My busy friend said that he meditates for about 30 seconds, several times a day. I immediately thought of the book "QR: The Quieting Reflex" by Charles Stroebel, MD. I got a copy to give to the busy guy but decided to actually read through the book first. I had read some of it before. The main thing that caught my eye was the blurb on the cover of the 1982 book that it was about a 6 second technique.
Six seconds is just the amount of time that I read long ago to be the period German researchers had found was needed in isometric muscle building. Hold a muscle as tight as possible for 6 seconds a day, they concluded, and that muscle will get stronger. I had found on my own that practicing relaxation at odd moments, such as when waiting for a traffic light to change or for my phone call to be answered, increased the chance that deep relaxing of tense muscles would come easily and quickly to mind. Six seconds is a brief enough time that many things can be tried for that long without making a big, even a detectable, deal of it.
The book is one of those out-of-print jobs that is offered at a price over $100.00 right beside another offer of $2.99. That always makes me laugh. The selection and prices are better on Barnes and Noble used books and other markets than on Amazon, for this title.
Dr. Stroebel is a physician and the child of a Mayo Clinic physician. He is a psychiatrist and was aware of efforts such as Transcendental Meditation to organize and somewhat simplify and secularize meditational practices for psychological and physical health. The book contains a useful summary of many different movements since 1900. As with Herbert Benson's approach, he summarizes efforts to assist in lowering stress.
As you may know, some members of the Society of Friends, known as the Quakers, have arrived at a religious practice which is similar in some ways to Buddhist meditation. Through quite independent paths, all religions have arrived at the value for some of sitting quietly and still and seeing where one is in life. Variations of the practice, in non-religious form, are now found in business, education, athletics, military training and medicine. My interest is in the attention training aspect that tends to increase my awareness of what I am thinking about. I develop a better ability to notice what is occupying my mind and whether I am facing full on the aspects of my life that are wonderful or horrible.
The bottom line seems to me to be the frequent practice of scanning the body for tension while focusing the eyes on a single spot, checking where I am and what I am about. I don't feel that I need much training or equipment to do the practice, which can take Stroebel's 6 seconds, the Google engineer Chade-Meng Tan's 2 minutes, Victor Davich's 8 minutes, Herbert Benson's 10 minutes or B. Alan Wallace's 24 minutes. I just need to do it several times a week.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
Six seconds is just the amount of time that I read long ago to be the period German researchers had found was needed in isometric muscle building. Hold a muscle as tight as possible for 6 seconds a day, they concluded, and that muscle will get stronger. I had found on my own that practicing relaxation at odd moments, such as when waiting for a traffic light to change or for my phone call to be answered, increased the chance that deep relaxing of tense muscles would come easily and quickly to mind. Six seconds is a brief enough time that many things can be tried for that long without making a big, even a detectable, deal of it.
The book is one of those out-of-print jobs that is offered at a price over $100.00 right beside another offer of $2.99. That always makes me laugh. The selection and prices are better on Barnes and Noble used books and other markets than on Amazon, for this title.
Dr. Stroebel is a physician and the child of a Mayo Clinic physician. He is a psychiatrist and was aware of efforts such as Transcendental Meditation to organize and somewhat simplify and secularize meditational practices for psychological and physical health. The book contains a useful summary of many different movements since 1900. As with Herbert Benson's approach, he summarizes efforts to assist in lowering stress.
As you may know, some members of the Society of Friends, known as the Quakers, have arrived at a religious practice which is similar in some ways to Buddhist meditation. Through quite independent paths, all religions have arrived at the value for some of sitting quietly and still and seeing where one is in life. Variations of the practice, in non-religious form, are now found in business, education, athletics, military training and medicine. My interest is in the attention training aspect that tends to increase my awareness of what I am thinking about. I develop a better ability to notice what is occupying my mind and whether I am facing full on the aspects of my life that are wonderful or horrible.
The bottom line seems to me to be the frequent practice of scanning the body for tension while focusing the eyes on a single spot, checking where I am and what I am about. I don't feel that I need much training or equipment to do the practice, which can take Stroebel's 6 seconds, the Google engineer Chade-Meng Tan's 2 minutes, Victor Davich's 8 minutes, Herbert Benson's 10 minutes or B. Alan Wallace's 24 minutes. I just need to do it several times a week.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
