[alecbenzer]

>In many programmes, students learn that emotions such as anger, anxiety and fear stem from reactions in a brain region called the amygdala. They are taught that mindfulness helps them identify and manage these emotions by activating the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with behavioural regulation. In doing so, students are taught that mindfulness creates space in which we can ‘choose our response’ as opposed to reacting or lashing out. In the words of one programme, mindfulness gives us ‘the freedom to choose’.

> These might sound like reasonable claims, but they imply a dichotomy between emotions and reason, and the superiority of ‘rational’ responses to distress. This idea derives not from traditional mindfulness but from liberal Western ideals. Historically, these ideals have served to undermine oppressed groups, as anger and resistance is perceived as irrational.

The article's commentary here seems out-of-touch with most mindfulness instruction I've experienced. It's usually emphasized to notice things in as non-judgmental a way as possible; you're definitely not encouraged to label anger or any other emotion as "irrational".

Mindfulness does give you the freedom to choose. It wouldn't be freedom to choose if the choice was always to ignore anger: sometimes anger is useful, other times it isn't; mindfulness helps you notice that and act accordingly.

[BiteCode_dev]

You can see the same misconceptions when people expect mindful meditation to always:

- relax them

- make them happy

- make them less emotional

But with practice I learned that some sessions are extremely emotional, full of stress or sorrow. It's not uncommon to feel pain, distress or to cry deeply during intense meditation retreats.

The process improves one existence by making us live those aspects of our life better. Not by taking them away.

Now of course, on the long run, it will make people more relaxed, happier, etc. Making you fitter to live with yourself.

But not by removing, ignoring or suppressing suffering.

It's still here. It will always be here. That's the point of meditating.

Mindfulness forces us to observe it as it is. You see your contradictions, your scars and your urges. You see your masks, conditioning and reflexes.

If anything, it removes dichotomy. Not add to it.

In fact, from what I witnessed, meditation tends to make people remove layers in general. I rarely hear meditators talking about adding ones.

And mindfulness is certainly not emotions vs reason.

It has nothing to do with either.

Emotions and reason are here. You observe them, and yourself using them. But the fact you use them is not part of the technique. It's just a part of you, and like all parts of you, you are invited to observe it.

Like everybody, when I started years ago, I confused "be detached" with "don't feel", "label it unimportant", "try to relax". That's not it.

What you feel or the label you use are just not part of the teaching. They don't matter at all (for the practice). What matters is that you observe it.

[a-nikolaev]

Thank you, this is the most compelling argument for meditation I've ever seen.

Don't want to sound too ignorant (although I might be), but more often than not I encounter much simpler interpretations of meditation and its goals that (to me) sound more like instructions to wall off rather than to find peace with yourself. They also sometimes come with a tacit shaming of strong emotions, but as the saying goes: "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". I think that pushing for no strong emotions at all (at least on the surface) does promote walling off rather than actually understanding yourself better, which sometimes requires you to be out of balance. Like in math, always going up can lead you to a local maximum only, and to reach a global maximum you have to walk downhill once in a while.

[BiteCode_dev]

> more often than not I encounter much simpler interpretations of meditation and its goals that (to me) sound more like instructions to wall off rather than to find peace with yourself.

I've notice this at several occasions.

It is not specific to meditation though.

Agile software development, as practiced behind corporate walls, is very different what Beck and Schwaber talked about in the 90'.

Thanks to MMA, we know now that many modern martial art teachings are not practical from a self-defense perspective.

Many may claim they follow the ideal of the same famous religious figure, and confronted with each others, will end up with opposite opinions on how to live one life.

As soon as something become mainstream, it is bound to be adapted into different variations of what it was initially intended. Yet we keep the same name for it.

For what I know, what I'm practicing is also a variation of a variation of a variation of something.

[e12e]

> Thanks to MMA, we know now that many modern martial art teachings are not practical from a self-defense perspective.

I don't disagree with the general point that there are martial art schools that do not teach effective self defense - but I'm not sure how MMA figures in to it.

