What I'm Reading Today
Nowadays you're meditating like a paddle surfing Silicon Valley executive. You may become an enlightened one, a being beyond flesh who has transcended suffering, attachment, and bacon. Or, maybe you'll just lower your blood pressure a bit. Or maybe you'll master your brainwaves like a short run Spiderman villain.
The HuffPo's latest meditation bit, Meditation 101: The Neuroscience of Why Meditation Works, is even less helpful and less science-y than their usual shovelware health articles. The article refers to both brain waves and MIND STRENGTH (not my caps), citing a psychotherapist for the basis of why meditation works, neuroscientifically. Though lacking much of a progression, or even a thesis, the article seems to suggest that daily five minute mantra meditation sessions will change your brain waves, thus leading to MIND STRENGTH (again, not my caps). Apparently, slowing brain waves means slowing thoughts (which is not what the science says). Slower thoughts means more time to assess and choose which thoughts to take. I guess the assessment thoughts are moving faster than other thoughts, otherwise the whole enterprise would grind to a halt. How else would you be able to assess and choose which thoughts to take unless your assessing/choosing thoughts are immune to the effects of slower brain waves?
This sort of silliness is not helpful in the promotion of meditation or other means of self-knowledge, healing, and coping with stress.
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