The New Thread About Nothing

[Renatus]

When I was younger my cousins convinced me that if an ear wig gets on your ear it will somehow burro in and get rid of your hearing permanently.

[Fruitbat]

Originally Posted by Renatus

When I was younger my cousins convinced me that if an ear wig gets on your ear it will somehow burro in and get rid of your hearing permanently.

No, that's listening to fruitbats that will damage your hearing, or is that loud music. Eh, same thing.

I once tried to convince a neighbour's kid that we kept dead bodies in the ceiling, but they never went for it, although her mother believed I was a drug dealer (which is seriously ridiculous)

[Fruitbat]

I'm going to cry now.

[Fruitbat]

It's a hat-trick!

(just wanted to do that once in my life.)

[Solumina]

Ugh I'm still exhausted from Erik staying with us, I don't think I have ever met someone who is so emotionally draining. Don't get me wrong, I do love my brother and as a whole I had a wonderful week, I'm just really, really tired and I don't have long before Jake's family comes for Christmas. Thankfully Shannon is much more easy going and I'm sure will make a much better guest.

[Fruitbat]

Originally Posted by Miss Absynthe

I've done bits and pieces of CBT, mainly things that I've picked up myself along the way.. and I find it very helpful. I enjoy the discipline involved in it. The thing that I'm concentrating on at the moment is the negative internal dialogue.. which is hard. I never realised how freaking often I say bad things about myself.

Sweetie, I heard this the other day on the radio from Professor Clifford Saron about the Sharmatha project. Quite fascinating.

Under the direction of CMB principal investigator Dr. Clifford Saron, the Shamatha project is the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the effects of meditation practice on the brain.

Meditation offers many benefits to mental and physical health. The Shamatha Project, the most comprehensive study of meditation to date, investigates the psychological and physiological processes underlying such benefits. In a randomized, controlled study, we studied how intensive meditation training affects how people think and feel. We employed cognitive and perceptual tasks, emotional provocation, questionnaires, and physiological and biochemical monitoring to assess people’s skills and behavior before during, and after long-term, intensive meditative practice.

I. The Study Design

We randomly assigned 60 healthy people with prior meditation experience to an intensive 3-month meditation retreat or a control group. The control participants later had a 3-month retreat as well. Laboratory assessments of all participants were obtained before, during, and after their retreats and at various follow-up points. In retreat, participants received instruction from B. Alan Wallace in meditative practices designed to promote relaxation, refine attention, and develop compassion and kindness toward others. Participants practiced alone about 6 hours a day over the 3-month period.

II. Overview of Current Findings

Initial results show that intensive contemplative training sharpens and su stains attention, enhances well-being, and leads to less judgmental, more empathic emotional responding to the suffering of others. Additionally, the training was linked with pro-social emotional behavior and important physiological markers of health.

Attention. How was attention improved? Participants in both retreats improved in perceptual sensitivity, assessed by their ability to discriminate minute differences between lines of different lengths. These improvements held at least 5 months after the retreat for people who continued with meditation practice. Also, those receiving training better sustained their focus in the same task as the retreat progressed.

The capacity to inhibit responses also improved with training, as indicated by participants being able to withhold their responses to a visual line stimulus when the line occasionally appeared shorter in length. This improvement predicted other benefits, assessed by questionnaires assessing positive and negative ways of relating to self and others.

Emotions and Well-Being. There were robust improvements in psychological well-being over the course of the retreat – improvements that endured at least 5 months after training. According to self-reports of daily mood, participants in both retreats experienced increases over time in well-being and an enhanced sense of awe.

Participants also engaged in laboratory tasks about emotional functioning. They viewed film scenes of violence from a recent war, depicting both the perpetrators and the victims of violent acts. Analysis of unobtrusively video-recorded facial expressions displayed while participants viewed these scenes revealed more expression of sadness, which we interpret as relevant to compassion, in the retreat group compared to the control group. We found different ways of emotional responding to suffering in the two groups, in ways that suggest less aversion and more engagement in those who went through the retreat.

Biomarkers. We assessed some health-relevant biomarkers that might change as a result of meditation training. One of these, telomerase, an enzyme that protects genetic material during cell division and enhances cellular viability, can be suppressed in response to psychological distress. Blood samples obtained at the end of the retreat revealed that telomerase activity was significantly greater in retreat participants (vs. controls) and that telomerase activity was related to meditation-induced changes in well-being.

LINKS

http://mindbrain.ucdavis.edu/people/...amatha-project


http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/...e-says/4394692


Although i will add a footnote saying that when some people come back from extensive meditation retreats, they do have issues coming back to society.

