Project Reason is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. The foundation draws on the talents of prominent and creative thinkers in a wide range of disciplines to encourage critical thinking and erode the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.
Richard J. Davidson is the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior and the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, and Founder and Chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology and has published more than 275 scientific papers, many chapters and reviews, and edited 13 books. He is the author of the new book (with Sharon Begley) The Emotional Life of Your Brain. Richie (as he is known to his friends) has done more to bring the study of mental well-being into the 21st century than anyone I can think of. He was kind enough to answer a few questions about his work.
***
Can you briefly summarize your work up to this point?
The research I summarize in my book The Emotional Life of Your Brain is about emotional styles—differences among people in how they respond to emotional challenges. From quite early on in my career, there were two critical observations that came to form the core of my subsequent life’s work. The first observation is that the most salient characteristic of emotion in people is the fact that each person responds differently to life’s slings and arrows. Each of us is unique in our emotional make-up and this individuality determines why some people are resilient and others vulnerable, why some have high levels of well-being despite objective adversity while others decompensate rapidly in the response to the slightest setback.
The second observation came from the great fortune I had early in my career to be around some remarkable people. They were remarkable not because of their academic or professional achievements, but rather because of their demeanor, really because of their emotional style. These were extremely kind and generous people. They were very attentive, and when I was in their presence I felt as if I was the sole and complete focus of all of their attention. They were people that I found myself wishing to be around more. And I learned that one thing all of these people had in common was a regular practice of meditation. And I asked them if they were like that all of their lives and they assured me they were not, but rather that these qualities had been nurtured and cultivated by their meditative practices.
It wasn’t until many years later that I encountered neuroplasticity and recognized that the mechanisms of neuroplasticity were an organizing framework for understanding how emotional styles could be transformed. While they were quite stable over time in most adults, they could still be changed through systematic practice of specific mental exercises. In a very real and concrete sense, we could change our brains by transforming our minds. And there was no realm more important for that to occur than emotion. For it is so that our emotional styles play an incredibly important role in determining who will be vulnerable to psychopathology and who will not be. Emotional styles are also critical in our physical health. Mental and physical well-being are inextricably linked.
What is the focus of your new book? In the book I describe 6 emotional styles are that are rooted in basic neuroscientific research. The 6 styles are:
1. Resilience: How rapidly or slowly do you recover from adversity?
2. Outlook: How long does positive emotion persist following a joyful event?
3. Social Intuition: How accurate are you in detecting the non-verbal social cues of others?
4. Context: Do you regulate your emotion in a context-sensitive fashion?
5. Self-Awareness: How aware are you of your own bodily signals that constitute emotion?
6. Attention: How focused or scattered in your attention?
I did not decide one day to figure out how many emotional styles there were or to postulate which styles would make sense for humans to have. Rather, each of these styles has arisen inductively from the large corpus of research my colleagues and I have conducted using rigorous neuroscientific methods over the past 30 years. They are not the obvious styles that correspond to well-known personality types such as introversion and extraversion. But, as I explain in my book, they can explain the constituents of commonly found personality types.
The fact that they are grounded in neural systems provides important clues as to how each style affects our emotional behavior and how the styles can also impact downstream bodily systems important for physical health.
How much of a person’s emotional style is conscious?
Many aspects of emotional style are not conscious. They constitute emotional habits that largely proceed in the absence of awareness. For example, most of us are rarely aware of how long negative emotion persists following a stressful event. The self-awareness style underscores the fact that there are many bodily processes that contribute to emotion of which we may be unaware. One important motivation for me in writing this book is to bring into awareness habits of mind that previously were not conscious. By describing the nature of emotional styles and their underlying brain bases, it is my fervent aspiration that it will help others to recognize emotional patterns in themselves and such awareness is the first, and often most important, step in producing change. So if there are aspects of your emotional style that you wish to change, first becoming aware of these components of your mind is a key ingredient to change. In the book, I offer simple questionnaires you can take for each of the 6 emotional styles to give you an idea of where you fall on each of the 6 dimensions. And I also offer simple strategies to change your emotional styles should you wish to do so. These strategies are derived from ancient meditation practices and modern scientific approaches. Together, they constitute what I’ve called “neurally-inspired behavioral interventions”: Interventions that are derived from some understanding of the brain and utilize simple behavioral or mental strategies that offer the prospect of transforming your mind and thereby changing your brain. In the book I show that we can all take more responsibility for our own brains and intentionally shape our brains in a more positive way.
