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rdcooper

5 karma · joined March 3, 2024

Broadcast engineer, composer, musician, juggler.
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rdcooper··on Meditation as Wakeful Relaxation: Unclenching Smooth Muscle
I notice I often have very strong knee-jerk reactions to these kind of comments.

It's usually from some person that has not spent very much time meditating at all or invested much time around the various cultures which treasure and pride themselves in their meditative practices. It usually goes something like:

"[Some kind of reasoning], therefore, there is no need to meditate."

I'd like to provide an analogy which I think fits:

We use our muscles every day. If you just use your muscles well, there's no need for strength training!

And sure, I mean, that KIND of works. But like... There's a LOT of research around the benefits of strength training. And there's a multitude of reasons why someone might want to get involved in strength training. Very few people aspire to become powerlifters, etc.

IMHO, it's a dangerous view to take, as it can lead to dismissal of a lot of fantastic use cases, and it leads to people dismissing meditation outright ("No doctor, my friend said that if I just move correctly, I don't need strength training!").

And yes, similar to strength, there's no upper limit on training for things like focus, concentration, mindfulness.

There's no 'need' for meditation sure, but by that logic there's no 'need' for most things.

What seems to be true to me is that it's absolutely fantastic in terms of technologies available to us for self (and also society)-improvement.

rdcooper··on Music for Programming
I made a 117hr Spotify playlist for coding specifically. The music generally has to meet the following criteria:

1. No lyrics. Words distract me (small little mouth sounds are fine).

2. Mid-tempo. Anything too fast gives me anxiety and anything too slow puts me to sleep. To stay in 'the zone,' I need to keep my heart rate at a certain BPM, so the music reflects that. Some variability is fine, but no extremes.

3. Nothing too 'interesting.' If it's taking my attention away from work, it's no good for me.

What resulted from this is my ever-evolving ultimate "coffee shop"-style playlist, which I tend to add 10-30+ hrs to every year. A healthy mix of electronic/acoustic that goes all over the world and is designed always to be shuffled.

It keeps me sane.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6t9a4XQ4ZLOT5D5X3ENXCO?si=...