A Journey of Mindfulness--the Remaking of Life in Midstream.

[IlliniDave]

Another bit of trivia picking up on a prior conversation, I had a chance to do the Oura 6-minute walk test (first day without a blustery head/tail wind on my flat course. The score it gave me was 34 which they scored as "high" cardio capacity. Checking around a few sources via Google that tends to fall in either the "good" or "above average" categories depending on the source.

I think I could have scored higher, I generally don't power walk so really don't have a feel for pacing. I didn't get out of Zone 2 and I'm thinking pushing into zone 3 (assuming I can without breaking into a run, which I think is likely) is probably where I'd want to be, although I can't say how much difference that would make in the score. Interestingly, my weak link seemed to be my calf muscles. They didn't fail on me, but I has a nice little burn going towards the end.

[Ego]

Good to see the bloodwork remaining consistent. Nice work!

In the digging I've dome I've been surprised to see how prevalent the connection between gut health and mental/emotional health has become in tip-of-the-spear research and even in what you could call Medicine 3.0 therapy. There are now several "nutritional psychology" departments and programs within departments at universities. That's just an aside, I mostly think my gut health is pretty good, especially over the last year or two.

This is a major focus for me as well. A lot of gut health is related to gut permeability, the ability of the gut to protect against toxins, bacteria and other bad stuff while allowing the good stuff to pass through. Acetaminophen, NSAIDs and aspirin (even the baby variety) mess with the gut barrier as does antibiotic use and alcohol consumption, so I avoid all of those like the plague. Among other things, they cause dysbiosis (imbalance in the gut microbiota) which causes the leaky gut, so I try to focus on feeding the good bacteria PREbiotics to protect against the chronic inflammation caused by the "leaky brain".

[IlliniDave]

Good to see the bloodwork remaining consistent. Nice work!

Thanks. Some of the numbers that came in later in the day and overnight weren't great. None were of the "medical attention required" variety but if I go by their biological age calculation I've aged almost 3 years in the last year! The good news is the algorithm still comes up with a biological age that's a little over 8 years younger than my actual age--could have been 8 years older! My fasting insulin and glucose were a little higher than I would have liked. Both were "in range" per Medicine 2.0, but "slightly elevated" per function Health's Medicine 3.0 definitions. My HbA1c stayed the same as April 2024 at 5.3, which is slightly above the goal I set for myself, but my HOMA-IR jumped up to 1.49 from 1,0 which is under the Medicine 2.0 cutoff of 2.0, but in 3.0 interpretations (for some reason, Function Health does not compute that number) that's considered indicative of mild insulin resistance. I've been under the impression that IR takes several years or longer to truly unwind. I've noticed with my Keto Mojo when I occasionally check in with it that my fasting glucose tends to bounce around a good bit day-to-day, so I'm thinking the fasting numbers were just due to a high excursion withing my usual range until proven otherwise.

I do expect that my blood lipids will come back flagged for "needs medical attention". Quest Diagnostics always comes back with decidedly higher numbers than other labs so they are doing their part to help sell statins. And unlike some voices in the Medicine 3.0 space, Function Health advocates for uber low cholesterol.

The thing I am most pleased about, aside from not having fallen off a cliff in the lat year, was that my liver numbers were all in Function's Medicine 3.0 optimal range. Going back a couple of years I was truly concerned I'd done permanent harm to it.

I haven't sat down and thought through things in detail, but I suspect switching to a higher protein regimen explains a good bit of the changes. There's definitely a tradeoff between aggressively avoiding sarcopenia and optimizing other biomarkers when it comes to juggling all-cause mortality in the out years.

[IlliniDave]

This is a major focus for me as well. A lot of gut health is related to gut permeability, the ability of the gut to protect against toxins, bacteria and other bad stuff while allowing the good stuff to pass through. Acetaminophen, NSAIDs and aspirin (even the baby variety) mess with the gut barrier as does antibiotic use and alcohol consumption, so I avoid all of those like the plague. Among other things, they cause dysbiosis (imbalance in the gut microbiota) which causes the leaky gut, so I try to focus on feeding the good bacteria Prebiotics to protect against the chronic inflammation caused by the "leaky brain".

