Tried to google the thing now and then but all the hippie bullshit left me more confused everytime, so.. spirituality-memes aside, redpill me on meditation: on a purely scientific outlook, what is it? how does it work? what is it good for?
>t. depressofag
WHAT THE FUCK IS MEDITATION ALREADY?
Robert Wilson
Jacob Morgan
lets start with the basics user, can you have inner debates, are you capable of debating with yourself in your head? like actually taking a thing appart and explaining with your inner voice what you feel about it? also can you focus your mind on a single thing? if you can do all of the above you are on the right path, meditation is not really a scientific thing, its literally making use of your inner voice to take in and analise different things, like putting things into a objective perspective
Gabriel Wilson
Literally just a mental focus exercise. Sit down, focus on how the air feels going in and out of your nose as you breathe (or focus on something else, eventually you just focus on not thinking so it's just training wheels)
Do it for however long you can, every time you realise your mind wandered, calmly bring your attention back to what you're focusing on.
Just think of your mind as like a muscle, and meditation making it stronger in terms of your control over what you're thinking. Depression wise, it's helped me notice shit like suicidal thoughts and nope them instead of getting caught up in the chain of thought. I think I'm more in control of my emotions too.
Nathan Perry
nothing, since you're so analytical. stop wasting your time. you won't get anything out of it. it's not for people like you. it's for people with malleable, soft minds. like hippies.
Lincoln Cruz
Its about training yourself to be able to focus on literally nothing, which is alot harder than it sounds.
Now what may happen when you intensely focus on nothing for a period of time thats a whole nother story.
Nathaniel Turner
>analise different things
>focus on not thinking
Here we go again, so what I'm supposed to do? To think or not to think?
Trust me I'm not trolling, I really want to own this shit, but the more I read about it the more it looks like a meme. One of those things that are 'not the same for everyone', inb4 hippie-tier bullshit
Mason Gonzalez
>nothing, since you're so analytical
but user mediation is literally focusing on analising things in a setting that helps you focus, not some hippie mumbo jumbo about getting in contact with spirits or whatever
Asher Nguyen
When people come to me and they ask, 'How to meditate?' I tell them, 'There is no need to ask how to meditate, just ask how to remain unoccupied. Meditation happens spontaneously. Just ask how to remain unoccupied, that's all. That's the whole trick of meditation - how to remain unoccupied. Then you cannot do anything. The meditation will flower.
Meditation is just to be, not doing anything - no action, no thought, no emotion. You just are. And it is a sheer delight.
osho.com
I can't meditate if i don't do the wim hof breathing method.
Angel Adams
You got me there, I'm way too much analytical and it's part of the problem
>Now what may happen when you intensely focus on nothing for a period of time thats a whole nother story
Please enlighten me like I'm a fucking brainlet
Kevin Diaz
>on a purely scientific outlook
in5d.com
Jace Garcia
The thing is its hard to explain how to focus on nothing there are some decent guided meditations out there that can help you find that state probably. For me what helps is to focus on a imaginary point above my head as if something is there.
Thinking wont happen when you are super focused on something but keep in mind in the beginning you might be able to do it for like couple seconds at a time
Dylan Anderson
Non-doing; observation; not stopping the flow of thoughts, just watching. You have a body, a mind, and a (?). Your body is a heap of food you've collected. Your mind is a heap of impressions you've collected. But what or who is the one experiencing them? You must look and see for yourself.
Jackson Gray
You can focus without thinking. Someone else mentioned your "Inner monologue" in the thread I think. Your mental voice. That's what you're silencing. The important part isn't "thinking or not thinking", it's the focusing . If you're focused on your breath, you're still focused. If you're focused(ish) on 'nothing' it's the same effect.
Sebastian Kelly
It's when you sit really still and ignore everything around you except what's happening inside your body. You can move your focus around like a flashlight too and "shine" it on different stuff. It's called a "body scan" and you start focusing on your feet, then your ankles, and then your calves, etc. until you get to your head.
people who are good at it can withstand extreme discomfort and pain while meditating, it's really interesting except I am not good at it.
Alexander Stewart
Great, I'll lurk this shit, thanks
Ok I get it now but, if I achieve this 'nothing-state' what will happen next and how can it help me to cope with depression?
