If you are particularly fidgety and have trouble concentrating, here is a thought experiment that might help:<p>Sit in a room with minutes to spare and task yourself this: to get to the market and back from your house. Maybe you shop for some fruits or something.<p>Step into your mental realm imagining every step you have to do in this task. Changing your clothes, tying your shoe lace, locking your door...everything. Not in frames but in a continuous motion as in a movie. It could be boring and I have felt the strong need to snap out of it. It still is difficult to power through, imagining every step and "looking" at the trees and shrubs along the way, picking up and inspecting an apple and putting it in the basket, paying for the goods, etc.<p>The whole thing is much more difficult than it sounds if you are the kind of person who gets restless easily. With practice, it gets better. Hopefully this helps you get in the productive zone. Good luck!
You don't need no fucking App to start.<p>Sit down in comfortable position, close your eyes, <i>try</i> to concentrate on your breathing in and out (your mind will start to wander - keep coming back to the breathing). Repeat everyday.<p>You'll have the chance to "optimize" and "improve" your meditation experience later on. First, build the habit.
I have done meditation for years now and found it to be very beneficial.<p>However, I find this article to be very Cargo Cult and am disturbed that nowhere in this entire thread has it been called out as such.<p>"Look! Meditation must do things because we can make these colored charts telling you about beta waves. What are beta waves? Well, it doesn't really matter, just think of them as bad, because look, meditation does things to your brain, okay??"<p>The benefits of meditation to mood, creativity, etc are pretty easy to verify for yourself, subjectively. It disturbs me that we feel that adding scientismic mumbo-jumbo gives it credibility somehow. What is presented in this article is not actual science.<p>There is actual science involving meditation and the brain, but it is in extremely early stages and is hard to draw conclusions from. Our understanding of the brain, in general, is very early! Please be suspicious of pretty colored charts showing brain activity.
I belong to a religious group where initiation into meditation happens at about 10-12 years of age for boys. This initiation ceremony is an important ceremony (called thread ceremony) in a male's life. After initiation, every male has to perform a ritual called Sandhya Vandanam [1] thrice every day for the rest of their lives. The ritual has different components. The two important components are Praanaayamaa (breath control exercise) and mantra meditation. A mantra is a Vedic Hymn that is chanted/repeated again and again (for pre-specified # of times). In the Sandhya Vandanam ritual the mantra that is chanted is the famed Gayatri mantra. The mantra is chanted with the following schedule:<p>Morning at sunrise - Praatah Sandhya - 108 times<p>Midday - Maadhyanika - 32 times<p>During evening twilight - Saayum Sandhya - 64 times<p>The Vedic definition of mantra is "mantaaram traayate iti mantrah". In English this translates to "That which protects the mind is called mantra".<p>When I was young, I used to perform this ritual regularly. Though I performed the ritual regularly, I used to wonder about the requirement of such a ritual. Over the past few years I have come to know some fascinating things about the ritual and also the Vedas. After gaining the insights, it is ironic that nowadays I do not perform the ritual regularly at all. This article has come at the right time for me to get back into the meditation routine.<p>[1] - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhyavandanam" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhyavandanam</a>
Mindfulness in Plain English is a readable and accessible introduction to meditation, available online at <a href="http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html</a>
I find it helpful to think of a muscle as an analogy for my brain. Thoughts are like contractions - sometimes they are purposeful when they are part of a movement, an extension of my will. But sometimes they are not; in that way the incessant chatter of the internal monologue, or worse yet, stress, is similar to a cramping muscle, a flood of contractions that come unbidden. Meditation, then, is similar to relaxation exercises, doing stretches or posture training - teaching your muscles how to be at rest. This can then also translate into efficiency and economy of motion when you choose to move, not to mention more energy, because all the useless contractions/thoughts haven't worn you out beforehand. Also, yoga makes a lot of sense when you think of it this way, because you literally do this for both your body and brain at the same time.
Is reducing beta waves actually a good thing? It might allow for focus and relaxation, but I wonder if that might do something like clear your working memory and make you less able to make connections between things. Could anyone that has a good grasp on this comment on whether this might be true?
> More grey matter<p>Well as study shows [1] meditation not only thickens cortex in some parts of the brain but also makes it thinner in other parts. Just saying.<p>[1] <a href="http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/1/27.long" rel="nofollow">http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/1/27.long</a>
I'm skeptical of articles like this because they tend to draw conclusions from studies that only provide weak correlations. The only concrete evidence I can find is that meditation can help some people relax and temporarily reduce their stress levels. My experience confirms this but I prefer other means of achieving the same effect (like exercising).
I can highly recommend reading the Relaxation Response for a scientific treatment of meditation.<p>Much like exercise, if it came in pill form, everybody would take it.
If you are interested in meditation but wary of the eastern mumbo jumbo, I suggest checking out Jon Kabat-Zinn and his works on mindfulness from a scientific perspective.
One of the biggest publishers of meditation products is MindValley (<a href="http://mindvalley.com" rel="nofollow">http://mindvalley.com</a>). The story of its founder, Vishen is well documented, and really inspiring. He bootstrapped and grew his business to seven figures without external funds. His purpose is not only monetary; he seeks to "push humanity forward" with his groundbreaking programs.
I know this is asking a lot, but would anybody like to weigh in with some explanation/evidence for the descriptions of those four parts of the brain?
The app is just to help you to get into a rhythm. I downloaded the app and really liked the user flow. Will definitely use to begin my meditation.<p>In my experience, I have seen a sea change in people who have started meditating. They are much more calmer and happy. There is a flip side as well. Many people get into a happy mode and start giving up in life.
Maybe a good place to mention the book that got me started on meditation: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Minute-Meditation-Quiet-Mind-Change/dp/0399529950" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Minute-Meditation-Quiet-Mind-Change/dp...</a>
Meditation, such a scam. I can't believe so many intelligent people are fooled by it. It's nothing more than a relaxation technique and that's it.<p>The studies about meditation are mostly of dubious quality and origin, and people draw unwarranted conclusions from them.<p><a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/08/21/quacks-everywhere/" rel="nofollow">http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/08/21/quacks-eve...</a>