Live Now, Thrive Later

Meditation, is that what you need? Part 2: Midfulness, Contemplation and Philosophy

in wellbeing

In part 1 of this series, I looked at the current body of research into the effects of mindfulness based meditation.

Contrary to what you might have been led to believe by the many glowing press reports, there's actually very little quality evidence to confirm any benefits, and also some pretty serious potential adverse effects!

Based on these findings, the question is, will I be continuing my daily meditation practice?

Surely, all these experts can't be wrong?

Meditation is practiced and recommended by many famous and successful people. Surely they can't all be wrong?

Well, yes, they probably could. In fact, more often than not, celebrity endorsement is a warning sign for pseudoscience Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop being prime examples!

But it's not just flaky Hollywood celebs proselytising about meditation, lots of seriously successful, productive, high performing business types swear by meditation. A significant majority of the high achievers interviewed in Tools of Titans for example, cite regular meditation practice as an essential part of their daily routine.

Again, however, media moguls, business tycoons and silicon valley super achievers are not immune from confirmation bias and self-deception. Just as many high level athletes swear by training routines, therapies and supplements which have no basis in reality, it could be that the high flyers would have flown equally close to the sun had they swapped the meditation for a box set of blue planet.

Meditation is also practiced and recommended by some very intelligent, skeptical and rational people, such as Sam Harris and Yuval Harari (author of the amazing book Sapiens).

Could they also have been "duped" into believing that meditation "works"?

Well, I suppose that all depends upon what you mean by works.

Investing in the Future

The current name of this site, Live Now Thrive Later, was inspired by a blog that I used to follow many moons ago called Pay Now Live Later.

It was part homage, as the blog was inspirational in my relatively early days within the world of health, fitness and wellbeing, but also part criticism/comment.

This concept of "Pay Now, Live Later" is pretty much integral to the diet/fitness/health/longevity industries.

We are told to invest in our health now, in order to reap the benefits later in life.

These investments could be:

Invest now, and reap an increased life-span/health-span, reduced risk of disease, better physical and mental health, etc.

Sounds perfectly reasonable, and in many respects it is.

Just as with finance, however, not all investments in health and well-being are created equal, and should probably come with the same kind of warnings that results are not guaranteed, and losses can be incurred!

There are some pretty sure and steady investments such as eating lots of vegetables, and staying active. These are like index funds. Not very sexy, but very likely to pay reasonable dividends in the future.

There are also plenty of Ponzi schemes out there, total pseudoscience with a hefty price tag; expensive, time-consuming, unpleasant, or sometimes all three...

Where things get more complex, is with promising new ideas - diets, supplements, therapies, training routines - that sound like they have amazing potential, but are too new, or insufficiently studied, for anyone to know for sure whether they'll really work. These are like IPOs of the fitness world.

It's easy to kick yourself for not having put all your savings into Facebook, Uber and/or Bitcoin when they first came on to the market. But you could just have easily dumped all your assets into Beepi or Quixey and lost everything. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

Meditation, though it has been around for thousands of years, for me falls into the IPO category, because we still don't have hard data on its long-term effects. There are indicators that it could be a worthwhile investment of time and effort, but with no concrete guarantees, could those minutes and hours spent meditating be put to better use elsewhere?

Invest in the Present

While it may be true that the long-term effects and benefits of meditation on health and wellbeing have not yet been validated by rigorous scientific study, and that this information would certainly be very useful to have, this does not mean that we have to discount the subjective experiences of its practitioners.

Take for example the two statements relating to taking an ice bath:

The first claim needs to be backed up by high quality scientific data. If it's not, take it with a pinch of salt, and don't let it influence your behaviour.

The second claim however is subjective, and there's no real reason to doubt its validity. Perhaps you'll feel the same, perhaps you won't. No amount of scientific testing will answer that question for you, the only way to know for sure is to try it yourself.

Perhaps a more analogous comparison than ice baths, would be that of LSD.

Just as with meditation, there are a growing number of advocates claiming that psychedelics could be a potentially effective treatment for a range of conditions, from depression and anxiety to addiction and PTSD.

Again, just as with meditation however, the "science" is still in its infancy. Small, short-term studies, with methodological flaws and obvious problems when it comes to blinding.

It's too early to say whether LSD or psychobilin could or should be used in the treatment of patients with a clinical diagnosis.

This doesn't mean however, that psychedelics "don't work".

Not convinced? Drop a couple of tabs of acid and come back to me in 12 hours...