Mine too. Given what we're increasingly learning, seems like everyone would be well advised to pay more attention to their gut health even if they aren't experiencing any overt symptoms of gut problems per se. When I started the process of taking more agency for my health one of the first voices that influenced me was Dr Gundry. Somewhat of a controversial figure but I think he's got way more right than he's got wrong. Aside from all those things you listed, many plant-based foods, some lauded as healthy or even "superfoods", can cause the same problems for people with the right sensitivities, and/or exacerbate problems caused by the things you listed. Once the barrier is compromised all manner of toxins and foreign material enter the body that shouldn't, which can cause our immune system to short circuit and spiral out of control, and can even cause us epigenetic changes. And once inside the body, some of those bad actor substances (or bacteria) can pass through the blood-brain barrier. That's on top of the fact that an unbalanced gut/gut dysbiosis can create an environment with a lot of postbiotic chemical signals that can screw with mitochondria, hence out neurology, and hence our brains/psychology/emotions/mental function. Over the last year I've added back a couple plant foods on Gundry's don't eat list, tomatoes and peppers, which I tolerate pretty well in the sense they don't cause me any malady I can consciously detect, and I've been having a carb-heavy day once every 7-10 days that typically features wheat (pasta or bread, though carefully sourced to be grown in Europe). As I look to take the next evolution of my nutrition regimen in the coming weeks, I might rethink those choices.

Just yesterday I was doing some spring cleaning in my dad's yard and listened to a recent Dave Asprey podcast where he had Dr Gundry as a guest. Gundry's got a new book out in the last few days, The Gut-Brain Paradox. Although Asprey and Gundry have some stark disagreement on certain topics they both through their respective journeys are very attuned to gut healh (it's nice to see two people who have some disagreements still able to have a civil and productive conversation). Since I was working I didn't listen with 100% attention but picked up some interesting things. There was some discussion that people are discovering there are fungi in our gut that are capable of changing the epigenetic expression of some types of bacteria that can in turn wreak havoc on us. Asprey asked the interesting question, "So if the fungi control the bacteria, and the bacteria control us, who controls the fungi?" And they talked about bacteria apparently have a role in addiction--that bacteria have been identified that feed on things like opiods and alcohol that overgrow after chronic use and might explain some of the tolerance buildup noted in addicts. They've found in rats they can reverse the tolerance buildup to opiods by completely resetting their microbiomes, then restore their prior microbiome and the tolerance immediately appears. I don't know how much of that was subject matter in the book versus a couple guys just talking about stuff, but I'm likely to put the book on my summer reading list.

I sometimes wonder if I would have enjoyed a career in the biological sciences more than the one in engineering I chose.

[IlliniDave]

I prefer to think of it as Dan Harris framed it: 10% Happier. Meditation is not some panacea that will have a drastic impact on your life, but it will provide a meaningful ROI on time spent and is therefore “worth doing.”

What you say there, suomalainen, resonates with my intuition, especially since I don't have any appetite to make meditation a way of life ala a Zen monk or something. Since we now have the wherewithal to actually measure the effects of meditation, and to understand some of the downstream implications of those effects regarding our health and well being (though the puzzle is far from solved), I'm fairly confident that developing (maybe relearning) some of those skills can be a useful part of a balanced approach to life. Not so long ago most people probably did a lot of meditation-like activity because they couldn't revert to the endless distractions we have now. When you spent your evening on the front porch watching the sun set, you probably did a lot of meditation without the word ever occurring to you.

+1 to suomalainen, I would add that it might take a while to see the results, especially at a low dosage. But a few months in, it might be interesting to stop doing it for a while and see if you notice the difference in day-to-day well-being/mental functioning.
If you wanted to go at higher intensity (2+ hrs) from the start, you might find yourself feeling significantly worse before it gets better.
Sample of one, results may vary.

At this point I'm doing three short "guided sessions" per day that usually add up to about an hour. That's about all I want to set aside time for at this juncture, although that could change depending on how things go. A suggestion I picked up somewhere was to start a little meditation journal to refer back to as a way observe change/growth, which tends to be subtle. I like your idea to periodically just stop for a while as a means to prompt observations.

Yesterday I learned the app for my Oura ring has a function that allows me to record some extra biometric data (akin to what I can do during workouts/activity) while doing what from Oura's perspective is an unguided meditation (since I'm not using one of their built in guided sessions), even though I'm actually using a guided session from elsewhere. It also records the data when I do one of the internal Oura sessions, although I never knew it was doing so. I tried it out last night with a non-Oura guided session and observed a decrease in heart rate, and increase in HRV, and an increase in the temp of my finger (a sign of relaxation/elevated blood flow) during the session. I didn't feel like I totally got immersed in the session that time like I occasionally do, and the biometric changes recorded were far from dramatic. But they were real. One of the problems I have with meditation is I'm reluctant to just flow with it. My analytical brain often goes into overdrive as I attempt to monitor myself to detect signs I'm meditating "correctly", which of course is self-defeating. Although I'll have to suppress the part of me that will want to score well with the numbers, I'm hoping just letting the ring record the data will help me get over the desire monitor and overly supervise myself during the process.

[jacob]

I prefer to think of it as Dan Harris framed it: 10% Happier. Meditation is not some panacea that will have a drastic impact on your life, but it will provide a meaningful ROI on time spent and is therefore “worth doing.”

