alt Hacker News> If this works, there must be some way to tune our meditation methods specifically for relaxing smooth muscle.... using awareness to track exactly how and where the body grips and lets go.
It's great that westerners are exploring these things, but I can't help but think the strong aversion people have for things not being "proven" by western science is holding everyone back. This is literally yoga and meditation practice and has been studied for at least a couple thousand years.
Even if we exclude the modern invention of yoga as exercise in the 20th century, there are seated practices of releasing these tensions in the body. It's not even framed in mystical terms, it's literally just opening the body and getting rid of discomfort, pain, and stress in the body so that you can sit and focus for longer periods of time in your formal meditation practice.
Even in the author's teacher's capital V Vipassana tradition, invented in the 20th century, it is known that the piti that arises even in the first stages of meditation can be directed. That weak piti is just the piloerection response, which is an autonomic response, and if you can control it it would seem to imply we of course have facility over things science assumes we have no control over.
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The biggest challenge is that it's a very slow process and most people don't have the patience for it. I have been practicing Vipassana for 14 years, including all day long body awareness (so, not only on cushion, but basically integrating Vipassana to normal activities like work) and it's took close to a decade to be satisfied by the results. That being said, permanent relaxation of muscle is really what you gain from it. There have been period with faster developpement but there are up liits to progress. Notably, the release of muscle release all sort of chemicals in the blood streams, which would make my body smell during intense practice and if we progress too fast, we get bizarre side effects. For instance, relaxation of some of my muscles meant that other muscles in my legs had to be "trained" when walking, or I would be in pain for a while, etc, etc.
> the strong aversion people have for things not being "proven" by western science
What does “western” have to do with anything? There is plenty of pseudoscience, snake oil and magical thinking in the west. I’d wish people were much more skeptical of anything not scientifically proven.
Or do you imply there is a racist component to it? That could certainly be true.
The problem is that Eastern medicine is also full of complete horse shit. How do you differentiate between the good and the bad without just reinventing from base principles?
> It's great that westerners are exploring these things ...
> This is literally yoga and meditation practice and has been studied for at least a couple thousand years.
> Even if we exclude the modern invention of yoga as exercise in the 20th century, there are seated practices of releasing these tensions in the body.
You are very clearly opposing eastern meditation practice and science, saying science held westerners back but let me give an example...
I've got a tense spot somewhere, I do practice meditation since a long time and I definitely can relax myself using breathing techniques etc. That's great.
But one of my very best friend lost, 15 years ago, both kidneys and had a kidney transplanted from his mom (she was compatible and willing to give one). As to my wife, she suffers from an auto-immune disease: but thanks to medication she lives a normal life (and thankfully doesn't have a reduced life expectancy).
So my questions is simple: you talk about "thousands of years". Easterners had "thousands of years" and they can... Release tension in the body?
Shall we now have a talk about science and ask the inverse question: weren't easterners held back by their meditation practice while westerners invented: MRI, X-ray, antibiotics, insulin, kidney transplantation, heart transplantation, artificial heart, in vitro fecondation, polio vaccine, anesthesia, chemotherapy, stethoscope, microscope, ...
And that's just a tiny list. I could go on and on. Versus... Relaxing tension in the body?
I'm not exactly sure who's been held back by what here.
Many things have been practiced/studied for thousands of years - that alone isn't interesting or valuable imo.
What are the objective benefits of meditation - what is the exact/specific process and what specifically does it accomplish?
I can see how being in a silent reflective state and similar practices could have various effects and benefits (not that I know specifically what those are) - but what separates me zoning out in the shower/on the bus from actual meditation? How is 'guided' meditation when you're actively listening to someone else even the same thing?
Whenever I ask my meditating/'spiritual' friends about these things the response is basically vague undecipherable gibberish and allusions that it is unexplainable to someone like me who is not ready to accept the truths lol.
Science is not exclusive to western countries. In fact, I would argue that a lot of the basis from science is Eastern philosophy. It is merely a method for determining the validity of truth claims.