Jacob Adams
user this so called nothing state is a load of bullshit, do you know the meaning of the phrase 'cogito, ergo sum'? what these retards are saying is stop using your inner voice which is bad for you
Noah Cox
it's just learning to be patient and withstand discomfort. once you build up your threshold of making yourself sit still even though it's really, really boring, you will be able to withstand more discomfort when you're not meditating; discomfort like depression.
also if you're in the habit, in an emergency you can switch to a meditative state to help you endure extreme distress.
Bentley Nguyen
Taking turmeric with black pepper will help with depression
Michael Foster
Like I said before, it's not about "achieving" the state, that's pretty easy, it's about improving your mental ability to control your thoughts/focus by being able to MAINTAIN the "nothing state" for periods of time. Gives you more control over your mind and makes you calmer.
Joshua Brooks
not him but fuck off, this isn't a hippie thread.
Grayson Gray
Basically just the process of clearing your mind of all thought. Your heart rate slows and such. If you can sit down and purposely think absolutely no thoughts, just exist and breathe, that's meditation.
As you get more experienced, you can use this to hyperfocus on different things. There's one guy that can literally control his body temperature to the point where he climbed Everest in shorts, he's even sat on blocks of ice in scientific conditions under brain scans which show he's just controlling his temperature with his mind.
Juan Howard
So basically I have to worsen my depression to enjoy meditation, which is less shit but still a pain in the ass. Are you for real? It's like recommending heroin to junkies ffs
Ayden Long
look at all this hippie nonsense.. i wanna know how far you get through this zen garden-garbage before you realize nobody knows what they're talking about. the only thing scientific about meditation is the reason you feel that warm fuzziness you mistake for "enlightenment" or "inner-peace", when it's actually just minor oxygen deprivation from breathing once every two minutes. you'll know what i mean when you boot up one of those 12 minute binaural beats meditation aid videos voiced by hannibal lector how much of a sham the whole thing really is.
Joseph Cook
>how does this help with depression
It relieves symptoms. Depression is a lack of energy created in the mind. You clear your mind, you clear what is depressing you. Think of it like your mind is a muscle you're constantly using. It's made to be constantly used, but sometimes you need to relax it.
Chase Nelson
Isaac Gomez
You don't worsen your depression dude. It helps in the long run because you will have an insane level of emotional control so you can just go "ah" and feel something different for a while.
works better with the addition of meds but that's your prerogative.
Daniel Russell
Most solid answer so far
Grayson Flores
what I am talking about isn't hippie shit. it's building up your pain tolerance and emotional control via self examination and sitting really still.
Benjamin Baker
I don't do shit all day long, I don't think shit, I don't feel shit. Am I meditating? Because I'm still depressed as fuck
Already on meds, which aren't doing shit anymore. Hope you're right anyway, but so far nobody was able to explain me how the fuck this thing works
>clear head
>??? magic
>now you can control depression n shiet like temperature
>profit
Angel Edwards
he's not trying to lay on a bed of nails here, he's trying to help his depression. sitting cross-legged on the floor with your eyes closed and humming a single contra-octave note isn't going to do shit aside from making you feel dumb.
Sebastian Perez
It's just a brain exercise that makes your brain stronger.
>lifting weights
>??? magic
>now you can pick up heavier stuff
>profit
Ryder Mitchell
Yo. Meditation I don't think is like spiritual or any healing stupid bullshit. But it does actually clear the mind to do. Like it's proven that your mind is less stressed, you're relaxed, and you can work out a large variety of problems while you're meditating. It's kind of like sleeping but you're not dreaming and you can think. And you can like kinda figure yourself out in that time. I like it. I haven't done it in a while but it's a great time passer.
Connor Martin
That's not what meditation is afaik. You can do it wherever you want and you make no noise.
Lucas Torres
meditation is a meme
Juan Campbell
>I don't do or think shit at all all day
It is physically impossible to live like that.
Christian Cruz
Explain to me how you would be depressed if you really felt or thought nothing.
You are depressed because your mind is stuck in a negative feedback loop of shitty thoughts comparing you to others, imagining a negative future etc. thats far from feeling or thinking nothing.