In my experience, the topic of meditation still provokes skepticism among scientists and secularists. Can you describe what you mean by “meditation” and then tell us why you think this practice is relevant to our understanding of the human mind?
One definition of the word “meditation’ in Sanskrit is “familiarization.” And in a key sense the family of mental practices that constitute meditation can be thought of as strategies to familiarize a person with her own mind. Meditation in this sense can help to cleanse the interior lenses of perception so that we can see our own minds with greater clarity. Particularly for those who are students of the mind, this practice can be enormously informative in providing an inner or phenomenological view that is different from that provided by the objective methods of science. In other senses, meditation refers to mental practices that can be used to cultivate attention and emotion regulation. For example, some practices involve focusing attention on breathing and returning the attention to breathing each time a person notices that her mind has wandered. In this way, gradually over time, selective attention can be improved. The term “mindfulness meditation” refers to a form of meditation during which practitioners are instructed to pay attention, on purpose and non-judgmentally. The process of learning to attend nonjudgmentally can gradually transform one’s emotional response to stimuli such that we can learn to simply observe our minds in response to stimuli that might provoke either negative or positive emotion without being swept up in these emotions. This does not mean that our emotional intensity diminishes. It simply means that our emotions do not perseverate. If we encounter an unpleasant situation, we might experience a transient increase in negative emotions but they do not persist beyond the situation.
Scientific research has now established that certain forms of meditation have the types of effects described and underscore their relevance for understanding the human mind. Such work establishes that the mind is more “plastic” than we had assumed in scientific research. By plastic we mean that it is capable of transformation. These findings invite the view that many qualities that we regarded as relatively fixed, such as one’s levels of happiness and well-being, are best regarded as the product of skills that can be enhanced through training.
Recently I’ve thought that you, Dennis, would benefit from meditation, or at least medication.
Does meditating about a glass of vodka count? It does affect the emotions positively.
Instead of returning the focus to breathing, would it work if we returned the focus to drinking? That’s also a basic function, no?
Come on down to the tavern, our meditations on the vodka (or whiskey, or tequila) last about as long as it takes to imbibe them and following on each shot there is a quick return to a focus on breathing, usually accompanied by some sort of mantra such as “Wooooooeeeeeh!”
Recently I’ve thought that you, Dennis, would benefit from meditation, or at least medication.
Does meditating about a glass of vodka count? It does affect the emotions positively.
Instead of returning the focus to breathing, would it work if we returned the focus to drinking? That’s also a basic function, no?
Come on down to the tavern, our meditations on the vodka (or whiskey, or tequila) last about as long as it takes to imbibe them and following on each shot there is a quick return to a focus on breathing, usually accompanied by some sort of mantra such as “Wooooooeeeeeh!”
Yes, toward the end of the tavern meditation session, my “Ohm” usually turns into “Ohm my God, I meditated too much.”
I haven’t read him before. If I can download it to my Kindle I’ll buy it. Maybe. Depending on reviews. Sounds sort of interesting. I want to get back into meditation - there are parts of me I want to develop further. For example, I’d like to be able to turn off anger more efficiently - like when I read another ratbag rant by BroMo. I recently broke my own rule not to respond to him. Have to stop that. Meditation might help.
I am with GAD on this kind of stuff. Sounds like mostly flapdoodle. Basically it is suggestive reasoning and confirmation bias. Most mind game fuckology is.
Richard J. Davidson is the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior and the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, and Founder and Chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology and has published more than 275 scientific papers, many chapters and reviews, and edited 13 books. He is the author of the new book (with Sharon Begley) The Emotional Life of Your Brain. Richie (as he is known to his friends) has done more to bring the study of mental well-being into the 21st century than anyone I can think of. He was kind enough to answer a few questions about his work.
***
Can you briefly summarize your work up to this point?
The research I summarize in my book The Emotional Life of Your Brain is about emotional styles—differences among people in how they respond to emotional challenges. From quite early on in my career, there were two critical observations that came to form the core of my subsequent life’s work. The first observation is that the most salient characteristic of emotion in people is the fact that each person responds differently to life’s slings and arrows. Each of us is unique in our emotional make-up and this individuality determines why some people are resilient and others vulnerable, why some have high levels of well-being despite objective adversity while others decompensate rapidly in the response to the slightest setback.
