Gormac12 t1_j03358e wrote
Reply to comment by kittenTakeover in Eight weeks of mindfulness training improves adolescents’ attentional control, study finds by chrisdh79
Well for one, mediation can be deeply personal and there is no single 'way to achieve meditation'.
In my experience, meditation is a process of bringing your body and mind to a restful, mindful state, and then listening to the thoughts and sensations that your body and mind are feeding to you. Allowing yourself to explore and feel those sensations, before letting them go and returning to the restful state.
kittenTakeover t1_j034nk6 wrote
In science you need a way of defining your experiment so that it's repeatable. I guess I'm looking for the definition of "meditation," either from the research or other peoples opinions on what they would call meditation.
Gormac12 t1_j037dt7 wrote
Again, you're not going to have much success looking for a widely acknowledged & accepted definition for meditation, at least not one that's more than "sit still and try to be calm", due to the highly personal nature of the activity.
You might find some really long winded and elaborate definitions that fit almost all personal interpretations that might exist though.
kittenTakeover t1_j03853i wrote
It doesn't need to be widely acknowledged. I'm just looking for different definitions, either by individuals on this subreddit or by the authors of the quoted study. Without definitions for measurement and reproducibility talk of meditation doesn't belong on a science subreddit. Luckily, I suspect that some people have their own definitions, even if you're not one of those people.
Gormac12 t1_j0394tt wrote
I attempted to communicate my definition of meditation via the phrase 'in my experience'. I hope you are able to find your own definition.
kittenTakeover t1_j03ci6b wrote
>In my experience, meditation is a process of bringing your body and mind to a restful, mindful state, and then listening to the thoughts and sensations that your body and mind are feeding to you. Allowing yourself to explore and feel those sensations, before letting them go and returning to the restful state.
This is not a definition that can be clearly repeated. How do you know when the subject is "restful" enough and "mindful" enough? What differentiates the "rest" of meditation from other forms of rest? I totally respect that your definition is individual. There's nothing wrong with that. However the definition you have described to me is not really actionable for a scientific study.
Gormac12 t1_j03d5pq wrote
>not really actionable for a scientific study.
That's completely fair, my intention was more to provide a data point of my personal definition.
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