Meditation (and probably many other state of well-being measures and methods) is something that could use a large dose of nuance compared to striving to meet the current one-size-fits-all recommendations for ... basically anything that instruments can now measure. From various anecdotal accounts, meditation makes a life-changing difference for some, whereas for many others it makes no difference at all and would just be an "unproductive" use of time. Maybe that averages out to a 10% improvement on a population basis.

An important sorting variable in those accounts seems to be whether the person is/used to rank above average in the anxiety and sensitivity dimensions. In other words, whether they had a rather large (and possibly volatile) range in terms of feeling anxious/sad/dreadful vis-a-vis steady vis-a-vis happy/euphoric/... If so, meditation can stabilize the swings and recovery rate back to a more tolerable normal state. This will be experienced as a wonderful thing. Whereas, a person with a very steady-eddie state, who isn't easily rattled or impressed (narrow range), will likely not experience any noticeable benefit from meditation.

(IOW, if you take a population of which half of them are above averagely neurotic and universally prescribe 30 minutes of daily meditation, the average will be lifted. But it will be lifted by the neurotic people improving. This is similar to saying that engaging daily in 30 minutes of walking faster than 2.5mph (and calling that brisk) will make people healthier. Sure, it will for the majority of couch potatoes who otherwise don't move at all. Whereas to an athlete or even someone who has a job that requires being on their feet most of the day, such an activity would be a drop in the ocean.)

To complicate this a bit, one person may have a good and functional paradigm for perceiving the world and another might have a bad and dysfunctional one. A dysfunctional paradigm is a handicap, but meditation will make it possible to deal with the bad consequences of not approaching the world well. However, in this case reframing the paradigm towards something useful would also work [half-way]. This is where therapy comes in. Therapy can provide a different lens in which what was previously perceived as anxiety-inducing and handled badly is now seen as a "wonderful opportunity" and handled well.

Note that paradigm is "state"-based (here using the word "state" in the lens-way) whereas neuroticism is "trait"-based. Therapy can help with state-based problems and meditation can help with trait-based problems. It's possible for a person to have one or the other or both or none at all. For someone who suffers from none-of-the-above, meditation is but yet another way to spend time---a way to play with the mind, like memorizing digits of pi, guided day dreaming, biofeedback tricks,... or what have you.

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:

I think your analogy with exercise applies, because there can also be different levels achieved through meditation with practice, and reducing anxiety might just be the "getting off the couch" level. For example, I don't feel anxious very often, but I like guided meditations that take me out of my 98% tendency towards abstract "N" and into more present "S" functioning, "feel the weight of your coffee mug as you lift it", "feel the warmth of the mug in your hand", "take a sip, notice the feeling of liquid", "take another sip, now notice the taste of bitter", etc. It's towards another way to experience abundance, so also towards frugality, because it allows me to glean more quality of life out of one cup of coffee.

[IlliniDave]

@jacob:

I think your analogy with exercise applies, because there can also be different levels achieved through meditation with practice, and reducing anxiety might just be the "getting off the couch" level. For example, I don't feel anxious very often, but I like guided meditations that take me out of my 98% tendency towards abstract "N" and into more present "S" functioning, "feel the weight of your coffee mug as you lift it", "feel the warmth of the mug in your hand", "take a sip, notice the feeling of liquid", "take another sip, now notice the taste of bitter", etc. It's towards another way to experience abundance, so also towards frugality, because it allows me to glean more quality of life out of one cup of coffee.

This is much closer to my take on the practice in general. Chronic stress is pervasive in the modern western world in epidemic proportions. The thing about it being chronic is that a person can be under it's influence while feeling perfectly "normal" because chronic stress is their norm. A person might say, "So what?", but chronic stress is implicated in heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, hypertension, anxiety, and depression. It's an aggravating factor for arthritis, suppressed immune system function, GI conditions, and poor sleep quality. It tends to block or inhibit a lot of the body's upkeep and repair processes. There's a much deeper bi-directional connection between mind and body that the various sciences are only relatively recently beginning to unpack. For a long time mental/emotional health and physiological health were considered completely separate questions.

Unlike acute stress/anxiety, there are no pills to take for chronic stress. Treatments are in the family of lifestyle modifications, and that's where I think various mindfulness practices fall--lifestyle improvements. It's not even clear to me whether the origins of chronic stress are mental/neurological or physiological (as if those two are separable). In our evolutionary past we probably had a lot of down time that was essentially meditative since there were no books, TV, smart phones, computers, etc., to keep us distracted and in a state of heightened external awareness. Evolution designed us to make use of that time for maintenance and repair in between opportunities to sleep.

