot of others, etc – things I can’t just not do and still actually be a functional human being). The “deal with them while they’re tiny and easy” part is what helps, not the letting it wash over you and fill you with wonder and admiration stuff that… I can’t find myself saying anywhere.
The biggest problem is the article’s implication that the study has anything to do with Harvard. The woman who wrote the paper teaches psychology at Harvard, but has no neuroscience degree. The study isn’t related to Harvard itself; she is. The other woman mentioned does have a Ph.D. – in the field of Contemplative Neuroscience, Mindfulness Research & Practice Initiative from the University of Miami. I don’t know what contemplative neuroscience is, but she’s trained in it. Another is a research fellow in the author’s lab. James Carmody, Ph.D, is a Zen practitioner, and I have to quote his description on the University of Mass.’s Medical School website:
“[Carmody’s] interest is in delineating the qualities of attending to experience that are associated with distress and well being. As such, his research is on the psychological and neural mechanisms of mindfulness and mind-body processes more generally, including the evolutionary and biological imperatives that impinge upon these.”
It goes on to say one of the most ironic things in his statement: “He teaches mindfulness courses for clinicians with the goal of making the conceptualization of mindfulness straightforward, jargon-free and practically accessible for patients.”
I’ll add a jargon-free, straightforward opinion – it’s utter bullshit. Thanks for this gem, btw. I’ve just left a discussion on a YouTube video where a gentleman asserts that herbs “detoxify” the liver, help people “loose [sic]” weight, and that I’m arrogant to support the video. I explained that on the contrary, the liver detoxifies herbs, if anything. Now I’m “arrogant,” because there are many “gray areas” that scientists don’t know about. I have to assume that includes his brain. Between that and this article, I’m tired.
@rietpluim
For reasons unbeknownst to me, my peers are neck deep in woo. Most of them, anyway. I get exposed to a lot of ideas–some of which seem meritorious at a casual glance, such as your comment about mindful orgasms (I wholeheartedly agree)–but they get presented in a shit sandwich of New Age spirituality. Hippies all around me trying to make these mind blowing tantric orgasms about ghost snakes and chakras and I’m just sitting there going “can’t we just accept the far more testable hypothesis that relaxation is a useful, possibly even necessary, tool for achieving full body Earth-shattering-kaboom orgasms?”
Apparently that’s not beautiful enough. I, for one, think it’s fucking rad our brains can interpret signals from the body very differently depending on whether we’re relaxed or not.
Anyway, meditation: I spend a nonzero amount of time in my own head on an hourly basis, and teaching my brain to stop chattering to itself for 15 minutes at the start of the day tends to reduce the frequency at which I send myself into depressive death spirals. I do at least admit that the effects of meditation are highly subjective, and that its influence on myself is at most a blind guess. But at the end of the day, I’m not hurting anyone, charging them money, or trying to claim scientific knowledge, so I think most atheists (who aren’t assholes) will shrug and decide that it’s not a hill worth dying on.
Sadly, woo lives on because there is a sizeable market of gullible people looking for an easy solution to their problems, and they think turning to “alternative medicine” is going to fix them. So when it comes to woo, I tend to focus on instructors and peddlers of it, rather than customers, since the instructors are either: a) dupes with a poor way of structuring their knowledge or; b) people who know most of woo’s claims are untenable but spread them anyway to make a living–you know, not unlike the Catholic church.
Learning mindfulness changed my life for the better.
Practicing it regularly instead didn’t do much.
Regardless, it’s a very cheap and accessible way to relax, put some discipline to someone’s thoughts, and to trigger placebo.
Sucks that it is being overhyped.
Harris moral stances are appalling, meditation or not I want as little to do with him as possible.
If you think that the relaxation that comes from sitting down and breathing calmly for ten minutes is a friggin miracle, then maybe you need to switch to decaf.
I loved playing Cribbage with my Grandfather and miss it quite a bit. He always amazed my younger self by being able to look at four cards and immediate have the point value.
I’d gladly join your Cribbage Cult.
When I was in public school my grandmother taught me to play cribbage too, and we played quite a lot, until I left home after graduating. But she would perhaps have been aghast at my later cribbage escapades. When I was in university my GF and I used to play a game of cribbage during the refractory period, between rounds. I very much enjoyed playing a lot of cribbage back then.
@1 Marcus. Forgot to add; not sure how relaxing it was in comparison to wanking. But way more enjoyable.
The actual sensations, instincts and psychology that the feeling of “spirituality” correlates to is real enough and worth understanding. It will apply to atheists, what it means and what we should connect it to is what matters. I suspect it has to do with social memory somehow, but I have to admit that I’ve been dumping a lot of things in that box lately and should probably do some more reading.