The reason I think that there are so many passionate advocates for meditation, including numerous highly intelligent and educated skeptics, is that although we might not yet know the long-term clinical effects, as with LSD, you can experience significant and powerful changes to your perception and subjective experience in the here and now.

Let's go back to the exercise analogy again. Exercise (or perhaps regular activity or training) gives various different returns on your investment of time and effort, and different stages:

If you're lucky and don't get mown down by a car or vaporised in the imminent robot uprising it should hopefully pay out in the long-term in the form of an increased healthspan - more years on the planet with a healthy, functional, independent mind and body.

In the mid-long term, it will pay out in the form of fuller life. With a healthy body you can do more - climb mountains, kayak rivers, cycle across countries and continents, play sports, the possibilities are endless.

In the short to mid-term, you can achieve goals such as changing your body composition, completing a marathon, learning to backflip, or whatever gets you motivated.

Even before reaching any of these goals, however, switching from a sedentary lifestyle to an active one can bring about radical changes in your wellbeing in a matter of weeks or even days. People feel invigorated, less stressed, happier and more confident, long before reaching their first specified goals.

Pick the right activity, one that you enjoy, it could be capoeira, or crossfit, or hiking and you'll reap benefits instantly through the sheer joy of doing it, right in the moment.

So what's all this got to with meditation you ask? Get back to the topic!

There are indications that meditation could pay out dividends in stages over your lifetime, in a very similar way to which regular exercise does.

Just as long-term exercises have fitter, stronger and more agile bodies, long-term meditators have fitter, stronger and more agile minds. As covered in part 1, unfortunately it's too early to say for sure that this effect is causative, or an artifact of survivorship bias.

Luckily, however, we don't have to hinge all our hopes on possible benefits in the distant future, as just as with exercise and activity, you can start reaping benefits from meditation and mindfulness straight away!

Before I get into the how and why, however, a quick warning:

This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease...

The above is a compulsory message found on the labels of products classed as supplements.

Perhaps it could just as well be applied to meditation?

The majority of the meditation techniques that have become popular today in the West, originally come from the Buddhism.

They were not intended as standalone tools, to be used as curative therapies in individuals with pathologies, as they are often packaged and sold today.

To use the exercise analogy again, regular physical activity is strongly advised for normal healthy individuals, and can help bolster and prolong one's healthspan. It can't however cure diseases such as cancer or tuberculosis.

Meditation was intended to be used in conjunction with the study and practice of Buddhist philosophy to alleviate the "suffering" or "dissatisfaction" that is an all too common feature of the human condition.

I'll come back to Buddhist philosophy in more detail later, but in short, meditation was used as a tool of introspection, intended to help the practitioner to have a clearer perception of reality.

There are many people, myself included, who have found meditation and interesting and useful experience and practice in the short-term, and who don't perceive the required investment of time and effort dedicated to its practice to reap these benefits, and potentially even more later down the road, as excessive.

It's important to recall from part 1 however, that we also don't know for sure the risks of potential adverse effects that could be suffered from its practice.

If you're suffering from major clinical depression, severe anxiety, PTSD or any other such condition, it's crucial that you work closely with a medical profession, and approach any kind of contemplative practice with a great deal of caution.

Exercise is great for most people, but if you have angina, high blood pressure, or severe asthma, for example, too much intensity could prove disastrous! Perhaps meditation could be the same?

What is Mindfulness Meditation?

Before we go any further, it's probably about time to try to define what is meant by mindfulness meditation.

It was noted in the research reviews, that the practice of meditation was not clearly defined, and that there were numerous different techniques, with different focuses.

While it's certainly true that there are many different types of meditation technique, I think the "lack of definition", is possibly more to do with the authors' lack of expertise and understanding of the field.

Mindfulness Meditation is one subset of the wider category of Meditation, which comes from the Vipassana tradition of Buddhism, which roughly translates as insight meditation.

Mindfulness - Carefully focusing the attention on a chosen subject in your present moment sensory experience, in a non judgemental manner

One can do anything mindfully.

Eating mindfully for example, would be sitting down to eat, without distractions, and concentrating fully on every mouthful, trying to zoom in on every flavour and texture without making value judgements, holding expectations, or thinking about what you're going to be eating for dessert before you've finished the starter.

Running mindfully would involve focusing on being totally in the moment while out on the trails. Highly aware of your stride pattern, how you're holding your posture, how your feet are striking the floor, what your arms are doing, how you are breathing, how your muscles feel, the terrain underfoot, the scenery around you. Not worrying about how fast you are going, whether you'll achieve a new PB, what's happening at work tomorrow, or anything else that isn't in the present moment sensory experience.