The second observation came from the great fortune I had early in my career to be around some remarkable people. They were remarkable not because of their academic or professional achievements, but rather because of their demeanor, really because of their emotional style. These were extremely kind and generous people. They were very attentive, and when I was in their presence I felt as if I was the sole and complete focus of all of their attention. They were people that I found myself wishing to be around more. And I learned that one thing all of these people had in common was a regular practice of meditation. And I asked them if they were like that all of their lives and they assured me they were not, but rather that these qualities had been nurtured and cultivated by their meditative practices.
It wasn’t until many years later that I encountered neuroplasticity and recognized that the mechanisms of neuroplasticity were an organizing framework for understanding how emotional styles could be transformed. While they were quite stable over time in most adults, they could still be changed through systematic practice of specific mental exercises. In a very real and concrete sense, we could change our brains by transforming our minds. And there was no realm more important for that to occur than emotion. For it is so that our emotional styles play an incredibly important role in determining who will be vulnerable to psychopathology and who will not be. Emotional styles are also critical in our physical health. Mental and physical well-being are inextricably linked.
What is the focus of your new book? In the book I describe 6 emotional styles are that are rooted in basic neuroscientific research. The 6 styles are:
1. Resilience: How rapidly or slowly do you recover from adversity?
2. Outlook: How long does positive emotion persist following a joyful event?
3. Social Intuition: How accurate are you in detecting the non-verbal social cues of others?
4. Context: Do you regulate your emotion in a context-sensitive fashion?
5. Self-Awareness: How aware are you of your own bodily signals that constitute emotion?
6. Attention: How focused or scattered in your attention?
I did not decide one day to figure out how many emotional styles there were or to postulate which styles would make sense for humans to have. Rather, each of these styles has arisen inductively from the large corpus of research my colleagues and I have conducted using rigorous neuroscientific methods over the past 30 years. They are not the obvious styles that correspond to well-known personality types such as introversion and extra. But, as I explain in my book, they can explain the constituents of commonly found personality types.
The fact that they are grounded in neural systems provides important clues as to how each style affects our emotional behavior and how the styles can also impact downstream bodily systems important for physical health.
How much of a person’s emotional style is conscious?
Many aspects of emotional style are not conscious. They constitute emotional habits that largely proceed in the absence of awareness. For example, most of us are rarely aware of how long negative emotion persists following a stressful event. The self-awareness style underscores the fact that there are many bodily processes that contribute to emotion of which we may be unaware. One important motivation for me in writing this book is to bring into awareness habits of mind that previously were not conscious. By describing the nature of emotional styles and their underlying brain bases, it is my fervent aspiration that it will help others to recognize emotional patterns in themselves and such awareness is the first, and often most important, step in producing change. So if there are aspects of your emotional style that you wish to change, first becoming aware of these components of your mind is a key ingredient to change. In the book, I offer simple questionnaires you can take for each of the 6 emotional styles to give you an idea of where you fall on each of the 6 dimensions. And I also offer simple strategies to change your emotional styles should you wish to do so. These strategies are derived from ancient meditation practices and modern scientific approaches. Together, they constitute what I’ve called “neurally-inspired behavioral interventions”: Interventions that are derived from some understanding of the brain and utilize simple behavioral or mental strategies that offer the prospect of transforming your mind and thereby changing your brain. In the book I show that we can all take more responsibility for our own brains and intentionally shape our brains in a more positive way.
In my experience, the topic of meditation still provokes skepticism among scientists and secularists. Can you describe what you mean by “meditation” and then tell us why you think this practice is relevant to our understanding of the human mind?
One definition of the word “meditation’ in Sanskrit is “familiarization.” And in a key sense the family of mental practices that constitute meditation can be thought of as strategies to familiarize a person with her own mind. Meditation in this sense can help to cleanse the interior lenses of perception so that we can see our own minds with greater clarity. Particularly for those who are students of the mind, this practice can be enormously informative in providing an inner or phenomenological view that is different from that provided by the objective methods of science. In other senses, meditation refers to mental practices that can be used to cultivate attention and emotion regulation. For example, some practices involve focusing attention on breathing and returning the attention to breathing each time a person notices that her mind has wandered. In this way, gradually over time, selective attention can be improved. The term “mindfulness meditation” refers to a form of meditation during which practitioners are instructed to pay attention, on purpose and non-judgmentally. The process of learning to attend nonjudgmentally can gradually transform one’s emotional response to stimuli such that we can learn to simply observe our minds in response to stimuli that might provoke either negative or positive emotion without being swept up in these emotions. This does not mean that our emotional intensity diminishes. It simply means that our emotions do not perseverate. If we encounter an unpleasant situation, we might experience a transient increase in negative emotions but they do not persist beyond the situation.
