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Yes, this. There's almost an inverse "no true Scotsman" element to the way mindfulness and meditation are taught and spoken about. No such thing as failure, no such thing as doing it correctly, doing it at all is better than not doing it. All based on the unproven premise that it's a positive thing for everyone and/or that everyone will be able to get stronger at it with practice. Seemingly no consideration to divergent neurotypes, psychological trauma, physical limitations, or deep cultural differences.

It reminds me of: years ago I came across a book profiling the journey of a young western Jewish man seeking a path in Zen Buddhism, studying under gurus with other seekers in monasteries. As he progressed through his meditative practice he couldn't avoid feeling unsettled by the sense that none of it was "working" for him no matter how deeply he understood and how much he practiced. The gurus all just kept trying to help him improve his practice. Until he came to the most enlightened and compassionate guru who basically let him off the hook, saying, in essence, that this stuff will never stick to him and that he's just meant to practice Judaism.

For those who think this is a cop out; it is known that for most people the ability to learn new languages changes around puberty. The ability to learn, recognize and pronounce phonemes changes when kids are very young. Babies brains are flexible and can be shaped in many ways. Adults, not so much.

It is not impossible for all to learn this type of 'skill'. It is more difficult for many, and impossible for some.

My personal belief is that we retain the ability to learn new languages. The issue is that modern schooling has trained us to try and learn in counter-productive ways.

I believe we can learn languages by (1) concentrating on mimicking and (2) learning by speaking with others and being continuously corrected by others.

The problem is that is requires a tremendous amount of work for learner and teacher.

Think how a baby or child learns and do as much of that as possible.

Initially absolutely avoid all reading, and totally avoid learning any rules.

Improve your general ability of mimicking skills e.g. by copying singers and songs, by copying famous people in the foreign language, mimicking accents or people in your own mother tongue.

People with English as their mother tongue have some advantages - we actually recognise a huge variety of vowel sounds because various English accents contain them - we also have familiarity with a variety of grammatical constructs. We also know pronunciation and writing are completely disjoint: anyone coming from a language where you say what you read has a big disadvantage.

Much of my belief comes from talking with people that have English as their second language, and looking for their successes and failures. Some people learn English well and it's interesting to look for why them? Some mistakes are common to particular groups and it's interesting to look for the root cause.

I have applied some of the above to teach myself conversational Spanish. To test my beliefs I'm definitely keen to move onto something more difficult ( I'm middle aged): the block is that I will need to dedicate many months of effort living in another country.

> People with English as their mother tongue have some advantages - we actually recognise a huge variety of vowel sounds because various English accents contain them

Not so sure about that. For example, I noticed it takes a bit of effort to get native English speakers to pronounce the ы sound, or to get them to hear how the ь letter affects pronunciation.

> We also know pronunciation and writing are completely disjoint: anyone coming from a language where you say what you read has a big disadvantage.

I don't quite agree. I come from a language where the spelling is almost phonetic (so, not totally disjoint from pronunciation), and it's very easy for children to learn reading and writing, which means they quickly move on to more important things. Meanwhile, children learning English as a first language are stuck memorising spelling and obscure rules and exceptions just to be able to write correctly. And conversely, when they hear a new word (or name) they need to look up how to spell it. I don't see an advantage, it's just a waste of energy.

It was relatively easy for me to learn the spelling of English words because I already knew a reasonable amount of French, so it was quite intuitive to spell "restaurant" or "renaissance". But for someone with English as a first language, I suspect it would have involved a lot of memorising.

> I noticed it takes a bit of effort to get native English speakers to pronounce the ы sound, or to get them to hear how the ь letter affects pronunciation.

But you are saying English speakers can learn it? How do Romance language speakers do? I'm just making a generalisation, which is not universal and there are plenty of vowel and consonant sounds English speakers really struggle to learn.

> children learning English as a first language are stuck memorising spelling and obscure rules and exceptions just to be able to write correctly.

Absolutely: it is a serious downside of English and plenty of adults never learn to spell well. I have seen the advantages of saying it like it is spelled in Spanish. But that isn't relevant to my point that English speakers have a natural understanding that spelling is disjoint from pronunciation. It maybe doesn't help much - hearing English speakers saying words they have learnt from books is painful!

Secondly, many English speakers often try to pronounce foreign names correctly - another habit that teaches us pronunciation (a little!)

Agreed. I was pressured to meditate throughout childhood / adolescence. I’ve even spent a couple of weeks in a friggin’ ashram. It just doesn’t work for me. That’s fine, I have plenty of other ways to get into flow state, think deeply about things, be aware of my body, etc. It gripes, though, to be told yet again by random internet posters that I’m doing it wrong or ‘just haven’t tried hard enough’. People are different and different things work for different people, but meditation is way up there with lisp in its ability to attract people with sanctimoniously superior attitudes.

To you, what does it mean to “not work”? Or what would it mean for it to “work”?

I’ve meditated on and off, and find it sometimes helpful, but I can’t conceive of what it would mean for it to work, or not work.

I was being told it would help me to feel calmer, help me feel more peaceful, give me amazing insights, etc. so I'd define "work" as "fulfil one or more of those claims in some perceptible way."

