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Comment by fjabre | Hacker News Reader

Meditation will never gain mass acceptance or practice no matter how many more of these articles we see.

People seem to forget there is a huge percentage of the population that will never meditate or can't meditate due to extenuating circumstances.

While this article is interesting it's not helpful for this subsection of the population.

For them it is far more beneficial to seek alternative therapies like rTMS, tDCS, tACS, and DBS tech, of which meditation is probably a self propelled variant.

It is well known that these technologies have analgesic effects and modulate brain state with desirable outcomes, just like meditation.

They have the added benefit of also being directly applicable to nerve branch areas/PNS in the body itself and not just the brain. So they go beyond meditation and what is possible with meditation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulat...

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>People seem to forget there is a huge percentage of the population that will never meditate or can't meditate due to extenuating circumstances.

This is just a restatement of what you said in your first line, but again it's just an assertion: "they won't do it" - well okay, why won't they? Is it because they feel they don't have enough time? Then we must give them more time. Is it because they have little regard for their mental health? Then tell them the dangers of letting mental health go unchecked. Is it because they are averse to it because they see it as a satanic ritual? Then we must educate them.

Only a small amount of the population engages in any behavior that requires active lifestyle modification. Exercise and diet are hardly adhered to despite being relatively simple. Meditation has the added difficulty of being solitary, and, for most, boring and difficult (compared to the instant-feedback world surrounding them).

I think that fits into the wider goal of educating people to care for their health for their own good; clearly the methods we're using don't work, and haven't adapted to the world in which you could be doing a million other things. Besides, it doesn't have to be all or nothing, you can easily escalate how much time you spend and plan accordingly. The answer isn't to give up on them.

Most people won't live their lives intentionally no matter what you do. It's a noble goal to increase the number from, say, 10% to 20%. But getting even a majority of people are going to 'care for their health for their own good' is demonstrably impossible. At best you can turn self-care into a game or entertainment, but extrinsic motivation is kind of the exact opposite of the practice of meditation.

And yet the overwhelming majority of the population brushes their teeth daily.

Make something culturally routine and it will happen.

It's not just culturally routine, but culturally shamed for not adhering. Additionally, it does not take much time at all. Meditation requires more investment in time by a factor of 10 at least, and if you shame someone for not meditating, they'll probably laugh at you or give you a bewildered look.

Boring, difficult, or terrifying.

One of the groups that wash out of meditation immediately are those who it turns out are afraid of being alone with their own thoughts. These could be dark thoughts, or they could just be the sort of person who always fills the silence in a conversation (for that reason or a myriad of others).

I went on a long trip with someone who thought I wouldn't make it 3 days without the internet. Turned out they were the one who needed the fix on day 3. You can't really see what's going on in someone else's head so you don't know how they will react to having to entertain themselves without props, until they do it.

> well okay, why won't they?

Have you worked with clinically depressed people?

I have friends who are, but when GP said "a large percentage of the population", I assumed they weren't specifically talking about clinically depressed people, who don't make up a large percentage of the population. Meditation isn't a cure and it's not equivalent to therapy, so people who are depressed should consider doing things as prescribed by a psychiatrist. Their issues with motivation (such as avolition) aren't issues for most people who don't meditate. Time and addiction to instant gratification probably are.

Meditation and chronic pain have a bad history due to some unhelpful dogma that pervades the meditation community. Many teachers insist on seated meditation in a position that requires flexibility and only works for people without circulatory issues (heart problems, diabetes) or back problems.

For instance in Seattle, I believe the Rinzai school may be the only one that volunteers multiple affordances rather than forcing the student to ask for them, or rejecting them out of hand. It's not just bullshit, it's cruelty.

I didn't make it anywhere with meditation until I encountered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhan_zhuang and figured out it's standing meditation. (If the arms up hurts, put them on your thighs). You can also just practice laying in bed, which is also good for insomnia.

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