Self defense is about situational awareness, coping with multiple attackers, probably armed. Often you may have a way of de-escalating the situation (eg: give them your wallet).

I suppose in the instance of a single un-armed rapist (often the case when the victim knows the attacker) MMA has increased the focus on grappling (ie: judu/jujutsu/bjj and various wrestling techniques).

I'm not sure what else the popularity of MMA has thought us about self defense.

Now, if your talking about ring fighting with a particular ruleset, one on one, with a referee... That might be something else.

[Viliam1234]

I am not an expert, but some sources on meditation describe states of extreme emotion, as intermediate steps towards enlightenment. In Wikipedia, the first and second jhana are described as "rapture and non-sensual pleasure" (with or without internal speech respectively). So the proper path to balance seems to lead through mastery of the emotions, not suppressing them.

I think the idea is that you are not your emotions, and you don't have to be ruled by your emotions, but rather the emotions are something that happens to you, and something you can control. Doesn't mean you have to turn them off, it just means you have the option to do so if necessary. Or perhaps you feel the emotion, but are not compelled to act on it.

[closeparen]

Walls get such a bad rap. They are how we do resilience. They are how we prevent cascade failure. They are how we can keep sailing even when a compartment floods.

[foobiekr]

That is a great description of the reality and mirrors my experience doing a lot of meditation for mindfulness in college.

Three years ago, I picked it up again for about 18 months years and once again let it slip.

It took me a long time to realize why, which is this: I have not found meditation to have been very useful in actual day to day life despite the multiple attestations from people that it brought them ... something. I got something out of meditation also, but unlike weightlifting, for me it has never been a continuing something.

There's the eye-opening moment of really becoming aware of the ephemeralness of so many impulses that inflict us day-to-day. That is a great lesson and probably helped a lot with self control. It's like the first time you realize that you can change your mood - you don't have to ride the tiger, you can stop the process, it is subject to your conscious influence if you want it to be, but you don't need to practice this once you learn it.

In practical terms, I think those impulses are actually very valuable because they tap into faster, broader lower-tier reasoning, and mindfulness, at least as I understood it and practiced it, ended up disempowering them in a way that was mildly negative, especially in interpersonal situations where the side-effects of added latency and inevitably reduced amplitude have consequences.

YMMV, obviously. Possibly I am just lazy.

[BiteCode_dev]

Very lazy too, so I get it. I try to take so many shortcuts, and often it leads me taking more time that I would have if I did the hard thing first.

I've been meditating for 13 years, and sometimes I meet people with 3 years of practice that seem decades ahead of me.

One time, I think after my 2nd or 3rd retreat, I practiced in such a way that instead of helping myself, I got into depression. Took me a few months to change course.

I don't thing there is a "standard experience" for meditating. YMMV seems like a good summary for it.

Could be a t-shirt.

"Your Meditation May Vary"

[bsenftner]

Mindfullness is formally and best described here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2631787720929704

[BiteCode_dev]

I can relate.

Meditation at its core is a very mundane activity, no more special than taking a shower, going hiking or talking to your therapist.

However, humans love to create mythology or add deep meaning to anything. In doing that, we can turn a simple healthy practice into a load of BS.

That doesn't mean showering doesn't have benefits though.

[duncanawoods]

> out-of-touch with most mindfulness instruction I've experienced

The premise that emotions, be it anger, desire or rumination, are harmful, is almost aways the selling point and the reason people choose to start or are given such training.

The training itself might include non-judgement/compassion but that isn’t why you are sat there in the first place.

It’s difficult for me to see non-judgement as anything but a tool to pacify anger rather than as actual legitimisation of a state of anger as a way of being.

[BiteCode_dev]

I think it may be because culturally we mix anger with the causes and consequences of anger.

Meditation can, little by little, albeit very slowly in my experience, decorrelate those 3.