So for a person who doesn't have a clinically diagnosible condition due to acute stress or anxiety just giving our brains a break is apt to feel refreshing, because in a sense it literally is. The most expensive processes in our brains are fight/flight, absorbing and making sense of new information, and predictive activity. The latter two are closely linked. So just like the most intense physical forms of exercise, too much isn't a good thing. Just getting in touch with basic immediate sensations like the coffee version of the tea ceremony you described allows spare energy for subconscious processes to work. If instead one drank their coffee while reading the days financial fear porn and worrying about whether they are going to lose their job and all their money (or in my case, pouring over obscure biomarkers wondering whether the end of the line is right around the corner ) we wind up running those high energy brain processes at a much higher duty cycle than nature intended, and we hardwire neural connections that probably aren't the most healthy (virtually all stimulus is connected to fear).

11 years ago when I started here I was pretty ignorant and naive about a lot of things but I did by then have a sense that mindfulness and a healthy, relatively low footprint early retirement were linked. Unfortunately I lost sight of that for a long time. But life has a way of looping back to important ideas, and through a interest in sleeping well I suddenly find a resurgence of those old ideas. It's hard to enjoy life when your mind is always a million miles away. The here and now is where and when we are.

To Jacob's point, I agree that the range of efficacy of mindfulness practice or the like across a population varies widely--from life saving to trivial/essentially nonexistent. I agreed with the 10% statement because I think for most people, it's the kind of thing that will provide occasional moderate benefits of the type that can be consciously felt. My personal slant is a little different in that I've grown fascinated with mind-body connection and the nascent body of evidence that supports the idea that getting out of the way of our "other than conscious" mind (aka subconscious mind) can initiate physiological changes that are known to move us into a healthier state. It's something I have a desire to "see" in the same way another person might want to see a ginormous Mayan temple complex in the jungle somewhere. But I also know from past experience that I can experience little bursts of euphoria or peace or resilience to the crap life throws at a person, which are arguably worth the price of admission. If it accomplishes more than that, so much the better. I've never heard an argument that meditation causes harm, aside from the fact that it occupies an amount of time.

[AxelHeyst]

Meditation can indeed have adverse effects beyond wasted time. I don’t know what the argument is but there is at least some data. I dont know if it’s well understood as it’s not an area of my interest. Easily searchable to get started in the literature on adverse effects though.

Im not anti meditation, just sayin’. Probably some personality types who are risk factors should proceed only with caution, and it seems prudent that anyone going long on meditation should take a look at what is known there.

[suomalainen]

But life has a way of looping back to important ideas, and through a interest in sleeping well I suddenly find a resurgence of those old ideas. It's hard to enjoy life when your mind is always a million miles away. The here and now is where and when we are.

Similar to “The present can make no man miserable.” which is a version of a Seneca-ism. This is also a while loop in which I find myself stuck.

The 10% idea wasn’t really a quantitative idea, but a pithy way of saying it’s probably worth something to some people. As always, mileage may vary, but in my estimation, it’s always worth trying the cheap, simple, accessible things before trying the expensive, complex or high-barrier-to-entry things. It always strikes me that many people seem to like/ be comfortable with their crosses and fear even trying to unburden themselves. Not really sure if there’s a name for that.

[IlliniDave]

Meditation can indeed have adverse effects beyond wasted time. I don’t know what the argument is but there is at least some data. I dont know if it’s well understood as it’s not an area of my interest. Easily searchable to get started in the literature on adverse effects though.

Im not anti meditation, just sayin’. Probably some personality types who are risk factors should proceed only with caution, and it seems prudent that anyone going long on meditation should take a look at what is known there.

Interesting. And now I have heard of some downsides. It sounds like many of them are cases where people have issues that probably need to addressed clinically (e.g., PTSD-related things). Though apparently not all all of them. I find it almost stunning that simply sitting and breathing would cause people problems. And it doesn't always seem to happen only when the practice is engaged in for excessively long blocks of time. I think it's expected that there can be a certain amount of discomfort to it because as part of the process there is an aspect of confronting your thoughts which can be buried as a defense mechanism, but there are claims that the process breaks some people.

[Ego]

Meditation can indeed have adverse effects beyond wasted time.

Meditation can be great for training attention, but for the rapidly increasing number of people struggling with basic focus, the practice can intensify the ruminating negative thought loops that are a cornerstone of those struggling with depression and anxiety.

Practicing watching attention without the ability to focus needed to return it to the breath is like practicing heavy deadlifts without core strength – you're more likely to get hurt than stronger.

