Meditation thread

>You can meditate IN a nightclub if you want to.
I just pictured some jacked Veeky Forums autist in a DBZ tank top going to a night club and sitting down in the middle of the dance floor like a monk and humming rythmiclly to himself. A few people trip over him, some drunk girls grind on his face, but after and hour or so they kick him out. As the staff throw him out the door he can be heard mumbling about "Muh enlightenment."

Explain all the studies coming out of Harvard that show mindfulness literally improves blood flow to the frontal cortex and increase gray matter much like running and intense exercise

And you say prayer is not a meme fuck off Christfag it's almost the same thing-quiet reflection

It cured my depression so...

Train that elephant, build that village, and tap that ass!

I have not been meditating consistently for very long. That being said, I can already see improvements in my life. It obliterates depression. I always feel so energized and happy after a meditation even if it was only 10 minutes. I react to stressful situations much better now as well. I would definitely recommend meditation, especially to anyone battling depression or social anxiety.

OP here. Alright you guys have convinced me to try it out. Is there a guide on how to do it/ what do i do? Thanks for your guys help.

>Explain all the studies coming out of Harvard that show mindfulness literally improves blood flow to the frontal cortex and increase gray matter much like running and intense exercise

Similar effects have been observed in other forms of prayer/meditation, but that's besides the point.

You're also ignoring the fact that there are many studies showing adverse psychological effects of meditation.

telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11855103/How-mindfulness-plays-havoc-with-memory.html
dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3092572/The-dark-meditation-mindfulness-Treatment-trigger-mania-depression-psychosis-new-book-claims.html
extibetanbuddhist.com/category/dangers-of-mindfulness/
independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/meditation-is-touted-as-a-cure-for-mental-instability-but-can-it-actually-be-bad-for-you-10268291.html

Most will ignore this and any focus on anecdotes and whatever short term benefits they perceive, but it's clear there's something weird going on with all these new age meditation fads,

catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/apologetics/the-danger-of-centering-prayer.html
fisheaters.com/rosary.html

Thank you for revealing your bias against secular ideas

>secular ideas

Mindfulness is just watered-down Buddhism for yuppies, like all new age fads. it isn't a neutral idea.

Will meditating help me sleep better?

...

With the deep breaths and the state of calmness you get It helps. I usually meditate 10-20min before bed lights dimmed or off putts me in the best state to fall asleep right after.

I'm trying to unfuck my sleep schedule before I start working 9-5 in a week or so

Meditation can help with this, but there are really a lot of times that need to be followed to sleep right.

Don't look at screens 2 hours before bed.
Don't drink alcohol or caffeine 6 hours before bed.
Use sleepytime.me to find out your bed time. You may need to adjust.
Take melatonin and possibly zinc supplements before bed.
An eyemask is good.
Background noise can be good if you don't need to focus on it.

There's some other stuff too, like if it's hard to wake up at a specific time have a full glass of water to force you to pee.

One thing I noticed as my sleep got healthy was waking up for 10-15 in the middle of the sleep cycle. I've read this is actually natural and nothing to be alarmed by though.

Good luck. I was tortured by poor sleep that ruined a lot of my life. It's key. Often when you see trucrypt types on here that have nogains despite years of hard work I would wager they have shit sleep patterns

>Don't drink alcohol
Why not? If not to the point of utter intoxication, I've found that little bit of relaxant helps me get to sleep.

1 or 2 drinks won't hurt much. Still not good but not bad either. Depending on how much you drink your REM sleep is reduced.

>dark night of the soul

>perception of reality shattered

>can't let go

>help pls

i stopped meditating because of this

felt like i was losing my mind

funny thing is it didn't even make me lose my mind

it just showed me i never had it to begin with

fallingforever.universe

:-)

It works but do your own research on it. Don't listen to the autists on this board.

I do it everyday and each time I do it I go deeper and deeper in meditiation.

>i

who?