Scientific research has now established that certain forms of meditation have the types of effects described and underscore their relevance for understanding the human mind. Such work establishes that the mind is more “plastic” than we had assumed in scientific research. By plastic we mean that it is capable of transformation. These findings invite the view that many qualities that we regarded as relatively fixed, such as one’s levels of happiness and well-being, are best regarded as the product of skills that can be enhanced through training.
I do a lot of these exercises with my supervisor. Of course your mind will wonder at first, and even for the first couple months, but the truly hard thing is not judging yourself. And it’s been my experience that you can’t begin breathing exercises like these while anxious. You have to practice them while in a calm state. My professor equated breathing exercises to escaping from a robber via a bike. If you never learned how to ride a bike, you’re not going to hop on for the first time while being chased by a robber. Conversely, once you’ve mastered riding the bike, you would hop on it to get away from the robber more efficiently. The analogy being that you practice focused breathing exercises while calm with the goal to apply them while stressed with the long term goal to hard wire the process where it becomes an automatic and more efficient way to deal with anxiety and stress.
Edit: the goal is to breath deep with the diaphragm. In order to do so, it helps me to envision that the air has a color and I’m sucking it into my stomach with an imaginary straw.
I don’t doubt that meditation can “train” your mind, I just say so what. Repetitive ritual and focus are proven techniques used by every religion, cult, group therapy, corporate training, even Ninja’s. If you decide you need to be a better person or need to find god and spend hours a day on repetitive ritual and focus you will likely train yourself to believe you are a better person or that you found god. This why S&M is such a theme in religion and philosophy, suffering is extremely powerful as a repetitive ritual and focus for “training” ones “self”.
I don’t doubt that meditation can “train” your mind, I just say so what. Repetitive ritual and focus are proven techniques used by every religion, cult, group therapy, corporate training, even Ninja’s. If you decide you need to be a better person or need to find god and spend hours a day on repetitive ritual and focus you will likely train yourself to believe you are a better person or that you found god. This why S&M is such a theme in religion and philosophy, suffering is extremely powerful as a repetitive ritual and focus for “training” ones “self”.
If you want to play the piano, you’ve got to practice lots of boring scales. If you don’t want to play the piano you might thing playing scales is a useless waste of time. Breathing exercises, over time, can help to control the emotions (even my paternal grandmother knew this - “just take a few deep breaths…”) but a person who feels just fine with their emotional life might think that is a waste of time. Concentration and focusing exercises can help train the mind, but somebody who isn’t interested in mental quickness would think them a waste of time. Physical exercise, over time, can tone and strengthen the body, but somebody who likes to sit on the couch with a beer watching tv would think that a waste of time, or at least something too strenuous to really attempt - better to have another slice of pizza. You pay your money (time is money, so they say) and you take your chances.
I don’t doubt that meditation can “train” your mind, I just say so what. Repetitive ritual and focus are proven techniques used by every religion, cult, group therapy, corporate training, even Ninja’s. If you decide you need to be a better person or need to find god and spend hours a day on repetitive ritual and focus you will likely train yourself to believe you are a better person or that you found god. This why S&M is such a theme in religion and philosophy, suffering is extremely powerful as a repetitive ritual and focus for “training” ones “self”.
Except that your body manifests stress, anxiety, and depression is a very real and empirical manner. At the very least, meditation done correctly can help deescalate physical manifestations of negative emotions. Of course it can be adapted so that a theist can envision god in her breath, or whatever, but that doesn’t make the physical and mental improving effects moot.
I don’t doubt that meditation can “train” your mind, I just say so what. Repetitive ritual and focus are proven techniques used by every religion, cult, group therapy, corporate training, even Ninja’s. If you decide you need to be a better person or need to find god and spend hours a day on repetitive ritual and focus you will likely train yourself to believe you are a better person or that you found god. This why S&M is such a theme in religion and philosophy, suffering is extremely powerful as a repetitive ritual and focus for “training” ones “self”.