As for mindfulness meditation, the process itself is likely to be very useful, but again what it is and what is, does and means is what matters. I see “meditation” in general as simply exercising a part of cognition and there are things like “compassion meditation”. One can probably design meditation for many sorts of things. “Mindfulness meditation” itself is essentially exercising interoception (the feeling of body states and sensations) and extereoception (the feeling of incoming sensory information). That’s it. Lumping anything else into it is just not meaningful in my experience.
At that level mindfulness meditation resembles the earlier parts of cognitive behavioral therapy, the parts that have to do with understanding one’s feelings and reactions in a non-judgmental way so that one can learn to recognize them for more therapy work down the road. The cognitive enhancements and structural changes described in Toruette’s Syndrome are in many ways a result of our having to be mindful of the impulses that we struggle to control (being able to understand and control rage, aggression and dominance is certainly useful).
But I certainly agree that any structural data need to be connected with other information to understand what is going on. The most meaningful data I have encountered (because it’s more directly tied to what one is doing in mindfulness meditation) has to do with alterations to the Insular cortex, which has to do with sensation of the body’s homeostasis, self-awareness and emotion. That can provide the basis for other things, but that all depends on what you do with it. I would argue that the hippocampus and amygdala is more indirectly involved in what mindfulness meditation does, a mindful person of shitty character is still a person of shitty character, they are just more “in touch with themselves”. Generalizing here is very risky to say the least.
As an erstwhile Londoner I am always mindful, especially of the gap!
There was a piece in The Guardian a while back noting that when people claim mindfulness isn’t religious, well, it specifically is, as it derives its methodology explicitly from Buddhism — but the article then pointed out that picking and choosing some nice little bits from a given religion can be a slippery slope, because the entire religion has evolved over centuries to develop into a coherent whole that provides solace for its adherents in many subtle and comprehensive ways, not just the cute little subset of rituals you appropriated from it. So you could learn how to go into a whirling dervish trance, but without many other elements of Sufism infusing your beliefs, you might emerge with some sort of permanent inner ear imbalance and no greater understanding of yourself or the world.
I like to hit a heavy bag for a while, frolic with my dogs, and then play some chess. I can also get lost in the here and now when I’m peeling, slicing, chopping, dicing, mincing, blanching, spatchcocking, pestling a pistou, or tending a roux. But I once blew a 160 over 135 or so on a friend’s blood pressure cuff, so I made googly eyes, put my hands together in a wai, and said Nam Myoho Renge Kyo four or five times in my best Frank Zappa voice, and sure as shit, I came out at 128 over 102 or something the second try. Chopping and dicing, or petting my dogs would probably have worked just fine as well, but if you like a little woo with your relaxation, Bob’s your uncle.
Wading in while the Little Lurker is napping with a confession: I am a yoga instructor. But I do have a few personal rules:
– I never talk about toxins (if you’re so full of toxins, you need to detoxify, you need to be in a hospital, not a yoga class);
– the universe doesn’t give a shit about us;
– the heart is a very important organ that pumps blood, it does not feel for us or do our thinking for us.
– I never speak of gratitude or blessings, instead I like to say we are extremely privileged to have the means, freedom and leisure to attend yoga and to acknowledge that privilege to ourselves.
I’m very selective about the music I play before class (I turn it off during). And I always, always, always tell my students to check with their doctors, and not to do anything their docs have contraindicated for them and to NOT abandon their doctor’s advice for mine. And I try not to give too much advice.
I too, like to do the simple relaxation that PZ described, and thats often what I do in the final relaxation.
sorry, now gotta run cuz Little Lurker is up.
And Siobhan @32: I hear you. I am also an anomaly among my peers.
#39 “…because the entire religion has evolved over centuries to develop into a coherent whole… ”
So Buddhism is entirely different from every other religion???
I think what can be a measured placebo effect has been converted into mush with words like spirituality. There is undoubtedly a placebo effect when my wife attends Mass, my sister visits her psychic and I listen to a Tchaikovsky symphony. There is no need to make that effect more complicated than it is.
My skepticism of the supernatural has absolutely nothing to do with the spirit, which is simply another damn component of the supernatural. It is like saying I have faith in chemistry. What?
You might have read some Ursula Goodenough over the years. I suspect her writings would be tough for me.
So, I’ve tried this, as it is supposed to be useful for stress and anxiety. It seemed helpful, but that’s hard to measure in an objective way, and forget about finding it in a brain scan. I expect only psychological well-being assessments would allow you to generate analyzable numbers, and those are also pretty hard to do “right.”