Mindfulness Meditation typically involves sitting or lying down comfortably, and attempting to focus on the sensations of the body in a non-judgementalmanner.

The most common way to begin is by attempting to focus on the breath. Observing the sensations in the nose and or belly as you inhale and exhale. The attention can be focused anywhere however - sensations in the body, on the skin, sounds, sights, the contents of your consciousness i.e. thoughts, feeling and emotions.

What Mindfulness Meditation is NOT

Anecdotally, it appears that many people miss the point when it comes to meditation. This is not surprising as it is quite counter-intuitive, and not at all easy to do.

Perhaps the two most common errors are:

No wonder it's easy to get confused! You're not supposed to be sat down thinking about things, but you're not supposed to try to not think about things either, because it's basically impossible! So how's that supposed to work?

Thoughts Think Themselves

You sit down, make yourself comfortable, close your eyes, and begin to focus on your breath.

Next thing you know, you realise you've been thinking about that project due in at work tomorrow for the last 5 minutes, how did that happen!

"OK, back to the breath. Hmm, wonder what to have for lunch today? Did I remember to buy tomatoes. Did I have plans this evening? Hang on, I'm supposed to be meditating damn it!"

If you've tried meditation, that type of scenario probably sounds vaguely familiar.

It's hardly the kind of transcendental epiphany where the boundaries of the self spontaneously dissolve and you are unified with the universe in a psychedelic swirl of bliss, as you may have read about on the internet.

But I personally think that this more mundane experience can be very useful, particularly when put into the context of Buddhist and/or Stoic Philosophy.

Philosophy, Contemplation and Meditation

To me, mindfulness meditation is only really useful in the context of a philosophical underpinning.

Well, perhaps that's a bit harsh. It's possible, that just by meditating alone without instruction, you may at some point spontaneously arrive to the same philosophical conclusions as the Buddha. But why not make life easier by having a roadmap before you start, and therefore know what to look out for during your journeys of introspection.

For this reason, I'm about to go into a big discussion about Buddhist and Stoic philosophy - please bear with me, it will circle back to the topic of meditation!

I got interested in Buddhist philosophy long before I started meditating. Well, some elements.

Needless to say, it is a secular form of Buddhism that interests me. I don't believe in literal reincarnation, nor many other of the fantastical mystical aspects. The core teachings of the Buddha himself (or at least attributed to him), appear to make a lot of sense, both in terms of evolutionary psychology and in terms of practical application.

As of late, I've been reading more and more on the topic of Stoicism. I first stumbled across Stoicism thanks to the free pdf put out by Tim Ferris: The Tao of Seneca. Personally, I really like the writings of Epictetus. They are so clear, concise and to the point.

Stoicism has many parallels with Buddhism, which I shall get into shortly, but has less of the religious trappings and mysticism that typically come with Buddhism. There's no need to clarify, for example, that you're a secular Stoic. (Though of course there are plenty of references to "The Gods" in the writings of the ancient Stoics, one has to bear in mind they were writing thousands of years ago).

Indeed, I'd be much more inclined to refer someone to Stoic texts or quotes simply because they come with much less baggage, preconceptions and necessary qualifiers than Buddhism typically does.

I must make it clear, of course, that I would neither call myself a Stoic, nor a Buddhist. I believe there are very useful ideas in both philosophies, but it is always important to avoid dogmatism. Just because the philosophies have useful concepts, doesn't mean that every idea espoused within should be adhered to religiously.

Where Philosophical Worlds Collide

I am by no means an expert in either Buddhism nor Stoicism. Far from it! I've read a few books, nothing more. This is my very rough guide to my interpretations of the two schools of thought. I'm sure I'm doing neither justice. Apologies to any actual Buddhist/Stoic scholars who might be reading.

The following are the key areas where I view that Buddhist and Stoic philosophies overlap, and which I find to be the most useful ideas:

Major Differences

Meditation = Observing and Practising Philosophical Concepts

So if this is supposed to be an article about meditation, why have I been going on about Buddhism vs Stoicism for the past 10 minutes?

Because I believe that the real potential benefits for well-being, personal development, dealing with stress, anxiety, depression and so on, come from philosophy.

By this I mean to say that most, if not all, of the benefits attributed to meditation can be achieved through contemplation and rationalisation, as did the Stoics. No mindfulness meditation required.

That said, within the right philosophical framework, that's not to say that meditation can't or shouldn't be a useful tool within the philosopher's tool box.

Tags: mindfulness, philosophy