[bookworm]

Although I began doing meditation in the presence of moderate anxiety, I have done plenty of sessions (along the continuum of low/20 minute/casual and high/8hr+ daily/retreat levels) in the absence of noticeable anxiety and have found the effects to last throughout the day and beyond. It seems to boost the effectiveness of thought processes and enjoyment of external things. There is also a stronger sense of internal direction for me relative to baseline. Beyond that there are various "maps" to understand how things tend to progress with time/intensity.

There's also a book called Altered Traits by Daniel Goleman that goes how into what are initially state changes lasting a few minutes off the cushion become stable characteristics of the personality over time.

As for negative effects, these are documented elsewhere as AH mentioned. Going to one meditation retreat, I had to fill out an extensive questionnaire on past mental health history. From what I understand they do this because of some tragic outcomes in the past and the fact that there are no therapists on site.

[IlliniDave]

... As for negative effects, these are documented elsewhere as AH mentioned. Going to one meditation retreat, I had to fill out an extensive questionnaire on past mental health history. From what I understand they do this because of some tragic outcomes in the past and the fact that there are no therapists on site.

I can see why something intensive like a retreat setting could prompt some concern where you simultaneously get removed from your environment for an extended time while simultaneously taking a deep dive in a process you might not yet be conditioned for.

It sounds like you are much more versed as a practitioner on the topic than I am. But my experience has been along the same lines as what you describe, just much milder, likely for the combined reasons of lack of practice/skill, and perhaps lack of aptitude. I'm pretty sensitive to things that don't feel right, so I don't think disaster looms just around the corner for me. But I'll be mindful in the western sense of not being careless as I explore mindfulness going forward.

[7Wannabe5]

virtually all stimulus is connected to fear

Is this true? I feel like a good deal of stimulus is connected to reward. I recently read that humans with more ADHD type brain functioning were most successful foragers in primitive environment, and that's usually more towards what my brain is doing when not directed towards being "present" during "coffee ceremony." I think fear/anxiety speaks more to "hunter or hunted", but I'm usually just scanning the environment for the pop of red midst the field of green that signals "fruit!" For example, I was made happy yesterday by "discovering" that the first two chapters of Hanzi's new book are available on his website. The "coffee ceremony" is just more towards reminding me that as an affluent human in an affluent society, I already have a great deal of "fruit" stored in my cellar or crisper drawer. IOW, "anticipation" is a positive emotion, but so is "appreciation", and the "coffee ceremony" moves me from the first towards the second.

However, I also think leaving yourself open to the sort of experiences where the sensual reality just grabs you by the hand and won't let go is also key. IOW, situations where the level of arousal is akin to sliding down the mud bank on a hot day into the cold river. Yeah, I wouldn't mind going through life on a cycle of "anticipation", "arousal", "appreciation." This is why being a used/rare book dealer was such a good profession for me, and also why Scavenger Walking is the hobby I should engage in more frequently, but maybe also add a more meditative "Ceremony of Appreciation of My Finds" at the end. Roughly akin to the meditative "appreciative" reflection one might have upon the warmth and weight of a lover's heavy, muscular arm holding you pinned to the bed as he sinks into deep, deep, sleep to recover the great deal of energy he consumed in his attempt to move you from "anticipation" to "arousal."

ETA: It just occurred to me that maybe anxiety is experienced most by humans who hold the perspective that they are mostly engaged in zero-sum games like hunting, as opposed to foraging for fruit which is a Win-Win game, because the tree benefits by having its seed be transported to new sunny spots by primates who have big brains that burn a lot of sugar. Etc. etc. etc.

[IlliniDave]

I feel like it's time for a "don't try this at home" warning when it comes to discussions that could arguably cross the line into the realm of mental/emotional health. And while I'm at it the same is true when it comes to my dalliances with Medicine 3.0 versus Medicine 2.0, although on that topic I've got enough first-hand experience that I can pretty comfortably say that there's a lot in Medicine 3.0 that is worth considering. Still, there a lot about Medicine 2.0 that borders on the miraculous, it just doesn't have the answers to everything.

I use the term mindfulness on occasion, and I probably don't use it in a way that is technically (or clinically perhaps) precise. I generally see it as more of an active thing even though it often comes up in the context of "meditation" or other contemplative behavior. In my mind I've assigned it as iDave jargon for simply being present in my here and now. Or keeping my mind on what I am doing as my grandfather would say. I don't like to rule anything out but I don't see myself ever spending a year on top of a Tibetan mountain holed up in a monastery. It's been much more a desire to recover a certain childlike wonder while interacting with the word. Looking back, many of the more vivid and foundational memories I have coincided with periods of being fully immersed in a situation, something that seems to happen less and less frequently as in time I began to juggle more and more in life.

I don't remember exactly how it all started though I can point to having run across a quote: "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few." I'm pretty sure it's from the book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. It definitely led me to that book. It intrigued me because it came to my attention at a time when I was envisioning myself taking a fork in the road other than the path that had sort of grown into the default. That fork has turned into iDave Phese III, or my version of FIRE/ere-lite.