If you want to play the piano, you’ve got to practice lots of boring scales. If you don’t want to play the piano you might thing playing scales is a useless waste of time. Breathing exercises, over time, can help to control the emotions (even my paternal grandmother knew this - “just take a few deep breaths…”) but a person who feels just fine with their emotional life might think that is a waste of time. Concentration and focusing exercises can help train the mind, but somebody who isn’t interested in mental quickness would think them a waste of time. Physical exercise, over time, can tone and strengthen the body, but somebody who likes to sit on the couch with a beer watching tv would think that a waste of time, or at least something too strenuous to really attempt - better to have another slice of pizza. You pay your money (time is money, so they say) and you take your chances.
So basically, if you want to do something you have to do something, how profound
Except that your body manifests stress, anxiety, and depression is a very real and empirical manner. At the very least, meditation done correctly can help deescalate physical manifestations of negative emotions. Of course it can be adapted so that a theist can envision god in her breath, or whatever, but that doesn’t make the physical and mental improving effects moot.
That would just be a distraction as well as a detraction, IMO.
At any rate it’s amusing to me when people with cloudy, noisy, and/or just chaotic minds deride or just can’t appreciate meditation ... but then I’m very easily amused. Makes sense, though, that it’s the kind of thing that appeals to those who already have an inclination and doesn’t to those who don’t. Seems that’s the way of many such things.
I don’t doubt that meditation can “train” your mind, I just say so what. Repetitive ritual and focus are proven techniques used by every religion, cult, group therapy, corporate training, even Ninja’s. If you decide you need to be a better person or need to find god and spend hours a day on repetitive ritual and focus you will likely train yourself to believe you are a better person or that you found god. This why S&M is such a theme in religion and philosophy, suffering is extremely powerful as a repetitive ritual and focus for “training” ones “self”.
Except that your body manifests stress, anxiety, and depression is a very real and empirical manner. At the very least, meditation done correctly can help deescalate physical manifestations of negative emotions. Of course it can be adapted so that a theist can envision god in her breath, or whatever, but that doesn’t make the physical and mental improving effects moot.
Except that your body manifests stress, anxiety, and depression is a very real and empirical manner. At the very least, meditation done correctly can help deescalate physical manifestations of negative emotions. Of course it can be adapted so that a theist can envision god in her breath, or whatever, but that doesn’t make the physical and mental improving effects moot.
That would just be a distraction as well as a detraction, IMO.
At any rate it’s amusing to me when people with cloudy, noisy, and/or just chaotic minds deride or just can’t appreciate meditation ... but then I’m very easily amused. Makes sense, though, that it’s the kind of thing that appeals to those who already have an inclination and doesn’t to those who don’t. Seems that’s the way of many such things.
No more amusing then those who think that their minds aren’t cloudy, noisy, and/or just chaotic because of repetitive ritual. Kind of like people who have mental experiences and decide it was god instead of a common brain fart like everyone else.
I take what has been called meditation to be what I call “reflection,” on one’s physiological, emotional and cognitive functioning. Sometimes that can result, if it is not just narcissistic self-admiration, it quite useful changes in all three areas. Not in some great conclusions and “truth,” which tends to end further development, but in more effective and less stressful functioning in future events. But reflection is not in itself some end-state, but just an on-going process. Anyway, that’s my impression.
I take what has been called meditation to be what I call “reflection,” on one’s physiological, emotional and cognitive functioning.
That’s not generally what meditation means—certainly not Buddhist meditation/the kind of meditation Harris talks about. That would be the noise/internal dialog to be ignored through meditation, actually. In fact ignoring such noise is kind of the central “goal” in the form of meditation at issue here. It’s all about filtering out the noise and finding the Eye of the Mind, so to speak (as in the eye of a storm).
No more amusing then those who think that their minds aren’t cloudy, noisy, and/or just chaotic because of repetitive ritual. Kind of like people who have mental experiences and decide it was god instead of a common brain fart like everyone else.
Actually I was hoping that would be timed so it didn’t appear to be about you, because it wasn’t ... well, not directly so anyway.
