That is strange. I’m not versed in meditation except as tried here. But I’d think that can do stages 2 to 5 and possibly 6 at least to some lesser degree guessing from your summary. But I can’t breath consciously. I always get short winded until I let go of control (which I consciously can). Maybe it is related to my asthma.
Note that breathing consciously and being conscious of your breathing are not the same thing. I think the latter is usually what people are trying to do when they meditate.
Interesting detail. It appears that I cannot observe my breathing without altering it (and altering diverges to the mentioned short-windedness). At least not in any detail. Sampling doesn’t seem to alter it. I will experiment with this distinction.
It helped when I realized I should concentrate on how breathing feels instead of how it’s done. I usually concentrate on the rims of my nostrils and the sensations that passage of air causes in them. I think it helps that the sensations are very subtle, because it forces me to concentrate more. Concentrating on how to breath doesn’t even cross my mind once I become nostrils hanging in the void ;)
This experiment and its associated reflection on how the brain does it has led me to some (possibly obvious/well known) insight I’d like to share:
What does concentration mean brainwise? Roughly speaking letting ‘activation patterns’ of a perception (or thoughts) stabilize and suppressing non-salient aspects of the perception e.g. environmental noise.
(To do this with neuronal nets implies moderation feedback from a higher network level to a lower level)
Such a concentration allows to detect and learn finer differences in the perception structure because these finer differences can be picked up better in the absence of the filtered out ‘noise’.
(for neuronal networks this seems to correspond to e.g. selective training of kernels of deep learning nets)
Concentration/meditation on body perception then allows to become aware of its inner workings (as far as that is possible in principle given the ‘body noise’ and suppression capabilities).
If there are conscious control paths leading to feedback via the perception (and in the end even most subconscious control paths should be in principle controllable to some degree) then it should in principle be possible to learn the cooccurence patterns of control to perception (the same way that thoughs feedback on thoughts are routinely learned).
And this effectively means to consciously control (to a some degree) body functions normally working subconsciously.
This answers one question I long had: How it is possible for e.g. zen monks to achieve such feats as selectively controlling body temperature.
(for neuronal networks I’m not aware of algorithms for this kind of cooccurence learning)
That is strange. I’m not versed in meditation except as tried here. But I’d think that can do stages 2 to 5 and possibly 6 at least to some lesser degree guessing from your summary. But I can’t breath consciously. I always get short winded until I let go of control (which I consciously can). Maybe it is related to my asthma.
Note that breathing consciously and being conscious of your breathing are not the same thing. I think the latter is usually what people are trying to do when they meditate.
Interesting detail. It appears that I cannot observe my breathing without altering it (and altering diverges to the mentioned short-windedness). At least not in any detail. Sampling doesn’t seem to alter it. I will experiment with this distinction.
It helped when I realized I should concentrate on how breathing feels instead of how it’s done. I usually concentrate on the rims of my nostrils and the sensations that passage of air causes in them. I think it helps that the sensations are very subtle, because it forces me to concentrate more. Concentrating on how to breath doesn’t even cross my mind once I become nostrils hanging in the void ;)
Eureka!
This experiment and its associated reflection on how the brain does it has led me to some (possibly obvious/well known) insight I’d like to share:
What does concentration mean brainwise? Roughly speaking letting ‘activation patterns’ of a perception (or thoughts) stabilize and suppressing non-salient aspects of the perception e.g. environmental noise.
(To do this with neuronal nets implies moderation feedback from a higher network level to a lower level)
Such a concentration allows to detect and learn finer differences in the perception structure because these finer differences can be picked up better in the absence of the filtered out ‘noise’.
(for neuronal networks this seems to correspond to e.g. selective training of kernels of deep learning nets)
Concentration/meditation on body perception then allows to become aware of its inner workings (as far as that is possible in principle given the ‘body noise’ and suppression capabilities).
If there are conscious control paths leading to feedback via the perception (and in the end even most subconscious control paths should be in principle controllable to some degree) then it should in principle be possible to learn the cooccurence patterns of control to perception (the same way that thoughs feedback on thoughts are routinely learned).
And this effectively means to consciously control (to a some degree) body functions normally working subconsciously.
This answers one question I long had: How it is possible for e.g. zen monks to achieve such feats as selectively controlling body temperature.
(for neuronal networks I’m not aware of algorithms for this kind of cooccurence learning)
Does this sound plausible?
PS. Focussing on nostrils did work.