Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

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"What is it?"

At its simplest it is quieting the mind. A long time ago I took a transcendental meditation course (TM) (I know, I know, it dates me, there was a girl involved) they are (were?) the folks who claimed you could defy gravity if you were good enough. There was a lot of eastern mysticism but as the scientific type I was more interested in what, if any, physiological effects were to be had. Being an undergrad in a pre-med school has some perks and one of them was being able to practice meditation wearing an EEG cap.

As far as I can tell, the primary benefit of meditation is shutting down all the noise in your head. Your brain thinks a lot, about a lot of things, often all at the same time. You might be like me where you get solutions to problems that 'bubble up' from somewhere in your brain that you didn't know was working on the problem.

Anyway, if you meditate (and there aren't any big secrets here you are simply training yourself to stop thinking without going to sleep) you clear out your brain. Like doing a power cycle reboot on a computer. Flush everything all resources available for thinking. Then when new things come up you can respond more quickly because you've got cycles to spare.

My totally non-scientific theory is that normally, when you start thinking about something new, your brain has to pick something to stop thinking about so that it can free up the cycles. If you are trying to keep a lot things in your head, that is hard because you are already trying not to stop thinking about the things you need to remember. Whereas when you just come out of meditation you aren't thinking about anything so you can quickly pick up a new train of thought.

Note that this is different than sleep because when you sleep you dream, and dreaming is a way of thinking. If you're successfully meditating, you are awake, aware of your surroundings, but keeping your finger on the 'halt' button so that you don't start up new thoughts. Then you lift your finger and off you go.

Thanks for the detailed response. It sums up some of what I had heard/suspected, and the theory about regaining spare cycles is appealing.

>there aren't any big secrets here you are simply training yourself to stop thinking without going to sleep

This is definitely the first hurdle I encounter. The handful of times I have attempted this, I end up thinking about not thinking (isn't that silly?), or a song comes into my head, or I hear a noise in the distance, and attempts to clear out those thoughts lead to, well, more thinking!

I struggle with even imagining what it's like to not think about something. Something new or something old. Anything at all. I will note that I also have trouble sleeping for the same reason, and when someone describes "the feeling just as you fall asleep", for me that's a synonym for stress and frustration. I can never really remember how I eventually fall asleep.

An often used approach is to think of and feel your entire body. You start with the pinky toe on one foot. You just focus everything on the toe and try to "feel it". When you believe you can eel it you move on to the next toe, eventually to the foot, the lower leg and so fourth. In this way you move through your entire body in detail just concentrating on what you can feel. It usually works for me when my mind is overflowing with thoughts and I can't sleep.

"This is definitely the first hurdle I encounter. The handful of times I have attempted this, I end up thinking about not thinking (isn't that silly?), or a song comes into my head, or I hear a noise in the distance, and attempts to clear out those thoughts lead to, well, more thinking!"

Yup, that is exact right. The guy who taught me that it was about 'being the stillness' (I know, I know, but this was they 70's). Lets say you are looking at pond, smooth as glass and a pebble falls, ripples spread out. You can't stop the ripples, you can just note them and wait for them to pass. So you note the thoughts as they pop unbidden into your brain, and then wait for them to pass. If you were in a horror movie and the killer was walking in your house, you'd be scared to death trying to be invisible. That is 'being the stillness'. Actively not thinking.

"I struggle with even imagining what it's like to not think about something. Something new or something old. Anything at all. I will note that I also have trouble sleeping for the same reason, ..."

There were lots of people who fell asleep in our class. I did too a couple of times. One of the party tricks you can do while meditating is what some folks call 'lucid dreaming' which is you are balanced on the knife edge between consciousness and unconsciousness, you can learn to let your unconsciousness start up without leaving consciousness completely behind. Me, I end up going to sleep if I try that.

But having a lot of stuff happening at work, at home, and in the world, sometimes I meditate to go to sleep. But its a two step process, meditate, then once there allow yourself into the unconscious state rather than holding on to the conscious state.

There was an engineer at Google who had dug up a lot of interesting references on meditating. Some folks have decided it is a form of self hypnosis since the mental state most closely resembles that of being hypnotized.

Try this: Sit in a relaxing posture. As you inhale, think "1". Exhale and think "2". Inhale and think "3" and so on up to "10". Then start over. In the beginning you will often end up counting 11, 12, 13, 14 and then realize you counted to far. Just start over with inhaling and counting "1" and so on. In my experience, after 30-45 minutes, the mind and body will come to rest in a profound manner. For details check out "Mediation for dummies", this is where I leared the technique. Best of luck.

> This is definitely the first hurdle I encounter. The handful of times I have attempted this, I end up thinking about not thinking (isn't that silly?), or a song comes into my head, or I hear a noise in the distance, and attempts to clear out those thoughts lead to, well, more thinking!

Warning! Completely subjective descriptions ahead:

In my experience the best approach to clearing your mind is not to try and actively clear your mind (i.e. thinking about not thinking) it is training yourself to let your thoughts be more transient.

When I try to meditate I try to let all my thoughts slip. Of course, just like you I will hear a noise or some thought tries to worm its way in, but when this happens I try to relax (physically, there is a wonderful link between relaxing your muscles and relaxing your brain. Instead of forcing your brain to relax, trick yourself by relaxing physically) and let the thought go.

Of course, thoughts keep floating into my mind of course, but the longer I keep the meditation up the more transient they become. At some point they even stop being thoughts because they exist to short to even have any content or feeling associated with them.

I have noticed that with practice the time and difficulty of achieving this transient state go down, making it easier to just start. Early on I would need to be in a quiet spot alone, nowadays I can get the process fairly far even with people in the same room talking (if not to loud).

Anyhoo, I hope that description maybe helps you!

TL;DR - You don't stop thinking or actively try to shut down your brain, you passively let your thoughts become more transient.

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