I don’t doubt that meditation can “train” your mind, I just say so what. Repetitive ritual and focus are proven techniques used by every religion, cult, group therapy, corporate training, even Ninja’s. If you decide you need to be a better person or need to find god and spend hours a day on repetitive ritual and focus you will likely train yourself to believe you are a better person or that you found god. This why S&M is such a theme in religion and philosophy, suffering is extremely powerful as a repetitive ritual and focus for “training” ones “self”.
Except that your body manifests stress, anxiety, and depression is a very real and empirical manner. At the very least, meditation done correctly can help deescalate physical manifestations of negative emotions. Of course it can be adapted so that a theist can envision god in her breath, or whatever, but that doesn’t make the physical and mental improving effects moot.
Which is different from what I said how?
“I just say so what.” The so what = meditation has an extremely powerful and profound effect on the mind and body that I assumed you were trivializing by the tone of your post. If I misread, I apologize.
I view meditation as a very powerful tool; nothing more and nothing less. Past societies and religions view meditation as synonymous with the transcendental. I’m my opinion it is still effective when used this way, but less so. Inner well being can exist in the presence of the delusion that is religion, but these delusions create restraints on cognitions that should have powerful meditative implications. Do I think a reasonable atheist will have more powerful and longer lasting meditative results? You Betcha!
I don’t doubt that meditation can “train” your mind, I just say so what. Repetitive ritual and focus are proven techniques used by every religion, cult, group therapy, corporate training, even Ninja’s. If you decide you need to be a better person or need to find god and spend hours a day on repetitive ritual and focus you will likely train yourself to believe you are a better person or that you found god. This why S&M is such a theme in religion and philosophy, suffering is extremely powerful as a repetitive ritual and focus for “training” ones “self”.
If you want to play the piano, you’ve got to practice lots of boring scales. If you don’t want to play the piano you might thing playing scales is a useless waste of time. Breathing exercises, over time, can help to control the emotions (even my paternal grandmother knew this - “just take a few deep breaths…”) but a person who feels just fine with their emotional life might think that is a waste of time. Concentration and focusing exercises can help train the mind, but somebody who isn’t interested in mental quickness would think them a waste of time. Physical exercise, over time, can tone and strengthen the body, but somebody who likes to sit on the couch with a beer watching tv would think that a waste of time, or at least something too strenuous to really attempt - better to have another slice of pizza. You pay your money (time is money, so they say) and you take your chances.
So basically, if you want to do something you have to do something, how profound
Oh, dear, GAD, that is so funny and yet so deep. I don’t think you actually realise how deep that is.
I don’t doubt that meditation can “train” your mind, I just say so what. Repetitive ritual and focus are proven techniques used by every religion, cult, group therapy, corporate training, even Ninja’s. If you decide you need to be a better person or need to find god and spend hours a day on repetitive ritual and focus you will likely train yourself to believe you are a better person or that you found god. This why S&M is such a theme in religion and philosophy, suffering is extremely powerful as a repetitive ritual and focus for “training” ones “self”.
Except that your body manifests stress, anxiety, and depression is a very real and empirical manner. At the very least, meditation done correctly can help deescalate physical manifestations of negative emotions. Of course it can be adapted so that a theist can envision god in her breath, or whatever, but that doesn’t make the physical and mental improving effects moot.
Which is different from what I said how?
“I just say so what.” The so what = meditation has an extremely powerful and profound effect on the mind and body that I assumed you were trivializing by the tone of your post. If I misread, I apologize.
I view meditation as a very powerful tool; nothing more and nothing less. Past societies and religions view meditation as synonymous with the transcendental. I’m my opinion it is still effective when used this way, but less so. Inner well being can exist in the presence of the delusion that is religion, but these delusions create restraints on cognitions that should have powerful meditative implications. Do I think a reasonable atheist will have more powerful and longer lasting meditative results? You Betcha!
I am trivializing it in the sense that it can make you believe what you want to believe, but so what lots of things can.
Lets say you say you are happy and I say I am happy, are you going to claim you are happier then me because you meditate and I don’t? If so prove it, if not then meditation = so what = you are happy because you made yourself believe you are happy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that you are happy but don’t imply that your happiness is above mine because mine didn’t come from meditation, that makes me sad.
