If you don't have access to meditation center book "Mindfulness in plain english" seems like not newagey introduction to the subject.
It describes Vipassana. It's almost like Zazen, but slightly different. In my understanding Zazen is Mahayana buddhism version of Vipassana, which comes from Theravada buddhism, but I am just a begginer so I can be horribly wrong.
One thing which I notice the most is increased ability to deal with distractions and staying focused on boring subjects . It is essentially what one practices during meditation. Dealing with distractions is very important skill for programmer: http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/ . What's more it's kind of skill, that is hard to develop without active practice. I can't think of better way of developing it than meditation.
Good stuff. Sitting still for 60-90 minutes has the purpose of eliminating the distractions from paying attention to your body. This practice also has the benefit of hopefully allowing the ego to settle some, and perhaps even allowing the baseline level that the ego is engaged to be less - or start towards that path anyhow. As you said, stress still maintains the same - it actually will feel potentially even more vivid, though that is likely counter-acted with the ability to process things easier. Learning other things, and doing deeper guided meditations and breath work, like yoga nidra - is a good way to lessen that. Physical movement, asanas - or yoga as a whole, meditation being a part of yoga - is a good way to help physically-caused stress and baseline stress reduce; There's a biofeedback mechanism: tight muscles tells your mind you're stressed, you being stressed tells your muscles to be tight. "Nice" little loop there.
my thoughts as a yoga practitioner:
Yoga is, first and foremost, a meditative practice. What separates it from sitting meditation is that the "hack" it employs not only combines breath awareness, but an ACTIVE breath/body/mind awareness. By moving through asanas, still using the breath as the "guide", one's awareness becomes on breath, on muscle, on bone, on gravity, balance, and all the subtleties of the mind and body's reactions. For example, one begins to "feel" what it is like for the subconscious to instinctively tighten muscles under slight distress, and learn how to gain increasing control over these subconscious processes as one's awareness becomes ever more focused and relaxed. Another example is one learns to feel "losing their breath" when they have lost attention to it and their body, and are stressing themselves out.
An interesting TED talk describes the seat of awareness as a primitive network of neurons in the brainstem and body, the network that gives one a sense of "I am" and experiences the rest of the neurological processes.
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/70236306?strkid=1954165956...
If true, meditation and yoga can be thought of as techniques that progressively still the later evolved "higher" thought processes, and turns one's awareness back into the experiential parts of the mind. Yoga is simply a very active and tactile meditation hack, that provides strong stimulation responses through the nerve network that one is training to become more actively connected.
In keeping with others who are mentioning / linking to books about non-new-age meditation, try the book by the Psychologists in the mindfulness movement:
It's a great book that leads you through the first 8 weeks of meditating, and contains meditation aid audio clips for various scenarios. The most useful I've found is the 3 minute "breathing space" meditation, particularly for that noisy bus - you need good noise excluding ear buds though.
If you don't like the speaking audio, and/or you've practiced enough not to need the prompts, you should check out Simply Noise:
It certainly seems like you got a lot out of meditation. My own practice is similar (20 mins most days for a few years and 130 days consecutively now), but I think in a different Zen tradition.
I've found in practice that I have most success when I treated emotional highs and lows as irrelevant. The books I've read all suggest that the point is to focus on ordinary life, not search for ever deeper trance states, and my experience has been that trance states are transient while ordinary life goes on always. Taking my meditation in that direction has tended to make it gentler, lower-impact, but longer-lasting. At least it feels that way.
If you ever meditate differently, it would be interesting to see you contrast any new effects with the ones you've already experienced.
I found your essay fascinating, by the way, particularly your precision in analysis. It's what I might call first-person science :)
Firstly, why do you think it's worth it and do you notice a substantial difference in your life when you stop for whatever reason?
Secondly every time I read something like this, or talk to people that meditate, it seems extremely unscientific and filled with subjective analysis. Can you point me to something that would convince me that it has real world benefits, past that of taking a nap, or stopping for 45 minutes to think about your day/life.
It's worth it to me because I have seen significant shifts in my baseline sensory clarity, concentration, and equanimity. These improvements benefit everything I do every moment of the day.
try doing your own experiment and just do it, I'm pretty sure you can find 20 minutes a day to set aside for it. The first thing that you will notice is that it is TOUGH, but after several weeks you'll start to gain moments of clarity and eventually it will "click" and you'll get it. Or it wont, and you can just move on
Thank you for putting this together and sharing it. I've been flirting with the idea of meditating more seriously for the last few years, and I always find myself making excuses not to continue with it. A 50 or 100 day challenge seems like a manageable experiment, and a better way of deciding if it's worthwhile to continue.
I have a question. Could you explain "The Deep" in a little bit more detail? What happens to your body and your mind? What is going through your head?
Thanks; feel free to join the group and start posting.
The Deep is sort of a 2nd plateau, the first being basically just an awareness of your mind being (very) noticeably stiller, ie "Hey, my thoughts have stopped--cool." The 1st plateau would occur usually at the 30 minute mark.
The Deep would occur a bit after that, usually at the 45-60 minute mark, occasionally sooner, and it is like the 1st plateau, only much more so--almost like if you were actually scuba diving and you had gone deep enough into the water that you could just barely see the light of the sun above you. The first plateau is characterized by stillness, but The Deep is a profound stillness, stillness to the 2nd power. It struck me, because I realized I had never experienced a stillness like this before in my life.