I've seen it to result in meditators subject to a lot of anger:

- producing less anger

- maintaining anger for smaller amounts of time

- acting less dramatically over anger

And so it seems logical that people draw the conclusion that meditation tells you not to be angry. That angers it bad, or that you should control it.

To my knowledge, that's not the teaching.

Note that I think it's as good as a reason as any to start practicing. The practice will shift your point of you over time anyway. It's what it does.

And it will help with the suffering related to anger on the long run.

However, confusion can arise if people with little to no experience with meditation make quick judgement of the technic and build definitive ideas on top of that.

Appart from kindly explaining that it's a different story, there is not much one can do about it, though.

[duncanawoods]

I believe meditation has taken too much oxygen from intellectual action e.g. writing exercises where you try to fully describe what is happening, the feelings, the causes, consequences and possible actions.

If you do this, you gain insight, empowerment and actionable plans. Meditation might claim something similar but I don’t think it delivers to the same degree.

[BiteCode_dev]

Self-development in general is a very efficent excuse to avoid taking action.

You can certainly use "meditation" to work on yourself forever, in preparation for doing things, and never, ever, actually do anything.

But in itself, it's not the nature of meditation.

In a way, meditation share similarities with physical exercice.

Doing your morning run doesn't make you less fit to take action, make a plan or to apply critical thinking. I would say it's the opposite.

A lot of my most productive periods in my life are right after meditation retreats.

During those times, I use GTD a lot, to support my efforts. Writting, descripting, listing causes and consequences are in no way in competition with meditation.

To be frank, I don't know what could be in competition with meditation. It's pretty much orthogonal to everything by essence.

[alecbenzer]

IME it does deliver. Not necessarily directly (like, you're not going to come up with an action plan white meditating), but, over time, it helps cultivate a state of mind where those things are easier to do.

I think it does take time, though, like between 1 week and 1 month of daily practice, to start noticing the effects.

[mercer]

I agree, but I'll add that in my opinion a writing exercise such as OP describes is half-way meditation anyways.

different activities involve different degrees of mindfulness, and I believe making a sharp distinction, while sometimes useful, is usually harmful.

You can take a shit mindfully, way I see it. it might not be something you call 'meditation' most of the time, but I imagine it's even possible to do a proper meditative shit.

[wadkar]

Couldn’t have phrased it better myself!

Mindfulness should focus first on observing and not judging/labeling things as good/bad. That just leads to more misery!!

The instructors should certainly realize that mindfulness and it’s experiences are very subjective and each individual has different experiences. One must be careful not to compare two students and say one is a better example of mindfulness than the other.

[naringas]

the point of the article is how the UK's version of mindfulness "mass produced" for public education carries all of those things as implied ideological baggage.

Of course mindfulness practice is not about labeling emotion as irrational, but the reasoning behind implementing it in the education system is very close to this.

[BiteCode_dev]

Indeed.

And if the teaching frees the student from that idea, then we can see that as an opportunity to give it a try.

But I can see how it could do harm if the teaching is also twisted to the point that it reinforces that idea.

Going mainstream almost always implies loosing something important in the process. It's hard to condence years of teaching in a few hours.

[alecbenzer]

Maybe, but the article is kinda just saying that -- I don't see the quoted sentences from the instructors as evidence that they just want to suppress anger or think that anger is always irrational.

[state_less]

Mindfulness is somewhat analogous to breaking out the profiler or debugger/introspection on a program you're running. You step through each state of mind deliberately, looking at the callstack and variable that brought you to this point. Introspecting with mindfulness or a debugger isn't in itself going to make your program work better, though you might learn enough about the way the program is working that your initial unhappiness with it subsides because you see that the program is working as well as can be expected. Other times you might see a program with many unnecessary calls and in need of a great deal of change, which in itself might make you blow your top upon discovery - especially if the change will be difficult or nearly impossible. That people find problems with the program doesn't mean that the debugger is broken or debugging is something to be avoided.

We use these tools and while they might not always guarantee a pleasant experience, or even that you can change anything, they allow us to discover something about the program or ourselves that can be of some benefit often enough that we keep these tools around.