I don’t doubt that meditation can “train” your mind, I just say so what. Repetitive ritual and focus are proven techniques used by every religion, cult, group therapy, corporate training, even Ninja’s. If you decide you need to be a better person or need to find god and spend hours a day on repetitive ritual and focus you will likely train yourself to believe you are a better person or that you found god. This why S&M is such a theme in religion and philosophy, suffering is extremely powerful as a repetitive ritual and focus for “training” ones “self”.
Except that your body manifests stress, anxiety, and depression is a very real and empirical manner. At the very least, meditation done correctly can help deescalate physical manifestations of negative emotions. Of course it can be adapted so that a theist can envision god in her breath, or whatever, but that doesn’t make the physical and mental improving effects moot.
Which is different from what I said how?
“I just say so what.” The so what = meditation has an extremely powerful and profound effect on the mind and body that I assumed you were trivializing by the tone of your post. If I misread, I apologize.
I view meditation as a very powerful tool; nothing more and nothing less. Past societies and religions view meditation as synonymous with the transcendental. I’m my opinion it is still effective when used this way, but less so. Inner well being can exist in the presence of the delusion that is religion, but these delusions create restraints on cognitions that should have powerful meditative implications. Do I think a reasonable atheist will have more powerful and longer lasting meditative results? You Betcha!
I am trivializing it in the sense that it can make you believe what you want to believe, but so what lots of things can.
Lets say you say you are happy and I say I am happy, are you going to claim you are happier then me because you meditate and I don’t? If so prove it, if not then meditation = so what = you are happy because you made yourself believe you are happy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that you are happy but don’t imply that your happiness is above mine because mine didn’t come from meditation, that makes me sad.
I’m not claiming superior happiness. What I’m saying is that many people claim happiness despite the fact that they can find additional mental and physical relief from meditation. I think of it as less of you v. me regarding happiness, and more of a “we” can all experience relief with meditation done correctly. There is a plethora of research regarding the positive effects of meditation and breathing exercises, both physically and mentally. However, it’s very easy to dismiss meditation and breathing exercises as a hoax because of the social psychological stigma. And normally denial comes from people whose anxiety levels or frustration tolerance levels are jeopardized for one psychological reason or another.
I don’t doubt that meditation can “train” your mind, I just say so what. Repetitive ritual and focus are proven techniques used by every religion, cult, group therapy, corporate training, even Ninja’s. If you decide you need to be a better person or need to find god and spend hours a day on repetitive ritual and focus you will likely train yourself to believe you are a better person or that you found god. This why S&M is such a theme in religion and philosophy, suffering is extremely powerful as a repetitive ritual and focus for “training” ones “self”.
Except that your body manifests stress, anxiety, and depression is a very real and empirical manner. At the very least, meditation done correctly can help deescalate physical manifestations of negative emotions. Of course it can be adapted so that a theist can envision god in her breath, or whatever, but that doesn’t make the physical and mental improving effects moot.
Which is different from what I said how?
“I just say so what.” The so what = meditation has an extremely powerful and profound effect on the mind and body that I assumed you were trivializing by the tone of your post. If I misread, I apologize.
I view meditation as a very powerful tool; nothing more and nothing less. Past societies and religions view meditation as synonymous with the transcendental. I’m my opinion it is still effective when used this way, but less so. Inner well being can exist in the presence of the delusion that is religion, but these delusions create restraints on cognitions that should have powerful meditative implications. Do I think a reasonable atheist will have more powerful and longer lasting meditative results? You Betcha!
I am trivializing it in the sense that it can make you believe what you want to believe, but so what lots of things can.
Lets say you say you are happy and I say I am happy, are you going to claim you are happier then me because you meditate and I don’t? If so prove it, if not then meditation = so what = you are happy because you made yourself believe you are happy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that you are happy but don’t imply that your happiness is above mine because mine didn’t come from meditation, that makes me sad.
I’m not claiming superior happiness. What I’m saying is that many people claim happiness despite the fact that they can find additional mental and physical relief from meditation. I think of it as less of you v. me regarding happiness, and more of a “we” can all experience relief with meditation done correctly. There is a plethora of research regarding the positive effects of meditation and breathing exercises, both physically and mentally. However, it’s very easy to dismiss meditation and breathing exercises as a hoax because of the social psychological stigma. And normally denial comes from people whose anxiety levels or frustration tolerance levels are jeopardized for one psychological reason or another.
