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Comment by lbsnake7 | Hacker News Reader

I've been trying to find a no bullshit guide to meditation for a long time now but I can't. None of this energy, chakra bullshit. Just a proper guide to relaxing your body and calming your mind through breathing exercises, positive thoughts and maybe some external stimuli (like music). But almost every guide I read has to do with how the stars channel their energy through your heart to make you feel one with nature.

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Try instructions from the Theravada Buddhist tradition, or zazen. Though Buddhism itself is enormous and diverse, these traditions of meditation instruction are in themselves rational, unsuperstitious, and useful. I particularly recommend Gil Fronsdal's introductory series on http://audiodharma.org/ -- which comes from a U.S. tradition of secular mindfulness meditation inspired by Theravada and Zen.

Very good advice. For an excellent primer, I recommend Mindfulness in Plain English[1], which has been around for 20+ years and remains one the best and most recommended books. There is a little mystic stuff! but it's easily ignored.

1. http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html - links to buy, or scroll down to read first edition PDF for free.

Yeah. The mystic stuff might also turn out to be interesting or even true. People are so picky with what they read! :)

Depending on your definition of "no bullshit", this might be relevant :

http://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Achi...

This is a mindfullness meditation guide in disguise. It is clearly geared toward "down-to-earth" readers (being written by an early google engineer), and stocked with references to neuroscience and psychology studies.

That still leaves open the debate about the validity, relevance, variety and trustworthiness of the sources - which I'm unfortunately quite unequiped to tackle. I don't know if the book has had to be debunked.

And I would not blame anyone for the "Google Kool-Aid hipster zealot fad" gut reaction ;)

Note that the current evidence for chakra and "subtle energy" teachings is inconclusive, which means it has not been disproven. So it is not unscientific to work with them as a tentative hypothesis.

I do understand it can be annoying when they are presented as some kind of absolute truth though.

I can recommend the material in "Mastering Your Hidden Self" by Serge Kahili King (1) as a very good way of working with various unproven-but-reported-effective-by-some techniques without being required faith.

(1) http://www.amazon.de/Mastering-Your-Hidden-Self-Guide/dp/083...

"Mindfulness in plain english" is a good secular, non-bullshit introduction to mindfulness (vipassana) meditiation: http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_eng...

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