Eastern Mysticism And The Yogic Posture

[petrushkagoogol]

Was contemplating the significance of the yogic posture well represented in Eastern mysticism...

 

Here are my salient observations of the "mudra"....

 

1.Eyes are closed : less stimulation of the visual cortex

2.Lips are sealed : no oral output

3.Posture is compact : less surface area occupied by body

4.Spine is erect : ego is intact

5.Body is still : no motion

6.Man is seated : as opposed to shavasana type posture where man is sleeping. represents an "active passive" state.

7.Shoulders are relaxed : no tension

8.Symmetric body : harmonious state

 

Interestingly this theme is recurrent in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and other Eastern religions.

 

Any theories on why this is so well represented in Eastern religions ?

 

And why does  it have no equivalent in Western tradition ?

[A-wal]

Eastern practices have a much stronger focus on inner harmony the connection between mind and body.

It's something that people in the west have moved away from and instead focused on materialism in a misguided attempt to fill the void.

[Maine farmer]

Eastern practices have a much stronger focus on inner harmony the connection between mind and body.

 

It's something that people in the west have moved away from and instead focused on materialism in a misguided attempt to fill the void.

I don't practice any martial arts or do yoga, but I do find meditation very helpful, and have been using it for decades in dealing with pain.  Recently read this about the subject http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/04/treating-chronic-pain-with-meditation/284182/

[A-wal]

Not long ago scientists would be risking their careers if they said they believe in the benefits of meditation. That's how unscientific they really are. Now it's okay for them to admit that they practice meditation. How long until they finally start admitting other topics that at the moment would end a scientist's career they've gotten completely wrong?

[CraigD]

Not long ago scientists would be risking their careers if they said they believe in the benefits of meditation.

“Scientists” describe people in a wide range of disciplines, many of whom, such a physicists, have practically no interest in health, so we need to be specific about the disciplines of scientists to which we’re referring. This is further complicated by the blurred boundary between medical scientists and practitioner, many of the latter of which consider their discipline “the art of medicine” rather than the science of it. But I think we can have a general idea of the kinds of scientist/clinicians that are interested in health, and just call them something like “medicos”.

 

That said, your claim that belief in the benefits of meditation not long ago could be risky to a medicos career struck me as wrong. I grew up in a family of medicos (father a surgeon, mother a nurse, then nursing teacher), and have myself been working in the field of medical computing since 1984, and knew many clinicians who personally practices and professionally promoted various forms of meditation, from traditional Hindu to orthodox religious prayer to science-y forms like progressive relaxation to varieties of new age (a large part of my mom’s PhD thesis involved progressive relaxation).

 

I was born in 1960, and can’t remember a time when meditation didn’t have a sympathetic audience among many (but certainly not all) medicos, so wondered if things were different before then – in short, if there were time and society when giving credence to the health benefits of meditation was medically anathema.

 

A quick internet search using the phrase “history of meditation in the west” found Lesson 1: History of Meditation as a Clinical Intervention at a website created by psychologist David Lukoff. According to this very brief history, the attitude toward meditation I grew up with appeared in the US and other western societies about the same time I started becoming aware of such things, ca 1970, in large part due to the influence of the American MD Herbert Benson, presently of Harvard Medical School and Mass General Hospital (the M in the MUMPS computer language of which I’ve long been a programmer and proponent). Before about then, the mainstream western view as that “meditation induced a type of dissociative state or a type of catatonia” and/or was a religious practice. While I know several present medicos who consider meditation a religious practice, I think that’s because they’re fairly devout Hindus. I don’t know any medico who thinks meditation induces a psychotic state, which is what dissociative and catatonic states are considered.

 

So if by “not long ago”, you mean 50+ years ago in the West, I think there is something to your claim, A-Wal. If you mean less than that, I think you’re mistaken.

 

That's how unscientific they [scientists] really are.

You’ve coined an oxymoron there, A-Wal: “unscientific scientist”.

 

Now it's okay for them to admit that they practice meditation.