Le no such thing as "me" xddd

You aren't alone.

>The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that participants who engaged in a 15-minute mindfulness meditation session were less able to differentiate items they actually encountered from items they only imagined.

psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/mindfulness-may-make-memories-less-accurate.html

That shit messes with your head.

le ignorance and close mindedness xdddd

health.spectator.co.uk/what-mindfulness-gurus-dont-tell-you-meditation-has-a-dark-side/

>Our approach was to go through almost half a century of scientific evidence and tease out fact from fiction when it comes to beliefs about various meditative practices. As it happens, most of the media hype about mindfulness as a cure-all is not grounded in scientific evidence. But it was a chapter on the dark side of meditation that caused a stir, where we described the unexpected or exacerbated mental health problems that have been experienced and the potential misuse of meditative techniques (such as by the military).

>things i wish i knew before practicing mindfulness 24/7

i don't care tho desu, it makes life more interesting

Then you're a fool.

Pray that God grants you clarity.

no one EVER mentions the darkside of this stuff

kinda fucked because its a big deal

>imagining
>meditation

Pick one

Just got done with my daily meditation, it does a world of good OP you should try it out. I heartily recommend the book by Ian Gawker as a introductory how to guide

You don't even know how your own New Age bullshit works?

not really

i have no choice but to accept

i can't "go back" to "normal"

the real fools choice would be resistant

i have too much clarity haha

delusion would be more comforting desu

Don't be fatalistic. You don't have clarity. You're mind has been twisted into a pretzel by some new age nonsense and delusions but you can get it back.

>all forms of meditation is imagination

Never go full retard

Read the article again, faggot. They weren't imaging during the meditation but after. Their perception of reality was destroyed.

>can't recall everything that they did in their past

>hurr durr, their perception of reality was destroyed

Again, never go full retard

>it doesn't matter if they can't distinguish between fantasy and reality, my new age fad is perfect.

maybe

or maybe not

:-)

fuck the newagemovement.jpg

there's nothing new about these beliefs / ideas / concepts

platos talked about it, so did ...

nietzsche

carl jung

and the Buddhists have for like a couple thousand years

fucks sake Christianity even references it

people have figured this shit out way long before the western world tried to capitalize off of it with the overly feathered """new age movement"""

What does mindfulness meditation entail exactly? Is it just preventing yourself from thinking for the time period?

>a meditation technique that was practiced for thousands of years is suddenly a new age fad

Never.Go.Full.Retard

being completely aware of your mind

watching it but not touching

>a watered-down, trendy version of a meditation technique sold to yuppies is a new age fad

You ain't deep, faggot.

This is a downright retarded paper and the conclusions they draw are totally unfounded.
They asked two groups of people to remember a list of words correlated but not including "trash". They let one group just sit and do what they wanted and the other sit through guided meditation.The unguided group misrememberd the word trash 20% of the time while the guided 39%. Here's where this is dumb the mindfulness group were actively doing something else after the list was read so OF COURSE they wouldn't remember as well. Misremembering a single word ≠ corruption of reality

How much have you actually read on the subject. Don't take offense, but you seem to have a very superficial grasp on the subject.

You seem upset. The fact is that mindfulness is a questionable practice and the supposed "benefits" are based on even smaller sample sizes and anecdotal evidence. You can choose to ignore any inconvenient evidence if you wish, but it will still exist.

Neither are you, retard. Go study (((Frued))) with "muh superior psychology" and learn the mind of an individual based on how long they hold their shit also known as the anal stage. Tell me how deep your head is up your ass.

enough for myself to believe that i understand it

what did i say the gave you the impression of me having a superficial grasp?

i can back up what i said with some info if you really want

Have fun getting scammed by some hippies in a tent in Nevada.

>I've never done meditation
>I have no experience of what I'm talking about
>but check out this flawed study on how it can mess up your mind

>dude psychology lmao

I bet you think sociology is a legitimate field too, huh?

