{"id":1027,"date":"2016-08-28T19:30:01","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T02:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/?p=1027"},"modified":"2016-08-28T17:15:45","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T00:15:45","slug":"solitude-and-loneliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/2016\/08\/28\/solitude-and-loneliness\/","title":{"rendered":"Solitude and Loneliness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend of mine is going through a hard time right now. I don&#8217;t know why, and I don&#8217;t know how I can help, partly because my friend has isolated\u00a0himself from parts of his social sphere. For better or worse, my friend has introduced a\u00a0degree\u00a0of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/tag\/solitude\/\" target=\"_blank\">solitude<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0into his life and my role, at least for now, is to be patient and support his choice.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Sitting in meditation is also a practice of solitude. It\u00a0is easy for me to see the benefits of this kind of temporary, self-imposed solitude for anyone who needs a break\u00a0from an over-connected, over-busy, over-stimulated life.<\/p>\n<p>Therapeutic solitude should not, however, be conflated with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Loneliness\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>loneliness<\/strong><\/a>, which Wikipedia describes as having &#8220;anxious feelings about a lack of <a title=\"Interpersonal relationship\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Interpersonal_relationship\" target=\"_blank\">connection<\/a> or <a title=\"Communication\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Communication\" target=\"_blank\">communication<\/a> with other beings.&#8221; Research has shown that those who describe themselves as &#8220;lonely&#8221; are more likely to suffer from depression and other health problems (<a href=\"http:\/\/nautil.us\/\/blog\/loneliness-is-a-warning-sign-to-be-social\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Loneliness is a Warning Sign to be Social,&#8221;<\/a> R. Penaluna &amp; F. Mohammad, Nautilus, 11 June 2016). Meditation practice may not be appropriate\u00a0for those experiencing severe loneliness and should only be undertaken in a supportive environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend of mine is going through a hard time right now. I don&#8217;t know why, and I don&#8217;t know how I can help, partly because my friend has isolated\u00a0himself from parts of his social sphere. For better or worse, my friend has introduced a\u00a0degree\u00a0of solitude\u00a0into his life and my role, at least for now, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[42,31],"class_list":["post-1027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-depression","tag-solitude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1027"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1032,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions\/1032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}