From my second-hand experience with non-medical sciences, such as theoretical physics, I’ve come to see that a scientific career is a fragile thing. A disheartening number of recent Physics PhDs wash up on into my profession, computer programming. This is mostly because there are far fewer jobs in the field than there are graduating PhDs.

 

I’ve never met or hear of a person who lost, a job in science because they admitted practicing meditation. Do you have any examples?

 

Though off-topic, I can’t resist addressing your next question, A-Wal:

How long until they finally start admitting other topics that at the moment would end a scientist's career they've gotten completely wrong?

According to physicists Lee Smolin’s 2006 book The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next, this may be happening now in the field of particle physics. The “other topics” in this case, would be any other approach to a theory of everything that is not a string theory.

 

According to Smolin, while not impossible, it’s difficult for theoretical physics PhD candidates to work on ToEs other than string theories, because their advisors don’t believe there are any viable alternatives to them.

 

I don’t have a source of information quantifying the trouble Smolin describes, or whether it’s getting better or worse, but just the conversations provoked by Smolin and others, such as Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong blog leads me to believe that many ToE physicist are seriously considering the possibility that they’ve “gotten it completely wrong.” I don’t think they’re much worried about their careers, because if you’re among many who’ve gotten it wrong, you can’t all lose your jobs.

[A-wal]

So if by “not long ago”, you mean 50+ years ago in the West, I think there is something to your claim, A-Wal. If you mean less than that, I think you’re mistaken.

I mean 5-20 years ago (not sure exactly because I'm not in the field). I've been told this by scientists. What you call medicos were no doubt the most inclined to believe in the benefits of meditation. I'm talking about scientists whose jobs have nothing to do with health, like physicists. Why would a physicist not be interested in their own health?

 

You’ve coined an oxymoron there, A-Wal: “unscientific scientist”.

Yes, that was very intentional. They call themselves scientists but are dismissive of anything that doesn't fit their narrow worldview even if it has supporting evidence yet they champion their own models that have been proven wrong countless times (lots of examples, the most blatant probably being pulsars now with the discovery of variations in pulse rates).

 

I don’t have a source of information quantifying the trouble Smolin describes, or whether it’s getting better or worse, but just the conversations provoked by Smolin and others, such as Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong blog leads me to believe that many ToE physicist are seriously considering the possibility that they’ve “gotten it completely wrong.” I don’t think they’re much worried about their careers, because if you’re among many who’ve gotten it wrong, you can’t all lose your jobs.

String theory is a very good example. How much time and money has been ploughed into this supposed ToE that should have been scrapped decades ago? I heard that something like 90% of physicists go into string theory. This is insane! What do they all actually do? String theory is an invention for physicists to get paid good money for doing nothing, it's a total con. Physicists are scam artists. They can get away with it because they have unwarranted credibility.

[Maine farmer]

Saw a news story today over breakfast on ABC news about a study that concluded that Tia Chi is more beneficial to cardiac health than aerobic exercise or strength training.

[petrushkagoogol]

Saw a news story today over breakfast on ABC news about a study that concluded that Tia Chi is more beneficial to cardiac health than aerobic exercise or strength training.

Tai Chi Chuan is a Chinese martial art that is equivalent to low impact aerobics. I think what you are talking about is high impact aerobics.

[A-wal]

Most people don't even realise that tai chi is a martial art. It's arguably a form of kung fu (the term kung fu is actually quite an ambiguous one because the martial arts tree in china isn't as simple as elsewhere) and it's very closely related to wushu. It's also where moving/sticky hands comes from, some that will be be familiar to many martial arts regardless of their style.

It's not the only Chinese internal martial that emphasis slow movements so I'm not sure exactly why it became so popular. Maybe it's simply the best suited to be used solely as a slow form of exercise. I don't know the Chinese styles very well, I practice the more external Japanese/Korean/Thai martial arts though I really enjoy the katas that use slow movements because I love the contrast will the power strikes that follow.