If you force people to drop down to the debugger every day, be prepared to get some clear feedback. Is an industrial school system ready to take on that sort of thing? It seems the goals is to turn out students to spec efficiently than the concerns of students mental life (e.g. You might not have much agency over doing X, but do it anyway because it furthers our graduation/testing/cost goals). If you're really interested in the students wellbeing (e.g. my parents are having problems at home, or I'm having problems with my classmates), I think the debugger can be a helpful tool. If you're debugger sessions are perfunctory with a stated goal of helping improve the program, but in fact discovered problems aren't addressed or are expected to be minimized, then you won't have much success with the debugger and I wouldn't diagnose it as a problem with the debugger or debugging per se.

[specialist]

"Is an industrial school system ready to take on that sort of thing?"

It's hard to not be cynical.

From the article:

"Kayleigh cuts in: ‘Sometimes other things help me more. But they don’t listen to us, they just tell us to do mindfulness.’"

Of course.

https://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/

[brownbat]

I've heard this rebuttal a few times, that western values try to suppress emotions, and anger is sometimes good. Eliezer makes this point too. I'm still not sure I fully understand it.

The anger I feel when I'm cut off in traffic is distinct enough from the anger that I feel at oppression or injustice to really deserve its own label. Like, anger1 and anger2.

Since they feel so different, I have slightly different thoughts about each.

I never want to drive with anger1 instead of safety. Driving with anger, or "road rage," is not an interesting value-neutral way to experience the world.

I think that driving anger is a distinct emotion that is always unhealthy and just happens to share the name "angry" with other emotions because of superficial similarities. People will probably say that's just a different context, I think that's overgeneralizing, but even in other contexts I worry about the call to set aside rationality. (Instead of anger1 and anger2 you could call one rage and the other indignation.)

When I'm angry ("angry2") about senseless human suffering, I agree it should move people, people should not just tune out. But that seems like a straw man of the rationalist approach. There too I'd rather channel that feeling into a thought process that maximizes my impact, rather than just attempt to satisfy the emotional call to yell or cry or punch a wall. Those may be important therapeutic responses, but if you can feel satisfaction by just getting to work to try to correct the injustice, that would be better.

I'm rarely physically threatened, but my system still occasionally floods me with fight or flight adrenaline. What's so wrong about saying that's a quirk of evolution, and thoughtful responses are going to leave me better off, absent some weird fringe scenarios?

I've heard the opposite perspective from people smarter and calmer than me though, so maybe I'm wrong and it just hasn't clicked for me yet.

[drunkpotato]

That's an interesting perspective and I think I mostly agree. The way I think about it is that anger is helpful for setting goals ("angry2" in your formulation). But it clouds the mind and is unhelpful for forming strategy and action, which relates more to "angry1." For example, reading something hateful online activates both "angry1" and "angry2" but responding in the moment uses "angry1" and is mostly unhelpful for forming a rebuttal that helps move hearts and minds.

[wolco]

One is called rage. The other repressed internal rage.

You shouldn't be angry at either. For the first issue accept it. The second do something about it.

[_jal]

> You shouldn't be angry at either

This is backwards. You may as well tell people not to be hungry.

[canjobear]

Maybe true mindfulness training has the subtleties you describe. But when it is mass-packaged and standardized such that it can be taught in schools, it will lose a lot of nuance. The approach can’t be judged in terms of its best form, but rather in terms of the average form available (in this case) to students.

[0xcde4c3db]

> It's usually emphasized to notice things in as non-judgmental a way as possible; you're definitely not encouraged to label anger or any other emotion as "irrational".

Identifying thoughts as "distortions" or "unrealistic" is a major point of CBT. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these programs are carelessly mixing it in.

[pmoriarty]

"Mindfulness does give you the freedom to choose."

Is it true freedom of choice or the illusion of choice?

Whether we have free will is very debatable, and there are many reasons for thinking we don't.