"inconvenient evidence"
I've yet to see any of this evidence.

You just seem to have a very vague grasp on the "concepts" you talked about, though I am curious as to what you do know if you'd care to elaborate.

Neither Plato nor any major Christian philosopher has talked about annihilationist/impersonal meditation as the New Age movement does.

>This study doesn't count because my conclusions make me uncomfortable.

>implying I'm being scammed by some hippies in a tent from Nevada
>implying hippies are the only type of people who meditate
>implying I don't go to a legitimate zen hall in my area that branches from a long lineage of masters that is based on Taiwan (and before Taiwan, China)

Never go full retard.

>implying hippies are the only type of people who meditate

Now, it's also yuppie kooks looking for easy answers.

Zen is a scam. Monks in Asia all drive nice cars because they scammed money out of people like you. There have never been any great Buddhist societies. It's a cancerous doctrine.

Jesus Christ I already explained why it was flawed. This is pretty basic logic my dude are you ok?

Here is a great video of a roshi in Japan explaining how to meditate. Turn the subtitles on for English subtitles

youtu.be/LL2XUTeoUsM

Palms together, Amituofo

>Zen is a scam. Monks in Asia all drive nice cars because they scammed money out of people like you.

I've been going to the zen hall since 2009 and I never donated a single penny to them. Nice try.

Give it a rest. You're making yourself look like an idiot.

Read "Mindfulness in plain English" and "Hardcore Zen." They are invaluable and the only sources I've found free of astral /x/ tier bullshit.

You didn't explain anything, you cunt. You dismissed it because the conclusions upset you.

the concepts i was referring is mainly the "self is an illusion thing" "all is one" "everything is you you are everything" "reality isn't what it seems"

those two things you mentioned i've never heard before so i guess you're right about my level of understanding

my studying has been based around Hinduism/ zen / personal observations / carl jung / alan watts

Try agian Bucko.

>this nigger still hung up on rough day in kindergarten
>big arms but socially awkward
>his rhetorical stories involve him getting cucked by chad and wanting to die
is he, dare i say it, /our/guy?

You're the one who thinks a failure to distinguish between reality and illusion isn't a problem.

equip.org/article/tibetan-buddhism-exiled-from-their-homeland-extolled-in-the-west/

Learn what "control groups" are, you dumb faggot.

"CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL"
MY SIDES ARE IN ORBIT

reality is an illusion you deluded fuck

if you think that you can tell the difference then you're the one with the problem

>dat file name

There are no risks with meditation. How does one hurt or delude him/her self simply by sitting and spending time with your self. Maybe if your already mentally ill something could happen. But it's certainly not mediation, it's you. On a side note, psychology is a quack bullshit field.

>naive meditation beginner

careful buddy

More credible then whatever gook witchcraft you believe in.

>reality is an illusion you deluded fuck

Is this the sum of your wisdom, you naive new age faggot?

Wew lad did this Thread ever derail.

youtu.be/De15EaR_irk

Meditation is basically fasting for the brain
Your body isn't meant to be constantly feeding, hence why insulin problems/diabetes are so common now

It's the same for your brain

Meditate right beside your friend. When you come out not realizing he's still yelling then you have mastered the first stage.

Threads like this make me wish frank yang still posted here

Welp that christfag shit up this thread.

Meditation helps me with my anger issues in a real way. I can let a lot of minor shit go that I used to ape out over. I've even taught some basic breathing exercises and techniques to my angry little nephew and it's gotten him to chill the fuck out now.

Sound isolating headphones and play some nice ambient music

Came hoping for a nice thread, shit was worse than a vegan thread.

Is someone really trying to argue that being a stressed out, ignorant, hyper materialistic normie is better for your mental health than taking a few minutes everyday to decompress and be a little introspective because it does exactly the thing its supposed to-- help you relieve yourself of trivialities and focus on more important things?

ITT: Fags who think meditation is some sort of cure-all while ignoring all contrdaticting evidence.