Here’s my understanding of the idea: meditation is self-training in a particular pattern of thinking, working to gain greater control over where your mind’s focus is going at any given time, which is helpful e.g. in applying the principals of cognitive behavioral therapy (which is about modifying the way you think about life) to reduce anxiety.
Training in useful ways of thinking is certainly valuable, but I wouldn’t expect that to be distinguishable in an MRI.
the trouble or difficulty in studying meditation of any kind and measuring it’s effects is all the evidence that some is meditating in the proscribed way is completely subjective. It is the subjects word that they are meditating in the way proscribed in words by someone else. It is someone else’s description that we must follow. It is a description often centuries old coming from a pre-scientific society and couched in metaphor whose purpose is completely different from modern health practices. It is difficult to learn to do effectively in any event and if the goal is achieved it often takes years of diligent practice.
add to that the often subjective definition and the cultural references
Just what does anyone expect to measure from these kinds of studies.
ever the western man reaching for the elixir of everlasting life and the fountain of youth, the bottomless well of truth and knowledge
reaches for “magic” and mistakes illusion and metaphor for reality
uncle frogy
Believe what you will. No one denies there are superstitious people who believe all sorts of nonsense out there practicing mindfulness. But I know from personal experience its ability to heal the brain. I have struggled all my life with crippling mental illness. I spent the first 20 years of my life in a state of constant anxiety. Dissociation, depersonalizations and derealization were my only companions. I became suicidal, longing to smash my hated body against the cold depths of the Pacific Ocean. But somehow, along the way, I stumbled upon mindfulness meditation. I am not exaggerating when I say it saved my life. Today, for the first time in my life, I left the house, in broad daylight, dressed as a woman. I nearly chickened out, as I have so many times before, but I spent a few minutes to meditate and gather my courage, and I walked right out that front door without batting an eyelid. Thanks to mindfulness meditation, I have finally found the strength to overcome my deepest fear and show the world who I really am.
It’s hard for me to be objective about “mindfulness”. I have an acquaintance who has become a “teacher” – this after leaping from “being passionate” about coffee enemas, toxins, ayuverdic medicine, advising cancer patients to seek “alternative cures” etc. She is seeking funding to take it into schools and hospitals now. As a friend who is a headteacher said to me – I want to get children to “appreciate the moment” by giving them really compelling, interesting things to become absorbed in, not spending money on this.
I can’t help coming to the conclusion that in this context mindfulness is to the greater body of woo what intelligent design is to creationism.
Ed Seedhouse: Your description of Buddhism has almost nothing to do with the religion (really, religions) actually practiced by the overwhelming majority of Buddhists in the world. I am so tired of those who are only aware of the de-religionized version of Buddhism that has marketed been to appeal to “enlightened” Western people turn around and say something like, “Buddhism isn’t religious.” Bull. If Buddhism isn’t religious, what are all those temples with the big gold statues doing? Why do all these people donate money to the temples so that monks will chant for them? Why do people buy all these trinkets that have been “blessed” and then wear them to “protect” against disease and harm? I am so tired of people who don’t see how Buddhism is actually practiced in its home countries give it a pass for “not actually being a religion.”
re 47:
understood. || At least Buddhism does have a pretty big sect, of following Buddhism for the philosophy while disregarding the ‘Buddha as god’. Buddha is a mythical personification of the idealization of perfection. “If you look for Buddha, you won’t find him. You’ll find him if you do not look for him”, and other koans being the purported roots of Buddhism. As much as some would like to claim Christianity is only philosophy: “be nice to people”. that attitude is only individual, without a significant sect.
but what do I know…
blank@#47: “Buddhism isn’t religious.”
And it damn sure isn’t a philosophy. I pull my hair and gnaw on things when woowoos start going on about buddhist philosophy – which is a bunch of authoritarian assertions. It’s all received wisdom. Instead of “this is what god says” it’s “this is what an allegedly semi-divine being who was ‘enlightened’ and therefore had the superpower of saying really smart-sounding shit says”
I’m still waiting for a definition of spiritual that means something beyond being told whenever I ask, “you know what it is, you’re just being awkward” or similar wording. If I knew I wouldn’t be asking but perhaps the failure to understand is in me. For whenever someone has tried giving me various definitions it has just seemed like gobbledegook to me so I’m still waiting.
Now why does that remind me of Plato….
no comment.
+1
+2
It’s a con. like all other religions… ever.
I just wanted to point out that meditation is as Buddhist as the number system we use is Arabic.
IOW, it isn’t Buddhist, and the only reason Americans think it is, is because they’ve been introduced to it by woo mongers (and saying the Buddha did something is a sureshot to get people interested).