Meditation increases GABA

Lee Lebrada

essentially this you just not-think as hard as you can for 20 minutes. Your mind will try to distract you and throw much bait at you to get you to stray but you have to learn to "recognize the though but not interact with it". Also try not thinking about "the void" it in itself is a distracting concept. What you're trying to do is process a negative.

thats natural. you just let the mind do its thing but dont actively try and think. let the mind wander and eventually you will get to a point where your mind is more clear.

Think of it like lifting: you concentrate on your breath only, and when you're distracted is like when you drop the bar. You just pick it right back up. The point is to stay concentrated the longest time, but eventually you will drop your concentration, that's the point of meditation. You're building strength concentration by continually picking it back up, until one day you're strong enough to not drop it anymore.

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Sometimes, ugly things come up during meditation. The trick is just to look at them, see how they're made (anger, anxiety, a knot in my throat etc.) and then going back to your concentration.
At some point, you'll be able to look at it placidly without being engulfed in it. And this is how you learn to deal with anxiety and all the hellish feelings your brain can push on you.
This is a very important skill to have imo. It means not getting dragged by anger, fear, anxiety etc. whenever they happen, but being able to look at it and decide how you want to react (rather than act on "impulse").

Meditation doesn't replace meds BUT it does help with the feels, and give you more control over yourself and your emotions.

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There two main ways of meditating:
>Concentrating on the breath
More precisely, the tip of the nostril, and the sensation of air passing through. This one is the most often recommended, sometimes called Samatha/Samadhi. It trains concentration, like a muscle.
>Observing everything
As stated, you observe everything there is to observe around you. The fridge making noise, your itching elbow, the cat waling on the couch, some car honking far away... Here, the point is to observe "a car is honking", and do no more. You just limit your brain activity to what is actually happening in the room, not what is happening in your mind. This one is sometimes called Vipassana.

>>Observing everything
What if nothing is happening in the room? literally only the sound of the AC

you seriously think an endogenous increase of gaba via meditation will have enough of a run-on effect on hgh to do anything at all?

with that logic you could get juiced from popping xanax every day

Then you observe your aching limbs, the silence, and how you experience it. You observe your reaction to it, the fact that you're bored, the fact that you're impatient etc. There are a million things happening, meditation is the time to actually look at them and realising what they're made of.

Everyones mind does that, recognizing it is an important step. Dont beat yourself up about how often it happens, the duration of focus will be longer or shorter at times depending on a lot of things.
Progress as a meditator isnt linear and the positives come slowly, usually one notices the positive effects of it if a regular practice is put on halt for some time and the negative habit patterns of past start showing up again.
If it helps you can also think of your mind starting to wonder and regaining focus as one rep, which might help with retaining equanimity.
One important thing to notice about meditation compared to sports and lifting is that you dont want to mix it up. You dont need to and to maximize positive results you should stick to whatever type of meditation suits you best. An analogy about this would be digging a well, you dont dig a bit here and there to get water, what you do is you examine what the spot you want to dig is and you go deep there. Try different things, but stick with whatever you decide works best for your life.

Is there a starting strength equivalent to mastering the burmese or lotus position? I can currently mediate criss cross apple sauce but my legs fall asleep after 30 minutes.

Yoga could help, but cultures that advise to sit in burmese or lotus are cultures that live on the floor. You're missing a whole life of sitting on the floor cross legged, so I wouldn't focus too much on the lotus. Just find a comfortable position, even if it requires a chair. The point is to be able to stay still more than 10 minutes without hurting too much.

Couldn't I just take phenibut? It's a GABA agonist

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There's a good iPhone app called Headspace. Been using it for a couple months. Works for me...

Holy fuck kill yourself.
Phenibut is a GABA agonist just like ethanol. It's also a medication against social anxiety. Is drinking fraud now?

how long should each session be and often should you do this for?

i had to do this a couple times at my muay thai gym before we started training way back when it felt good

we sat cross legged and just focused on our breathing for a bit - is that all there is to it

>I don't know how to meditate
>just empty your mind. focus on forgetting everything...
This is the response of someone who has little to no actual experience practicing meditation. Disregard this tripfag's advice.

If anyone is serious about learning to meditate I would strongly recommend the book The Experience of Insight by Joseph Goldstein. The book is subtitled 'Simple and Direct Guide to Buddhist Meditation' but it actually has no real reference in it to anything anyone might consider 'religious' or even particularly philosophical discussion, it is a very practical and straight-forward guide to meditation.
(I will point out that there is one chapter about karma which takes the concept of rebirth very literally which I do not agree with, but save for that one chapter the book is what I would consider to be the best guide to meditation which I have read so far)

Easy man, that was a joke.
You can't "just take phenibut". Take phenibut if you need it as a medication, but it has nothing to do with meditation. The two are different things. Relieving anxiety can be one effect of meditation, among many others, but it is not its main goal.
However long you want. Recommended is 10 minutes, and increase gradually as you see fit. That said, it is sometimes more enjoyable to just meditate with no limits.

This user is right. Any time someone says the phrase "empty your mind" in regards to meditation, they are full of shit and you will get nowhere.
>t. gook

Maybe I'd benefit from it, but I already do some things that help with that: maintaining low body fat by calorie restriction boosts GABA, and ascorbic acid (vitamin C) has been shown to induce a "decrease in the energy barrier for GABA activation". (I space C a few hours out from my workouts and otherwise spread a gorilla dose throughout the day.)