Since a significant part of Zen lifestyle is "sitting" or "practice", i.e., meditation, it was something I dabbled with out of curiosity. It really didn't move the needle for me although philosophically it seemed to make a certain sense. I don't know why that is. What seemed be more tangible was making an effort to be more present going about day to day things. Like while fixing dinner, paying attention to all the sensory things: the feel, sight, and smell of vegetables being chopped. The rhythmic motions of chopping and stirring, feeling the heat from the stove. I found that "practice" soothing. Something I heard recently is that our brains are essentially hidden away/trapped inside a lightless* box, our skulls, shut off from the environment and are completely dependent on encoded sensory input from the body for its "interaction" with the world. Over time the brain learns to predict what is going on in our surroundings based on the sensory input. Accepting that perspective it makes sense that going through big chunks of life while our conscious thoughts are a million miles away might result in a gradual degradation of the prediction algorithms, maybe even distortion. And so even though lately I've been talking about meditation the end goal is less about being a super-meditator than it is about pursuit of my idea of mindfulness. Of course I can't offer proof, but the hypothesis I'm working with is that those soothing feelings (which occur in mind and body), although usually best described as "on the margin" are indicative of using the brain in a way closer to the way it was designed to operate, making it more capable of fulfilling it's role in our general physiological maintenance and upkeep. I've realized over the last weeks that walking and low/moderate difficulty hiking is also soothing in the same way, and maybe my subconscious is driving me to continue to make space for it in my day-to-day.

To the extent I understand it, Zen meditation practice is about emptying the mind by releasing the busy thought generator of our conscious mind, or rather stepping back from it, observing it to the extent it remains active, but also standing somewhat apart from it. Perhaps in the extreme it's about suppressing it entirely, but it always struck me as being about balance. Turning down the volume on mental activity that would tend to stimulate the sympathetic nervous system and instead focus on allowing the parasympathetic nervous system to activate, primarily focus on slow, deep breathing. It's still a little hard to see how that would lead even a vulnerable person over the cliff into some sort of psychosis, but I'm not disputing that it happens. Zen has some concepts that are very hard for me to get my western mind around--for example the idea of non-duality. It's too hard to grok so I tend to just not think about it. Maybe a vulnerable person who has much more aptitude than I do could bump into such ideas and wind up on unstable ground.

My relatively recent dabbling in guided meditations are quite different. You have an ongoing voice instructing and/or encouraging you. One thing I've encountered repeatedly in them is the idea of trying to revisit childhood memory to recall a state of being that hadn't yet gone haywire through the incessant exposure to the stressors of the modern world. It's not hard to see where that might trigger unpleasantness in someone who experienced trauma as a child. A number of them also try to encourage a state of relaxation as a platform for envisioning future achievement/attainment which is very unlike my understanding of Zen mindfulness, which tends to discourage seeking behavior and projecting the mind forward in time. That's also something I can see as being a bad mix for anxiety prone people. I actually enjoy a certain amount of that, although some sidle a little too close to "prosperity gospel" sort of stuff for my general temperament. The general idea is that in the same way your subconscious mind can be alerted by sensory information and conscious thought ("Oh shit, that's a brown bear and it looks hungry!) to trigger the support role the other-than-conscious mind has in such a scenario (triggering the sympathetic system processes), that giving it stimulus of a different nature can activate other support functions that promote more holistic well being, I guess you could say. Most of the ones I've encountered seem to focus on future ability to achieve a calm and relaxed state in future situations where stresses (social, work, health, etc.) could be expected. So it seems fairly benign. But I've seen (not watched) others whose titles imply they are about achieving financial/business/relationship successes that I could see stirring up some unpleasantness in people who feel they have inadequacies in such domains.

I guess caveat emptor is the watchword. I'll certainly be more conscious about where I take this myself. I don't think I have any landmines buried anywhere, but that's the thing about landmines--they lay hidden until they blow.


*That might not be strictly true. I recently heard a neuroscientist assert that light is the most overlooked nurtrient. Apparently our red blood cells are able to absorb photons and release them elsewhere in the body where they are in turn absorbed by other cells/tissues.

[Scott 2]

Sometimes the freak out with meditation is related specifically to environment. IE a group setting in yoga studio is no good. At home behind a locked door, ok. Presence with trauma is a tricky beast.

Caution around the object of focus can help those who struggle with stilling. Maybe an advanced practitioner wants to release even the observer. Absolute stillness. But many benefit from rhythmic movement so aggressive, it forces them to single mindedness. The progression between those extremes warrants gradual transition. It isn't necessary. Guided meditation tries to facilitate it.