It did not. I never felt any real benefit from it and I didn't enjoy the process. So to me, that's "not working."

What's your motivation for meditating? Is it something that you can tell afterwards whether you achieved it or not? And I'm not talking 'achieve' like some sigma grindset maximizing gains type BS, I mean the way if I play a video game, I'm doing it because I expect to have fun, and afterwards I can ask myself "was that fun?" and gauge the degree to which I had fun.

To me it’s somewhat analogous to exercise, eating well, and sleeping well.

The benefits are “small” in one sense, but highly leveraged in another sense.

I don’t necessarily feel that I get a lot out of any single session, aside from a mental interrupt (which could also be achieved by going for a walk, or whatever).

It’s more like, doing it consistently over time moves the needle in some very small way, almost imperceptible. Like, I’ll notice I’m a little more patient with my kids, a little less anxious during a work meeting, a little slower to get angry, a little quicker to let anger dissipate.

And if I wasn’t paying attention, these changes might be so subtle that I wouldn’t even say anything had changed, and I could easily be one who says it “doesn’t work”.

But while those changes are all small and subtle, the downstream impact can be enormous. The difference between staying angry for a minute versus an hour is often the difference between good long term relationships and divorce, or the difference between going to prison, or not. Lots of long-tail negative outcomes get avoided. And the benefit of having a lower idle anxiety level seems to have a cumulative impact, or a thing that kicks off a virtuous cycle. Like, I feel a little less anxious, so I make a less worse decision to not medicate with junk food, so I sleep a little better, and make another better decision the next day, and so on.

It’s hard to really convey, because it’s very subtle but the principle is, I think, that the difference between doing a little, and doing zero, has a way larger impact than the arithmetic calculation would suggest. Like the difference between spending a dollar more than you earn, versus spending a dollar less than you earn. It’s a $2 difference and seems insignificant, but it’s the difference between debt and a path to wealth.

For me it's the different side of a coin: for some reasons after I had a few dissociation episodes, meditating is too easy. Clear your mind? Sure. I can stare at nothing for hours and only be vaguely aware of surroundings. 15 minutes of meditation daily? I plan ahead to have 15-20 minutes more then I need in the morning, because at some point my brain would clear itself and have no thoughts as I stare at the walls in thoughtless wonder.

The only times I do clear my mind intentionally now are the times when I am waiting. Kinda like fast-traveling to the future in video games (or, indeed, meditation mechanic in Witcher games). Makes airport experience a lot better, actually.

Meditation is a tool, and no tool is useful for everyone. And some folk don't use the tool as intended.

Not trying to get you to try again, but I used to feel that way about meditation until someone pointed out the goal was not to be empty and not have thought. When you have a thought you just observe it and make note of it and go back to your breath or experience or body scan. Sometimes you will just have a billion thoughts and you can’t get past that. Other times, and the more you have a practice, this gets easier. Ultimately it’s not about meditation but being mindful as you go about your life, and that’s what you’re ultimately practicing when you are meditating. Good luck!

I'm sorry you've had that experience. It's not necessarily for everyone. And I kind of feel like with trauma therapists should do a better job making sure you've processed the trauma enough to face the darkest recesses of your mind in silence. So it sounds like that therapist wasn't the right one for you.

But for others who maybe have struggled with it but haven't entirely sworn it off, I wanted to offer the following thoughts.

> It's impossible to put a cork in all of them

I know you know this given your background, but for others reading, the point of meditation isn't to silence your mind. It's one of the most confusing things about meditation at first, and it often sends people into an anxiety feedback loop. People notice their mind isn't being silenced and start to feel like a failure for not silencing it, which makes their mind less silent etc. I have an anxious kid, and this fear feedback loop is the hardest part.

But really, stripping away the traditional/religious background, IMO the main thing is activating the parasympathetic nervous system in a controlled way. Putting aside relatively abnormal cases, if one is angry or anxious then one hasn't successfully activated the parasympathetic nervous system, even if one is sitting in a meditation posture and trying to focus on the breath. So this it's pretty easy to tell whether you're deploying this skill successfully.

From trial and error, I've found that asking people to breathe out slowly is the least error prone method to get people to successfully activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Sometimes it helps to take a breath, hold it for a few seconds and then breathe out slowly. Other methods, like telling people to take a deep breath I've found to be less effective and more prone to errors. (For example, some people try to breathe hard or fast or even hyperventilate).

Once you can do that reliably and habitually, then you can start promoting other skills, like watching your mind without judgment. But I'm not sure it helps to, for example, non-judgmentally watch yourself have a panic attack. So IMO the ability to step back from the brink should come first for a lot of people, and then the harder skills should be built on a foundation where you know you have the ability to intervene if you need to.

I really appreciate George Haas as a meditation teacher. He specializes in those of us who are "f*cked up the most" (i.e. attachment disturbances)

actually, meditation can bring the buried emotions to surface. perhaps you have buried your anger and it tries to surface. maybe do Osho's dynamic meditation. Not alone, it needs a group. I did all kinds of stuff and read books, years and years. And after I invested to group sessions it got 100% more efficient