109. Meditation for the Curious Skeptic

Chris Castle, a developer advocate at Heroku, is joined in conversation with Andrew Lenards, a 20-year programming veteran and meditation coach. He believes that meditation is the practice of familiarizing one's mind with its various states.

Concentration is the ability to place attention on something for as long as desired. Clarity is about identifying the sensory experiences in your body. Equanimity is about accepting the state of the world around you. In programming terms, mindfulness becomes a sort of monitoring and observability tool for our bodies.

Andrew suggests that curious listeners focus their attention on sourcing materials from secular sources. As well,the benefits of meditation can only come after quite a bit of time. The inclination of most starting practitioners is to quit before investing to see the benefits. Even if you feel like you're doing it "wrong" or feeling your mind get distracted, the core tenant of the practice is to not judge yourself. This in turn will help bring about the calmness which meditation can offer.

Links from this episode

• "The Mind Explained"
• Niksen is a methodology focusing on "doing nothing"
• Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction
• "The Art of Noticing"
• Search Inside Yourself
• “99% Invisible” podcast
• Meditation information on Andrew's site: lenards.us and Afternoon Idle - 15 min guided meditation via a YouTube live stream
• Breathe (iOS / Android), Headspace, Calm and Ten Percent Happier are just a few apps which can help your meditation practice

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