Holy shit, you fags turn everything into fucking broscience.

If Meditiation is so great, why was Tibet a hell hole before the Chinese invasion?

Meditation is a psychological snake oil at best.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/22/seven-myths-about-meditation

>My sources include The Guardian, Telegraph, and Daily Mail

What is your proposed alternative, again?

>the guardian

lol

jesus h christ

sounds pretty rad tbqh bro

My source is the scientists interviewed in the articles. I guess meditation doesn't make you a better reader, does it faggot?

Here are the academic articles.

miguelfariasuk.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/lancet-psychiatry-2016.pdf

>How good is the evidence for its benefi ts? A major meta-analysis1 of 163 studies focusing on psychological variables suggests that mindfulness has a range of positive eff ects on mental health, such as changes in stress and negative emotions. A closer inspection, however, reveals that most of the studies had methodological limitations (less than 10% used an active control group) and, most surprising, there seems to be no consistent longitudinal eff ect—meditating for a greater length of time is not associated with better psychological outcomes. This lack of a longitudinal effect has been confirmed by a meta-analysis2 of brain imaging studies: although mindfulness practice leads to structural brain changes, these changes are confined to the first weeks of practice.

miguelfariasuk.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/has-the-science-of-mindfulness-lost-its-mind.pdf

news.nationalpost.com/life/meditation-is-often-thought-of-as-a-pillar-of-wellness-but-for-some-it-has-a-much-darker-side

This.
Common misconception is that meditation involves 'blocking out' your surroundings, as if you were withdrawing from the world around you into some higher plain of existence or some shit.
Meditation is about being *in* the moment. You don't try to block out background noise: You acknowledge it.
Think of Last Samurai with Tom 'Cruise's for boys' , when he gets ambushed by those Shinsengumi, or whatever the fuck they're supposed to be, and he goes into a trance like state and can detect every slight sound and movement around him; or Limitless with Bradley 'takes it in the' Pooper; or the Wolverine, aka Hugh 'straight but sings and dances like a poofter anyway' Jackman.
That's kind of what you're aiming for with meditation, only you don't dwell on what's going on around you: You just acknowledge it and move on.
The same thing applies to thoughts. You shouldn't try to 'empty' your mind. The mind is a cheeky cunt: if you tell it not to think about anything, it'll start pulling up random shit just to piss you off. When a thought comes, just acknowledge it, and move on.

Don't think you have to meditate for 'at least' x time either. I have ADHD, and I'm hyper-acuitive/hyper-sensitive, meaning I get distracted by every little thing. When I wake up, my brain is in full-sperg mode. I try to meditate every morning, for 15-20 minutes, but if I'm short of time I'll still do 5.
Same if I find myself getting fragged during the day: I just stop what I'm doing and meditate for a few minutes to try and compose myself.

The benefits I just described above are universal: They just happen to be particularly applicable to ADHD.
If you meditate regularly, you'll find that you become less impulsive and have more self-control, because you've trained yourself to be able to acknowledge and dismiss thoughts in a more controlled manner.
You'll also reduce production of cortisol, and every faggot here should know that cortisol is the fucking enemy of gains.

>You'll also reduce production of cortisol, and every faggot here should know that cortisol is the fucking enemy of gains.

Actually, studies have found that meditation can increase cortisol, even if the participant feels less stressed.

hgi.org.uk/resources/delve-our-extensive-library/resources-and-techniques/book-review-buddha-pill-can
bacpuc.org.uk/_sitedata/1430485622 akPtNy4vs/Being mindful of mindfulness.pdf

>studies
Link them then... You've linked two shitty articles I can't be fucked reading through to see if they include citations. I'm a sciencebro: I'd like to read these studies to find out if this is the reason I still can't do 1/2/3/4.

Isn't the whole meditation/mantra/eastern shit where the placebo even comes from? By that I mean the whole idea that our minds have the power to heal our bodies through thought alone