Meditation can be done by anyone just about anywhere in as little as two minutes a day.
Poor misunderstood meditation. People think it takes forever and is only for monks.
Meditation can be done by anyone just about anywhere in as little as two minutes a day.
But why should anyone bother? Because it's really — really — good for you.
Wow. That's a heck of a lot of science.
But wait. There's more.
I'm kind of curious now, but what to I have to do? I don't want to sit on top of a mountain with my eyes closed.
Good news! You don't have to.
There are many types of meditation, but for the most part they fall into one of three buckets: concentration, attending, and open monitoring.
Concentration meditation is great for relaxing when you're actively under stress. This is an incredibly valuable skill to help you manage negative emotions like anger, sadness, or fear. With practice, you get really good at pushing negative emotions out of your head in the moment — even if you're feeling them very intensely.This is the classic meditation where you focus on something specific like your breath, a flame, guided imagery, or a sound.
Mindfulness meditation is great for helping you figure yourself out. Hectic lives lead to hectic minds. Taking a moment to figure out what exactly you're feeling in that moment will help you make better decision for yourself and for others. With practice, you'll be more comfortable experiencing emotions — even intensely negative ones — and be more in control of how those emotions affect your actions. Mindfulness meditation allows you to be introspective and doesn't force you to avoid being distracted by thoughts or sensations.
Attending meditation is somewhere in the middle.
You don't have to pick one and avoid the others. Mix it up and see how they make you feel!
OK, I'm convinced. But I'm still a busy person. I don't have time to meditate every day.
Obviously two minutes isn't going to bring you a direct connection with nirvana. But you can start small. I mean really small. There are lots of great meditation apps available that help you try meditating for tiny chunks of time — 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes. Some options are completely free, some are have a one-time fee, some have both free and paid features.
Men try to read the most disturbing comments women get online back to them.
If you wouldn't say it to their faces, don't type it.
This isn’t comfortable to talk about.
Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence.
A recent video by Just Not Sports took two prominent female sportswriters and had regular guys* read the awful abuse they receive online aloud.
Sportswriters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro sat by as men read some of the most vile tweets they receive on a daily basis. See how long you can last watching it.
*(Note: The men reading them did not write these comments; they're just being helpful volunteers to prove a point.)
It starts out kind of jokey but eventually devolves into messages like this:
Awful.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
These types of messages come in response to one thing: The women were doing their jobs.
Those wishes that DiCaro would die by hockey stick and get raped? Those were the result of her simply reporting on the National Hockey League's most disturbing ordeal: the Patrick Kane rape case, in which one of the league's top players was accused of rape.
DiCaro wasn't writing opinion pieces. She was simply reporting things like what the police said, statements from lawyers, and just general everyday work reporters do. In response, she received a deluge of death threats. Her male colleagues didn't receive nearly the same amount of abuse.
It got to the point where she and her employer thought it best to stay home for a day or two for her own physical safety.
The men in the video seemed absolutely shocked that real live human beings would attack someone simply for doing their jobs.
Not saying it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Most found themselves speechless or, at very least, struggling to read the words being presented.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Think this is all just anecdotal? There's evidence to the contrary.
The Guardian did a study to find out how bad this problem really is.
They did a study of over 70 million comments that have been posted on their site since 2006. They counted how many comments that violated their comment policy were blocked.
The stats were staggering.
From their comprehensive and disturbing article:
If you can’t say it to their face... don’t type it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
So what can people do about this kind of harassment once they know it exists?
There are no easy answers. But the more people who know this behavior exists, the more people there will be to tell others it's not OK to talk to anyone like that.
Watch the whole video below:
.This article originally appeared on 04.27.16