Meditation boosts part of brain where ADD, addictions reside | Hacker News Reader

Meditation boosts part of brain where ADD, addictions reside

arstechnica.com

97 pointsevo_925 comments

When I began to work on overcoming my addictions, I never gained any traction on it until I made meditation a part of my routine. I don't know anything about the scientific aspect of it but I noticed that I was more patient with things, able to suffer/sit through things and sit with myself a lot more. I think the sense of self-comfort that came from meditation was the most important thing. not the sense of comfort, but being comfortable with myself.

Can you expand on how you started? Your routine?

I've had phenomenal experience with isha yoga's Inner Engineering. It is basically a daily 21 minute practice, that they thought me in a 7-day program. The practices are very simple (no strenuous postures etc). Since i started in Dec 2007, i haven't skipped a single day - the benefits are great enough that coming back to do the practice daily happens naturally.

Now it is also being offered online at www.innerengineering.com.

Above all, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, the person behind all of this, is the coolest, most awesome spiritual master i've come across.

http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html

That's what works for me. It's not at all involved, just concentrate on breathing. When the mind wanders, just pause & (non-judgmentally) go back to observing the breath.

Of course YMMV, but I find half an hour a day is enough.

"It's not at all involved, just concentrate on breathing. When the mind wanders, just pause & (non-judgmentally) go back to observing the breath."

That's the same method "Happy to Burn" describes, but I still find it a case of "easier said than done", and difficult to do.

That is the case, and that is the point. It is very hard, in fact impossible to do for more than a few seconds without practice. Which is the problem you are solving by practicing. If you can make yourself just sit there, not scolding yourself as you drift, but always returning to silence and the breath, you can go longer and longer without thinking.

Its just like physical exercise - repetition makes you better. And just like physical exercise, it makes your entire life better.

Right, and that's why I thought to comment about "It's not at all involved" - it is that involved.

I think I read somewhere in the book that concentration isn't all that important (& in fact you don't want to develop it too far). You're mostly trying to observe yourself lightly, & to catch yourself.

I started getting into Vipassana meditation after proofreading an intro book on the subject called "Happy to Burn" (https://www.fifobooks.com/Catalog?bkid=6b430c42-5bf7-4e0d-a5...) for my startup.

Couldn't agree more. It's the sense of always feeling safe or 'home' in any situation that meditation can give you. I found it extremely helpful when dealing with anxiety and I'm not surprised it works for addiction as well. My mother requires anti-anxiety meds to function and I was determined to find an alternate solution. Once you learn to watch (or listen) to your thoughts as they pop up you start to notice all the background chatter your mind is producing without your knowledge.

It might sound weird to others but your mind is constantly telling you stories. 'I would feel better if I had drink' or 'I should avoid this situation because I might have a panic attack' or a magical combination of both 'If I drink I won't have a panic attack'.

More informative article here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100816155000.ht...

Meditation is for the mind what physical exercise is for the body. That is why people do it, because it pays off in enhanced performance and mood. It is as difficult and painful to sit in intense focus for hours at a time as it is to exercise intensely for hours.

In my experience, both kinds of exercise pay off about the same amount. Taken together, they constitute a major self 'upgrade.'

That is one very real and tangible result of meditation. There is an aspect beyond this that grows from the concentration developed by regular meditation. I don't know about "enlightenment" but at least for me, after several years of steady practice, it's more about accepting things as they come and letting go of my ideas about how they should be. Somehow this has ended up nullifying the entire concept of an upgrade or enhancement for me, which is quixotic.

Sounds like you're happy :)

Perhaps, we stress the need too often to overcome our "disorders" versus leveraging and unleashing the powers of being outside of the normal distribution of the population. I have known my own symptoms that are reminiscent of ADD (and a host of others!) for a while now but have chosen to not overcome them through adderall,etc. but realize that these abnormalities might make me a more creative individual. Of course, its easier said than done, and it will most likely be an internal conflict existing a lifetime. Meditation seems like a practical way of reducing stress and channeling focus...

I don't think this article is informative at all. ADHD-Inattentive (or ADD)is primarily a frontal lobe condition.

I'm not convinced that meditation alone will boost attention. Meditation tends to boost alpha activity in the brain, but that only has limited advantage in attention.

Alpha boosting activities would help more with addictions.

I don't know anything about the neurological side of things, but many forms of meditation are all about attention management.

Put another way: if meditation doesn't boost attention, you're probably not doing it right.

After upvoting this comment I had a second thought: I think the hypothesis of meditation is that it improves attention, (and that is indeed the point). But has that hypothesis been proved? I can provide my own anecdotal evidence that indeed, it seems as if a meditation practice has boosted my attention span. But this is not really science.

Yes, there are dozens of studies on the effects of meditation. Here's one specifically on attention span: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100714121737.ht...

Your probably correct; "if meditation doesn't boost attention, you're probably not doing it right."

As an EEG tech, the stories from the 70s were somewhat legendary, about meditation and EEG. Alpha training was considered almost magical.

What were these stories?

This google talk by Dan Siegel (a neuroscientist & psychiatrist) talks about mindfulness training causing beneficial structural changes in the frontal lobes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr4Od7kqDT8&feature=relat...

The ACC is important to attentiveness. It's almost a lower-level to the frontal lobe, connecting it to the emotional and reward areas of the brain. George Bush et al saw poor ACC activation in ADHD subjects while performing the counting stroop:

http://www.citeulike.org/user/xinian/article/1366138

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/05/11/095679761037...

interesting stuff. i tried meditation a while back and persisted for about a year. after which i had a sense of self which was previously lacking. i'm glad they're starting to verify this stuff with research.

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