There is a great book - after the esctasy, the laundry, which looks at how to deal with the everyday, after you have found your piece of peace. One of the best books I've read.

[Miss Absynthe]

Thank you so much.. I'll look into it.

[Solumina]

I probably should have gone to bed ages ago but I've been super productive tonight. I didn't get home from the craft store until after 9 but I managed to decorate the small tree (including making a popcorn garland), make 3/4 of a hanging decoration (would have finished but I don't have enough ribbon), and I made a scarf. Oh and all of the holiday craft stuff was at least 50% off because normal crafters plan ahead and shit so being a procrastinator really paid off.

[Fruitbat]

Originally Posted by Miss Absynthe

Thank you so much.. I'll look into it.

I was quite keen on doing the mindfullness exercise where you spend 20 minutes with a tiny piece of chocolate in your mouth. I've done it over five minutes and it does help with my choco-holicness in the past. it actually tastes really fatty and overly sweet and disgusting.

I was in a game of spiderman v superman the other day with babybat when I decided that superman has supersonic farts. But then I realised that I'm probably leading babybat astray by proclaiming his farts can knock down an opponent.

[Saya]

I used a loofah Versus used while he was here and now I smell like some terrible patchouli/Old Spice hybrid.

[Versus]

Hahahahahahahaha wtf

[Haejin]

I'm done with the semester, so now I can fuck around on here again!

[Fruitbat]

I love the growling sound that possums make.

[BourbonBoy]

I should find a spa in town that doesn't over charge for a massage because of the tourists. Holy crap my body is stiff.

[Fruitbat]

Originally Posted by BourbonBoy

I should find a spa in town that doesn't over charge for a massage because of the tourists. Holy crap my body is stiff.

Are there any massage schools in town? They usually offer discounts for those willing to be guinea pigs for their students.

[HumanePain]

Having reviewed the tip of the forum iceberg I realize that the same thing that first attracted me here is still here, renewed in new members (and enjoined by some old timers), and the same interesting debates and discussions, pretty people pictures and awesome music still abound with the same vigor and vitality that it has always possessed.

I really must stop lurking and begin posting again. You all are soooome good looking, compassionate and intelligent folk.

[Murder.Of.Crows]

I missed you HP. Glad to see you back.

[MissCheyenne]

It's SO fucking hard to buy gender neutral baby clothes and other items.I have spent all day looking for stuff in my town and didn't come back with much at all.

[Solumina]

I seem to remember my cousin being really excited to find that most consignment shops actually had a really good selection of gender neutral baby clothing.

[MissCheyenne]

What exactly, is a consignment shop? I have not heard of that before. The real problem is, my sister is expecting a baby but she doesn't know the sex of it as when she had her last scan, it was too difficult for them to tell what the sex was due to the position of the baby. As such, I need to be buying neutral stuff which just seems really difficult to find as the selection I can find is really small and everything else is very obviously for a boy or a girl.

[Solumina]

A consignment shop buys and sells used clothing, usually either focused on high end clothing or clothing that is less than a year old.

[Saya]

I work at a thrift store (can't really say its a consignment store since we buy everything in bulk, but its usually nicer and newer stuff than a charity store) and I'm always pleased by how much green baby clothes we get! I also noticed before I quit Michael's that we were getting more neutral stuff in, seems to be getting a bit more popular.

You could also buy both "boy" and "girl" clothes and get uppity when people try to project gender roles on them, and say "they haven't told us what their gender is yet!"

[Fruitbat]

Originally Posted by MissCheyenne

What exactly, is a consignment shop? I have not heard of that before. The real problem is, my sister is expecting a baby but she doesn't know the sex of it as when she had her last scan, it was too difficult for them to tell what the sex was due to the position of the baby. As such, I need to be buying neutral stuff which just seems really difficult to find as the selection I can find is really small and everything else is very obviously for a boy or a girl.

Don't buy newborn clothes for your sister - buy something in a size 1 or 0. We had a lot of 0000 and 000 clothes, but bubs grows pretty quickly, and I was grateful to those who gave me the larger clothes.

Bonds onezies are great. Green, white, brown, yellow, red are good gender neutral clothing colours.



I am really hating this week - the weather is set for bushfires, and having gone through one already in my life, I'm terrified of another.

[Miss Absynthe]

Where abouts are you, Fruitbat?

I'm in Bathurst.

[Fruitbat]

Originally Posted by Miss Absynthe

Where abouts are you, Fruitbat?

I'm in Bathurst.

Generally, I live in a fruittree, but for now I'm in south-eastern Australia, eating the stone fruit, before I head north for mangos. *wink*