James Smith
My brain is already strong, I'm not an impressionable mind and I put things in perspective all day long. So as far as I can guess, meditation is not for me the same as psychotherapy.
Samuel Kelly
>impressionability =/= strength
Strength is being able to shut out the outside. Strength is stopping anxiety by shutting the brain off. Curing depression by indulging in nothingness and breaking the malaise of melancholy because your brain is no longer exhausted. It's slowing your heartrate before you give a speech. It's stopping yourself from sweating when you're nervous, curing clammy hands before a date with a female.
Meditation is one skill of many that you can utilize to help your depression. It's not a one size fits all.
Hunter Hernandez
Depends on how you meditate, and you can even follow a school or find your own way:
It's pretty common that breathing and the pulsing of your heart are connected.
>Heavy Brething?
Hah! Heavy Breath!
>Relaxed Heartbeat?
Hoh! Relaxed Breathing!
It's said, that the heart, even tho an "autonomous muscle" is also controllable, and influences our body...
Take for exemple a wound, it would heal, right?
But in(HERE IT IS):
HOW MUCH TIME?
Time is a relative concept. You could heal your wound faster trough meditation considering that you can HAVE 1 SECOND BE FASTER THAN MINE.
It's also Phyisics, cause the Theory of Relativity, in particular, this would be called "CLOSE RELATIVITY".
Another thing, you could CHANNEL, the energy of nofap.
Jason Wood
>He thinks cogito ergo sum is logically equivalent to it's inverse
Dude stop trying to be deep, you're bad at it.
Brody Rogers
Breaking news: depression ISN'T feeling sad, sometimes you aren't able to feel anything at all, and it's worse. Indeed, I don't give a fuck about the future, the others, you name it.. I simply don't give a fuck generally, this goes also for good things. I'm unable to enjoy, anything. Everything is a waste of energy that I don't have in the first place and if I try to do something 'enjoyable' (it's not) I feel less shit for a bunch of minutes, at the best, but usually I simply feel worse.
Jackson Hughes
They treat it like the panacea for all ills, but it is useful for a few objectives. Yes, because meditation isn't without objectives, like the tree hugging folk make it up to be. You do it to quiet the mind, fix the breath, try to access bodily functions and so on. Basically, it can be a tool against distraction.
Austin Reed
You're not shutting the brain off and it's not about experiencing "nothing", like a lot of people say. It's about focusing on the present moment and not being overwhelmed by your thought-patterns
Samuel Garcia
>im gonna use a complicate phrase to show him despite not understanding it myself
you have no ideea what you just wrote there
Jaxon Jenkins
jesus.. some insane mental gymnastics going on in here, even by r9k standards
Oliver Rogers
It's about maintaining full consciousness, focus, and awareness without thought or engagement with it.
Jackson Sanders
i've used to focus on an inanimate objects
at least that's how i started developing my conscious
first focus on that mug you've got sitting there and stop doing everything else
bring your full attention to it
it'll quickly wander off
don't worry
don't struggle with it
some time later do it again
after a while you'll be able to completely focus on that stupid fucking mug and ignore the whole world
because that's what you're aiming for
then will you only be able to take the next steps like focus on your breathing, focus on other people, focus on whole surroundings
... and then you realize how overwhelming it all is and why you started meditating in the first place
the modern world is unnatural and meditation is an attempt to avoid the unavoidable trauma caused by that fact
and grasp the surrounding world
Ryan Sanders
OP here, get your shit together and see you before the heat death of the universe, at which point you'll hopefully have a solid outlook on wtf meditation is/does.
/thread
Austin Nguyen
>/thread'ing your own post
like come on
Landon Brooks
You guys could go on forever without realizing the one true and simple fact: there's no fit-all answer, you're just struggling to impose your personal one. Enough with this shitshow, call me when you are meme-free.
Andrew Scott
>My brain is already strong, I'm not an impressionable mind and I put things in perspective all day long. So as far as I can guess, meditation is not for me the same as psychotherapy.
Dude here's the thing. If you have an IQ higher than about 130, then NOTHING is for you.
Logan Carter