Another danger is confusing disassociation with mindfulness. The flight / fight umbrella includes freeze / fawn. Disconnecting from your body is a very confusing trap. It looks "right" from the outside. And if you're trying to freeze or even flee, it might even feel good. A place to hide. But if that energy cannot be taken out of the practice, applied during daily activities, there's a good chance it's missing the mark.


The other insidious trap, is a dualistic lense. Separation of physical and spiritual. The manifest world is suffering. The spiritual blissful. Meditation teases, bringing one tantalizingly close to that bliss. If only there was release from the physical manifestation.

The inoculation is grasping a non dual lense - physical and spiritual as parts of the same whole. Divinity learning about itself through lived experience. It includes the promise of spontaneous love towards others, as they are you, and all are divine. I've not found that last part guaranteed, but I do like the non dual lense.


I found it interesting that for some schools, rather than the end state being unity, it is nothingness. What a meditator does is about the same though. So I've not found it terribly relevant. Coming from a yoga background, my first exposure to Buddhist thought was a trip though.


Every spiritual tradition has some form of meditation. I think it's a core part of the full human experience.

[IlliniDave]

Is this true? I feel like a good deal of stimulus is connected to reward. I recently read that humans with more ADHD type brain functioning were most successful foragers in primitive environment...

I was speaking to the fruits of excessive worry though information overload. Of course it's not universally true, many people have little or no issue with anxiety. But for people like my daughter it's frequently the case that any imagined (or real) perturbation to routine sweeps her off in that direction. I think it depends on the ratios involved. Uber anxious people often seem to be incapable of even feeling reward. Even the whole tray of cupcakes is not enough.

ADHD is something that I know very little about. The second D is in the acronym for a reasonI'd guess and it's among the things that are listed as epidemics that have arisen in the recent handful of decades. The stuff I read increasingly points to nutrition and lifestyle therapies being the emerging and most efficacious potential remedies, but I admit the possibility of being in an echo chamber. It does seem like a mechanistic hypothesis that it's a symptom of our natural curiosity about the environment run amok from being transported into a hypernovel environment evolution did not equip us for. Lack of ability to maintain some amount of focus and sensory attunement, however, seems like it would have caused our ancestors to stumble right into sabre toothed tigers, step on the strawberry instead of eating it, scare off the deer we were hunting, and make us lousy at discerning patterns in the environment to leverage as hunter-gatherers. I see people out gathering morels in the woods and they look extremely focused and patient.

Regarding foraging versus hunting. There's a reason why beans will at best make you very ill, or worst case kill you, if you don't destroy the proteins they use to protect their seeds from being eaten before you eat them, which renders the seed itself no longer viable. Symbiosis between humans and beans depends on the innovation of agriculture, to which beans have not evolved to consent to, hence the continued presence of the toxins. Berries are different, as are fruits. They evolved to protect their offspring by making them impervious to digestion. Due to the ripe fruit season being very short, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would have driven the evolution of our psychology, but who knows. Stranger things have probably happened. As far as hunting goes, "hunting" is part of nature and would persist even in the complete absence of humans. Many species have evolved to succeed in the face of predation. It's true that excessive predation can ultimately undo a species, but lack of it has a tendency to cause overpopulation and destruction of habitat. So predation is also a win-win assuming a balance is attained. I'd hazard a guess that stalking is an extraordinarily mindful activity.

Brains can burn sugar, and indeed must have a certain threshold amount (which the liver is designed to manufacture as needed) but brains actually run most efficiently on fat, and certain forms of fat we don't readily produce endogenously are almost certainly what allowed the brain to evolve as large and complex as it has. (human brains are actually smaller now than they were, say, 40,000 years ago according to archeologists). I think the main issue with brain health is excessive reliance on glucose for fuel which is caused by metabolic disorder/disease. We haven't evolved the ability (yet, perhaps) to do a good job being able to mobilize fat for energy when we're simultaneously consuming carbohydrates in amounts that meet our caloric needs, and for the large fraction of the population (to include me) that is susceptible to insulin resistance, it becomes difficult to mobilize fat energy adequately even in the presence of caloric deficit.

[jacob]

The biggest problem with talking about the mind is that it is yet not possible to get an objective understanding of the subjective. For example, I take "mindfulness" to describe a state of being aware of what feelings, thoughts, and sensations that one has. If this is [the correct definition] it actually took me a long time to grok this, the cause of my confusion being that for me this state has always been my default state. I could therefore not understand why anyone would be so focused/interested in something that I presumed was a given for everyone. To me "1 hour of practicing mindfulness" sounded like "1 hour of practicing how to put on pants".

FWIW, I score something like 3 or 4% on neuroticism in the Big5.