Body and mind are secondary and not thought of--in fact nothing whatsoever is going through my head, except the awareness of the stillness and calm. Breathing is barely perceptible, heartbeat not felt. It is a significantly refreshing experience.
when i see the words 'challenge' and 'meditation' being used in the same sentence, an alarm goes of in my head.
i'm too tired to go into details right now, but if you're interested in where i'm coming from, or in meditation in general, i highly recommend giving this book a read:
Clark Strand cuts right to the heart of meditation, without dogma, gurus, religion, beliefs, or any of the other gunk that gets in the way of sincere and honest practice. In a beautiful style reminiscent of Thich Nhat Hanh, Strand has created the ideal meditation companion and guide. While Strand is probably among the few teachers who would never invite a following, he most certainly deserves one. If you read no other book on meditation, read this one. If you have other books on meditation, put them on the back shelf and read this one. If you have never meditated before and want a book to teach you how, read this one. This is the only meditation guide you will ever need. It is superb!
Readit News
I started meditating recently after reading MIPE. I'll try to find a teacher as soon as I can. What got hooked me up was some research that it improves cognitive performance: http://www.gwern.net/docs/dnb/2010-zeidan.pdf . There's some evidence that long term meditation changes structure of the brain and improves mood and attention outside of meditation practice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_activity_and_meditation#C... . This post seems like good encouragement as well: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/38947/is-prac... .
One thing which I notice the most is increased ability to deal with distractions and staying focused on boring subjects . It is essentially what one practices during meditation. Dealing with distractions is very important skill for programmer: http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/ . What's more it's kind of skill, that is hard to develop without active practice. I can't think of better way of developing it than meditation.
http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html
(Scroll down for the on-line version.)
An interesting TED talk describes the seat of awareness as a primitive network of neurons in the brainstem and body, the network that gives one a sense of "I am" and experiences the rest of the neurological processes. http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/70236306?strkid=1954165956...
If true, meditation and yoga can be thought of as techniques that progressively still the later evolved "higher" thought processes, and turns one's awareness back into the experiential parts of the mind. Yoga is simply a very active and tactile meditation hack, that provides strong stimulation responses through the nerve network that one is training to become more actively connected.
* "Zen and the Brain" (written by a meditation practising neurologist)
* "The Buddha Brain" (about the neurological/physiological background of a couple of buddhist principles)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindfulness-practical-guide-finding-... (Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world, Prof Mark Williams and Dr Danny Penman)
It's a great book that leads you through the first 8 weeks of meditating, and contains meditation aid audio clips for various scenarios. The most useful I've found is the 3 minute "breathing space" meditation, particularly for that noisy bus - you need good noise excluding ear buds though.
If you don't like the speaking audio, and/or you've practiced enough not to need the prompts, you should check out Simply Noise:
http://simplynoise.com/ << they also have apps for phones.
I've found it equally helpful for rendering words unintelligible, which makes mindful awareness much easier.
I've found in practice that I have most success when I treated emotional highs and lows as irrelevant. The books I've read all suggest that the point is to focus on ordinary life, not search for ever deeper trance states, and my experience has been that trance states are transient while ordinary life goes on always. Taking my meditation in that direction has tended to make it gentler, lower-impact, but longer-lasting. At least it feels that way.
If you ever meditate differently, it would be interesting to see you contrast any new effects with the ones you've already experienced.
I found your essay fascinating, by the way, particularly your precision in analysis. It's what I might call first-person science :)
Firstly, why do you think it's worth it and do you notice a substantial difference in your life when you stop for whatever reason?
Secondly every time I read something like this, or talk to people that meditate, it seems extremely unscientific and filled with subjective analysis. Can you point me to something that would convince me that it has real world benefits, past that of taking a nap, or stopping for 45 minutes to think about your day/life.
There is a lot of scientific research on meditation underway. You might want to check out the IONS Meditation Bibliography to see if any of the studies interest you: http://noetic.org/meditation-bibliography/bibliography-info/
I have a question. Could you explain "The Deep" in a little bit more detail? What happens to your body and your mind? What is going through your head?
The Deep is sort of a 2nd plateau, the first being basically just an awareness of your mind being (very) noticeably stiller, ie "Hey, my thoughts have stopped--cool." The 1st plateau would occur usually at the 30 minute mark.
The Deep would occur a bit after that, usually at the 45-60 minute mark, occasionally sooner, and it is like the 1st plateau, only much more so--almost like if you were actually scuba diving and you had gone deep enough into the water that you could just barely see the light of the sun above you. The first plateau is characterized by stillness, but The Deep is a profound stillness, stillness to the 2nd power. It struck me, because I realized I had never experienced a stillness like this before in my life.
Body and mind are secondary and not thought of--in fact nothing whatsoever is going through my head, except the awareness of the stillness and calm. Breathing is barely perceptible, heartbeat not felt. It is a significantly refreshing experience.
http://www.amazon.com/Meditation-Without-Gurus-Clark-Strand/...
the first review sums things up nicely:
Clark Strand cuts right to the heart of meditation, without dogma, gurus, religion, beliefs, or any of the other gunk that gets in the way of sincere and honest practice. In a beautiful style reminiscent of Thich Nhat Hanh, Strand has created the ideal meditation companion and guide. While Strand is probably among the few teachers who would never invite a following, he most certainly deserves one. If you read no other book on meditation, read this one. If you have other books on meditation, put them on the back shelf and read this one. If you have never meditated before and want a book to teach you how, read this one. This is the only meditation guide you will ever need. It is superb!