Ask HN: Constant mindfulness/body-scanning, any science on it?
Then I decided to simply meditate constantly. I've gone to 4 Vipassana retreats in my life and have been on the practice on and off since 10 years (mostly off). In my opinion, Vipassana is more or less the same as a normal body scan, except for the fact that a normal body scan is more loose about how long you stay in a certain area of your body (with Vipassana you immediately move on once you've felt a sensation). Just to give you an idea of what it is that I'm doing.
There are a few things that I'm noticing:
1. My sensitivity towards sensations in my body seems to be growing a lot faster. It's hard to emphasize how much it has grown just for doing this a few days.
2. The more I think, the more my meditation is interrupted, which is okay. It's just something I notice.
3. When I get into situations where thinking isn't required, then it starts to look a lot like formal meditation.
4. To my surprise, it's relatively easy to be in a light to medium information dense conversation and still meditate with ease. It only becomes difficult when I'm listening to concepts I can't immediately grok and this almost never happens in normal day to day conversation. My suspicion is that this is mostly because mindfulness meditation is associated with the insula. The insula is not a part of the default mode network (normally), so not too many signals are disturbing each other.
Anyway, does anyone knows some science on this?