In our Western post-Enlightenment society, most of the beneficial aspects of Christian practice were adopted into secular practice. Consider: charity for the needy, monogamous marriage, burial of the dead, a 7th day of rest.

We haven't adopted as many practices from other religions. We eventually (1800s) adopted regular washing from Islam, but adoption was slowed by its taint of foreignness, much to the chagrin of millions of people who died of disease. The stretching aspects of yoga became mainstream within the last 50 years. Meditation and yoga breathing are still exotic. Perhaps some day they won't be, and our descendants will wonder how people from our era stayed sane without daily meditation.

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Living_Foundation teaches meditation and yoga breathing worldwide, including regular classes in the Bay Area, if you want to try it yourself.

Another example: if you don't want worms or salmonella, don't eat poorly cooked white meat. No doubt the meat was considered cursed after people consistently fell ill after eating it.

When it comes to eastern practices (yoga, meditation and so forth) my bullshit barometer is calibrated much, much higher. I'm far more likely to approach their practices with an open mind. Take spirit guides as an example; while I certainly don't agree that there are spirit guides, it is a religious explanation for the subconscious - your autopilot that guides you through small decisions every day. I can't see why you wouldn't try to wield it to your advantage (obviously with the appropriate care that eastern religions have unwittingly formulated).

Even the core of Christianity can be helpful. Life is far less stressful if you are generous in the most insignificant ways. Simple acts like letting traffic enter in front of you, over time, drastically erodes the stress that you feel in those situations.

From my perspective, religious texts have at least a few pragmatic observations - even if they lack scientific explanations.

> Even the core of Christianity can be helpful. Life is far less stressful if you are generous in the most insignificant ways. Simple acts like letting traffic enter in front of you, over time, drastically erodes the stress that you feel in those situations.

I believe James May (of Top Gear fame) specifically calls this "Christian driving". It's amazing how much more relaxed you are after a drive, if you simply stop thinking of traffic as a race or a competition. You're not going to change your arrival time by any significant amount anyway, so you might as well just relax.

In traffic, the only winning move is to not play.

> thinking of traffic as a race or a competition

People behaving like traffic is a race still raises my blood pressure. At the end of the day I still need to get into the toll lane, but I can't because there's 20 cars trying to get back into traffic at 75mph and I'm far too damned courteous to butt in at 60mph. It's far more of a blessing than a curse (I'm getting far more out of my habits), but the downsides do certainly exist.

It's not at all consistent, but my behavior is sometimes viral. I'll see the vehicle behind me keeping a generous following distance, or letting someone in. Almost every time that I've tried to resolve a traffic jam in Seattle, the person behind me has caught on - they will keep their distance and keep rolling in order to compensate for the tailgating person in front of me.

> competition

My favorite competition is to improve the commute of those behind me. There's always the guy who cuts in front of me, forcing me to stop, but there's also always the guy behind me who has caught on. Getting everyone home quickly is a far more interesting, and far less pointless, than the game of trying to beat everyone else home.

I do my best to keep a decent following distance, and try to match the average speed of traffic in rush hour. Sure, some people will merge in front of me, but there's usually enough buffer space that I don't have to adjust my speed by a lot. And when traffic inevitably clumps up, I slack off the speed a little instead of having to brake. I've notice that some people are perfectly happy to stay behind me and match my speed, to avoid stop-and-go.

I also try to position myself to make my merging intentions clear. I try to find a reasonable space to match speed and merge in, instead of trying to force myself in front. If traffic is completely blocked up, I will drive closer to the car in front if it's necessary to encourage a proper zipper merge. I sometimes see people getting really pissed off at that, usually the people who seem to be glued to the rear bumper of the car in front of them.

The basic rule I adhere to is that whoever's front bumper is the furthest forward gets to merge in front. It should be so self-evident and obvious, put people just don't want to let other people "win".

> People behaving like traffic is a race still raises my blood pressure.

The same tricks from mindfulness and meditation can aid here: don't judge, have compassion, focus on breathing, acceptance (of thoughts and feelings including negative ones such as anger) and relaxation shall follow.

My favorite competition in traffic is to have the least amount of anger (or other negative emotions). If someone else is angry, don't let them influence you; stay calm and rational instead.

I also find a good way to reduce stress is making sure you don't resort to last minute stuff like having to rely on a green light, not taking into account regular traffic jams, having tight appointments or an overburdened agenda, or arriving at the train station 30 seconds before the train departs. Instead, one's schedule should take into account minor delays. If there's a massive traffic accident you might get delayed but that is both rare and reasonable. If everyone would follow this advice, we'd all have a much more pleasant traffic experience.