So anyone who isn’t happier doing meditation is doing it wrong i.e. everyone is happier if they do it right. How is that different the someone like bromo who says if you look for god but don’t find him it’s because you did it wrong i.e. everyone finds god if they do it right.
1. Resilience: How rapidly or slowly do you recover from adversity?
2. Outlook: How long does positive emotion persist following a joyful event?
3. Social Intuition: How accurate are you in detecting the non-verbal social cues of others?
4. Context: Do you regulate your emotion in a context-sensitive fashion?
5. Self-Awareness: How aware are you of your own bodily signals that constitute emotion?
6. Attention: How focused or scattered in your attention?
”1. In having ones attention on one’s outlook one should be self-aware of one’s own resilience relative to the context of the situation and one should be resilient towards negative social intuition relative to the perspective others have on one’s personal outlook.”
-Daniel Moore
I’m not claiming superior happiness. What I’m saying is that many people claim happiness despite the fact that they can find additional mental and physical relief from meditation. I think of it as less of you v. me regarding happiness, and more of a “we” can all experience relief with meditation done correctly. There is a plethora of research regarding the positive effects of meditation and breathing exercises, both physically and mentally. However, it’s very easy to dismiss meditation and breathing exercises as a hoax because of the social psychological stigma. And normally denial comes from people whose anxiety levels or frustration tolerance levels are jeopardized for one psychological reason or another.
Prayer, chanting, singing spiritual songs, speaking in tongues, and engaging in religious rituals can also give mental and physical relief to certain folks. If it works, do it, just like with meditation.
I don’t doubt that meditation can “train” your mind, I just say so what. Repetitive ritual and focus are proven techniques used by every religion, cult, group therapy, corporate training, even Ninja’s. If you decide you need to be a better person or need to find god and spend hours a day on repetitive ritual and focus you will likely train yourself to believe you are a better person or that you found god. This why S&M is such a theme in religion and philosophy, suffering is extremely powerful as a repetitive ritual and focus for “training” ones “self”.
Except that your body manifests stress, anxiety, and depression is a very real and empirical manner. At the very least, meditation done correctly can help deescalate physical manifestations of negative emotions. Of course it can be adapted so that a theist can envision god in her breath, or whatever, but that doesn’t make the physical and mental improving effects moot.
Which is different from what I said how?
“I just say so what.” The so what = meditation has an extremely powerful and profound effect on the mind and body that I assumed you were trivializing by the tone of your post. If I misread, I apologize.
I view meditation as a very powerful tool; nothing more and nothing less. Past societies and religions view meditation as synonymous with the transcendental. I’m my opinion it is still effective when used this way, but less so. Inner well being can exist in the presence of the delusion that is religion, but these delusions create restraints on cognitions that should have powerful meditative implications. Do I think a reasonable atheist will have more powerful and longer lasting meditative results? You Betcha!
I am trivializing it in the sense that it can make you believe what you want to believe, but so what lots of things can.
Lets say you say you are happy and I say I am happy, are you going to claim you are happier then me because you meditate and I don’t? If so prove it, if not then meditation = so what = you are happy because you made yourself believe you are happy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that you are happy but don’t imply that your happiness is above mine because mine didn’t come from meditation, that makes me sad.
I’m not claiming superior happiness. What I’m saying is that many people claim happiness despite the fact that they can find additional mental and physical relief from meditation. I think of it as less of you v. me regarding happiness, and more of a “we” can all experience relief with meditation done correctly. There is a plethora of research regarding the positive effects of meditation and breathing exercises, both physically and mentally. However, it’s very easy to dismiss meditation and breathing exercises as a hoax because of the social psychological stigma. And normally denial comes from people whose anxiety levels or frustration tolerance levels are jeopardized for one psychological reason or another.
So anyone who isn’t happier doing meditation is doing it wrong i.e. everyone is happier if they do it right. How is that different the someone like bromo who says if you look for god but don’t find him it’s because you did it wrong i.e. everyone finds god if they do it right.
Firstly, there is physical proof that breathing exercises and meditation can relax the body and mind. Stress and anxiety can constrict air valves and trigger shallow breathing. Breathing exercises help this. More oxygen = Less physical pain = less anxiety. Vice versa and twice over. Some believe a deeper sense of clarity can be reached when this process is combined with memorial and cognitive exercises. I tend to agree. What’s so hard to understand?