In retrospect it is now clear that mindfulness is not normal for a majority of humans. In the typical brain, feelings, sensations, and thoughts, is not something they HAVE. It's something they ARE. A typical person IS angry. A mindful person HAS a feeling of anger. A typical person ARE their thoughts about XYZ, perhaps to the point of obsession. A mindful person simply HAS those thoughts and can choose to ignore them or possibly even change them on their own.

Apparently, mindfulness is trait-based. It's a talent you're born with. It is, however, also something that can be trained ... and by training, one's [persistent] state of mindfulness can be improved. (Many things about humans can be improved through practice.)

I do see a lot of value in mindfulness. It is useful! I would find it hard to operate as a human being without it.

Sitting with your eyes closed and focusing on the sensation of your breathing trains the brain to focus on that one thing without being taken over by random feelings, thoughts, or other sensations. This makes it a kind of grounding exercise to gain relief from unwelcome sensations like anxiety. However, if you're already mindful, you don't need to sit cross legged and focus on your breath to avoid getting overwhelmed. You can just let that stuff "pass through" while doing the dishes or whatever it is that you do. Grounding exercises become borderline ridiculous insofar you're constantly grounded.

Through reading (second hand observations), I know that there's a state of mind beyond mindfulness in which not only is the "I" paying attention to the "thoughts, feelings, sensations" the "I" has... but there's a witness to "I". Beyond that, there's also a point where even that witness disappears.

Unlike mindfulness I've yet to see how this state of being is useful. Note, that this is not something one accidentally stumbles into simply from closing one's eyes and focusing on one's breathing or mantra or mental image. It takes a lot of practice (or serious drugs).

Apparently a typical person can focus on their breath for 30 seconds before some uninvited thought invades their mind. I can do about 3 minutes. The gateway for the next level starts at around the 30 minute mark, that is, if you can concentrate on your breath for 30 minutes without a single thought or feeling, you're ready to begin the journey towards experiencing other ways of being.

However, I am not convinced that these "other ways of being" are an improvement over the previous state in the same way that mindfulness is an improvement over a state of ... "mindlessness".

The so-called unitive or cosmic consciousness state sounds very much like a very positive spin on conditions of dissociation otherwise known as depersonalization and derealization. Derealization is interesting because apparently our awareness of present reality is a construct created in short-term (instant-term?) memory from the current sensory inputs. If that process breaks down, as is possible with much meditative effort, the standard sense of reality breaks down and is replaced by what is perceived as a "luminous" jumble of sensory inputs and a feeling that everything is connected with everything. That might feel trippy and all but ... My take away from where I sit is that while unitive people are relatively harmless, they don't seem to offer any insight into the universe---at least not to this physicist; they don't seem to have any unique problem solving ability; they're not particularly productive---indeed rather unproductive even. As such, pursing meditation towards that particular state seems like a weird trap rather than "the next evolution of man's mind". Indeed, losing the ability form a coherent construct of the present and adding in a lack of desire to predict what comes next (because "feeling like I'm floating in, nay part of, a warm ocean is just a wonderful") sounds more like a kind of deevolution---like what a good starting point for how e.g. a dog or an ape would experience the world.

Proceed at your own risk / sense of adventure. I still find the pursuit fascinating, but it's not for me.

[7Wannabe5]

Due to the ripe fruit season being very short, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would have driven the evolution of our psychology, but who knows.

Our psychology likely changed as we evolved from being primarily fruit, tender leaf, and insect eaters to incorporating sedges, succulents and roots into our diet, to also including scavenged and hunted marrow and meat into our diets, but that in no way entails a disruption of our ability to forage fruit in a more tropical environment where it is more constantly available.

It seems like high saturated fat and high sugar diets may impair brain functioning, while varied diet which includes items such as small fish, sweet potatoes, spinach, and blackberries is likely most healthful and sustainable. The problem is that barring work applied to environmental reconstruction, when I set out cheerfully to forage in my Modern environment, I will encounter a Lemon Raspberry Easter Cake my mother ordered from Whole Foods within 25 steps of my current location.

I actually used to have a rule that I could only have sugar if I walked far enough to obtain it that I also burnt off all the calories. Therefore, I have "scientifically" determined that "I" do like sugar well enough that I am willing to walk 3 or 4 extra miles to obtain it approximately once/day. MMV (literally!) OTOH, I don't really care about having meat in my diet. I might lightly crave some meat after not eating any for several months, and I would be willing to walk zero miles to have beef vs. tofu in my stir-fry. And my DNA analysis confirms my predilections: highest possible liking for sweet foods inherited from both of my parents combined with a below average liking for meat or meat-taste. So, the open question might be whether humans who have a genetic tendency to like what they like in their diets also have a genetic tendency to be better able to utilize it to some extent?