> Meditation and yoga breathing are still exotic. Perhaps some day they won't be, and our descendants will wonder how people from our era stayed sane without daily meditation.

Yes! Energy can be experienced very simply after perhaps just 30 minutes of practice (for some - everyone's different). An excellent, clear introduction is "Energy Work" by Robert Bruce. Read with an open mind and practice.

Just because you haven't experienced something, don't discount it.

The dangerous aspect of religion for me is blind faith. If you view religious claims as hypotheses that can be personally verified, you become a scientist.

Yoga is such a scientific system. Kriya yoga is a good place to start, although at some level all of Patanjali's 8 limbs can increase the chance of experiencing the ultimate goal - enlightenment. Today, most people think yoga = stretching. That's just the preparation.

> [A]ssuming that religious practices are bunk is a pretty damn effective heuristic.

Maybe, but if I take your statement seriously, I would surmise that it's only an effective heuristic because being excessively distrusting/cynical has less downside in cases where the practice is actually sound.

That aside, you have to work a little bit harder to discern religious practices that are rooted in activities that are observably and directly beneficial to individuals and society (meditation, compassion), and activities that are either antiquated (not eating shellfish/pork) or were created to perpetuate the religion or its leaders (tithing).

> That aside, you have to work a little bit harder to discern religious practices that are rooted in activities that are observably and directly beneficial to individuals and society (meditation, compassion)

Leaving meditation out of this, I think the religious practices you're implying were basic human moral practices adopted _by_ religion, not the other way around.

I'm not religious, but I know many many people who practice religion because it helps them in very real ways. From having a community to providing meaning to taking comfort in rituals to praying as a form of meditation, there are many religious practices that are psychologically and emotionally healthy. Religion has played such a huge role in human history not just bc some power hungry priests brainwashed people, but because it actually helps people

>assuming that religious practices are bunk is a pretty damn effective heuristic.

Only if naively only count goals as stated by the religion itself, and only first order effects.

(E.g. if one examines whether there's really a heaven people go to, as opposed to examining whether the thought of such a place existing providing great psychological and personal benefit to the believer -- among tons of other similar things, I'm not even touching upon the impact on society, ethics, etc).

Another problem is that it's difficult to measure to the standards that we would like. You can't blind, so it's difficult to separate the placebo effect. Results take time to manifest, so you have long-running studies with problems with drop-out and survivorship bias.

I'm wondering, isn't it the same as placebo effect? In that it's not a change that occurs from taking a medication. It's a change that is the result of mental state change. Both can produce a physical change, as studies have shown (no link, sorry). But one is entirely the result of mental processes, though those mental processes were not induced by a placebo pill. So it's basically the same as the placebo effect, isn't it?

What would you consider a placebo for meditation?

a "placebo" generally refers to an inactive control arm of a study of a drug. For studying something like meditation, you would use a different kind of control arm. The most common example is "treatment as usual". So half of ppl get meditation therapy for a given condition (say, depression), half get "treatment as usual" (pills and Or therapy). This has lots of problems as "treatment as usual" varies a lot from patient to patient, doctor to doctor

A better control is basically taking every aspect of mindfulness based therapy except for the mindfulness (i.e. You educate the patient about the condition, have a group therapy session with a healthcare provider, have at-home therapy assignments, etc). You standardize this "active control" and compare how patients do with this intervention compared to the mindfulness based intervention. This isolates the effect of mindfulness vs other potential confounding effects, and also should reduce physician to physician variability

In the one large study of mindfulness interventions using this active control, there was no measurable benefit to the mindfulness arm

I want to reply here as well:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3964149/

The study you mentioned shows that mindfulness is overall as effective as the (best?) known other treatment options. If you take this literally you are right, there is no "benefit" in choosing mindfulness based therapy over the other options. It is "only" on par with the other known treatment options.

It is therefore a fully valid and effective choice for treatment.

i guess an analogy that could be appropriate here is to imagine there is a study that compares two interventions for treating cancer: chemotherapy as one intervention, and chemotherapy plus playing video games for several hours as another intervention. Let's say that both interventions provide the same benefit in terms of killing the tumor, helping patients live longer. Does this suggest that playing video games for several hours is an effective treatment for cancer?

The control in that study was specifically designed to "unpack" mbct into its components, and then test mindfulness + other components vs just the other components. When they did that, both arms looked equal

I meditate regularly and don't doubt it helps me, and I think if people actually committed to studying mindfulness rigorously they'd find great things, but it's a shame that most mindfulness research isn't that robust or rigorous