[Dove]

I don't know, I thought he explained it pretty well: during meditation, you practice resisting urges.

I'll admit that falls rather short of a doubleblindrandomlyassignedcontrolgrouplargesamplesizepeerreviewed study, but it does seem to be common sense that practicing something would make you better at it.

[KirinDave]

"during meditation, you practice resisting urges."

Saying this does not make it true thought. Is that actually what people do during meditation? The only experience I have with meditation is sitting in seiza position after 2 hours of Ki Aikido, slowly feeling my muscles cramp, listening to someone hit a drum periodically, and not feeling anything good at all.

Eventually I just learned to devote that time to reviewing things I had learned that day. I found this self-reflective practice far more refreshing and pleasant than any search for metaphorical emptiness.

[johnthedebs]

I think when most people say 'meditation' what they mean is 'mindfulness meditation' (and that seems to be the case here). During mindfulness meditation, yes, resisting urges is part of what you're supposed to do.

The basic process goes something like:

1) Sit down in a comfortable position that you can stay in without moving.

2) Take deep breaths through your nose and focus your attention on the sensation of air moving over your nasal passages and into/out of your lungs.

3) When other thoughts come into your head or you find yourself thinking about anything other than your breathing, gently direct your attention back to your breathing.

[KirinDave]

Why is "breathing" more effective than, say, "cats"?

[johnthedebs]

The subject of meditation isn't all that important, the focus is. Breathing just happens to be a great subject: it's simple and repetitive, it's always with you, it's something you can feel (you're supposed to pay attention to the sensation), etc.

I recently read Mindfulness in Plain English and really enjoyed it. If you're looking for an explanation and how-to (but not necessarily data to back it up), it's a great book.

Edit: Regarding cats specifically, breathing does not demand your attention (the way cats do) and it does not leave on a whim once it has received your attention (the way cats do). It's up to you, and only you, to focus and continue focusing.

[gls2ro]

I think it is about breathing because it is probably one of the unconscious processes of the body that one can also control consciously with ease. And probably focusing on this has something to do with connecting the two minds.

Probably one can do meditation by using Biofeedback (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofeedback -> http://www.ccjm.org/content/75/Suppl_2/S35.full.pdf) but this technique of focusing on physiological functions is new. Probably mediation was practiced for at least 2000 years (Buddha teaching are dated somewhere around 500BC) or more (indian scriptures called “tantras” mentioned meditation techniques 5000 years ago). So in that time the most viable way to control consciously an automatic body function was to do it with breathing.

I never practiced constantly meditation, but I has tried once different forms. So just take this as a simple deduction based on my own observations and few readings on the subject :)

[dwiel]

If you are "cats" you are also "breathing". If you are "breathing" you are only "breathing".

[KirinDave]

> If you are "breathing" you are only "breathing".

And sitting, and your heart is beating, and you're swallowing, and your eyes are moving reflexively, and you're probably digesting. And what about people with tinnitis? They're often "hearing" something.

Sorry, I just don't understand why focusing on a specific topic to the exclusion of everything else is somehow inferior to focusing on breathing. Because your higher functioning mind can take over your breathing, but your reflexive breathing is plenty good at it nearly all the time. Woudln't the same distraction-free mindset be attainable by contemplating the central limit theorem, or Euler's formula, or focusing on doing more situps than your body is comfortable with?

[jules]

I think the point is to train your ability to focus on things that you don't naturally focus on. If you like thinking about math and you can easily focus on it without effort, presumably it doesn't have the same training effect. I think the idea of mindfulness is to learn to build up "reflexes" in your mind that cause you to notice certain thoughts at the conscious level. Focusing on your breathing is something so boring that random thoughts will continually enter your mind. Sometimes it will take a significant period of time to consciously notice that you're no longer focusing on breathing. Over time you train yourself to recognize those thoughts as soon as the enter your mind. In other words you train yourself to lift unconscious thoughts to conscious meta thoughts, i.e. feeling angry v.s. thinking "hey, I'm feeling angry".

For example if somebody does something annoying, you might reflexively think or say something bad to that person. The idea of mindfulness is to train your mind to process thoughts on a conscious level before acting on them. You will have the conscious thought "oh, I feel annoyed by this" and then be able to make a conscious decision about your reaction, instead of a reflexive one. Or instead of randomly browsing the web, you consciously notice "hey, I'm browsing the web, lets get back to work" ;) I'm certainly not an expert on the subject, but this is my understanding of it. If you've never tried it and want to get a clearer understanding, try it now. Try focusing on your breath for 2 minutes (or heartbeat, or the number 5, or whatever, as long as it's the same simple boring thing over those 2 minutes).

[wpietri]

This is something that I don't think you will be able to understand until you have tried it enough to see what others see in it. There are many activities like that.

The point of focusing on breathing is not to do the breathing in place of your automatic breathing. It is to pay attention to that automatic breathing.

Contemplating the central limit theorem is a complex activity. Where does contemplation of that truly end? It is easy to follow the mind's natural tendency to become distracted. You think about related math. You think about your math professor that first talked about it. You think about unrelated math. You think about practical applications.

The breath is simple. You observe the breath going in and out. When your mind it on something else, you return it to the breath. Over and over. You don't have to consider anything: if you attend to something other than the sensation of the breath, you've wandered off.

[lobo_tuerto]

Maybe because breathing is something you are actually doing, while you _can't_ do "cats".

Basically you are fusing something you are doing with your complete attention. And that is on a different level than "cats".

[acous]

You can be mindful of all of those things, but it's not necessarily the thing they start you off with with. Breath is easy to explain and locate... not everyone can isolate their heartbeat or eye movements easily.

[sukuriant]

cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats forgets to breathe

[snogglethorpe]

cat: "eeeeexxcellent!"

[nollidge]

I think everyone's forgetting that there's a thousand different activities that people call "meditation". Vipassana meditation seems to be what the original article and most of the responses are referring to.