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Long term meditation "enthusiast" who has been around many meditation traditions and also done retreats from 3 days to 3 weeks. Meditation is definitely not re

Long term meditation "enthusiast" who has been around many meditation traditions and also done retreats from 3 days to 3 weeks. Meditation is definitely not relaxation. In the language of Yoga (which meditative traditions share), long meditation sessions move the focus (prana) to certains parts of the body where long sustained focus can create "imbalances" and lead to breaks and other side effects (psychosis or related). Further description risks going into woo-woo land without a shared language. Meditation carries with it the most definite risk of people experiencing a break. I would put the at-risk population in the low-to-mid single digits. I have seen folks go into long meditation retreats and experience breaks where they have an experience much like Megan in the article - they have to be admitted and most of them are never the same ever after. Very solid grounded people develop migraines, insomnia, loss of appetite, or start hallucinating. Meditation and Pranayama are both neither innocuous nor mere placebo effects. There is a very strong mechanism at work which we do not understand in a modern scientific context. However, the majority of practitioners do not do long intense retreats and will get away without any serious consequences. A good tradition will devote serious time on how to combat the effects of long meditation retreats. They will talk about it almost as much as the technique itself. The biggest antidotes are - getting good sleep, not overdoing it, physical exercise, long walks and getting enough food. The inversion - onset of insomnia or anxiety or loss of appetite - is a very bad sign and you should stop meditating immediately. Please do not do take either practice lightly or you could risk effing up something internally for which we have no cure. Feel free to DM me if you want to chat more.

akudha 6y ago
most of them are never the same ever after Can you share what happened to them? Also, you mentioned 3 week retreats. Can you share what changes (good or bad) you experienced during these long retreats?
- jessermeyer 6y ago
  I encountered this and wrote about it in other meditation thread. Here I've inlined it below. Meditation is a blade with no hilt. I _accidentally_ fell into a vipassana state of mind after the first time trying a particular religious chant, seriously, from out of the pains of boredom as a 20 year old. At the time I lived nearby mountains, and after 'coming to', I saw them through the window. I cannot describe to you the overwhelming feeling of beauty and awe that crashed over me. It was as though this was the very first time I had ever seen mountains. I think the best description I can manage comes from 'Both Sides Now' by Joni Mitchell. 'I've looked at clouds from both sides now From up and down, and still somehow It's cloud illusions I recall I really don't know clouds at all' The experience was so disorienting. As if I was seeing the mountains for what they were directly through my senses and not mediated by my knowledge of what mountains were like, linguistically. It changed my entire life -- weeks later later I lost my job and fell into a 5 year extreme depression / anxiety spell in the attempt to reconcile my adolescent religious upbringing with the continued insight from that experience. Absolutely worthwhile, in hindsight, but it cost me near everything for it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24186942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24186942
  - tucosan 6y ago
    I attended a Zen retreat in my late twenties. I had very little experience with meditation practice back then. We meditated four times for 90 minutes each day for about 10 days. It was a beautiful experience. The sangha was great. The food was simple but very tasty. When we didn't meditate, we worked in the garden and prepared food together. On the 6th or 7th day of the retreat I took a walk alone through the countryside. The meditation practice had made me very receptive to all sensual inputs. Sound, taste, smell and colour felt like someone dialed them to their maximum values. I walked along a small trail and encountered a snail making it's slow journey across my path. I stopped, and just watched her as she worked her way towards the other side. That very moment I was hit by a realisation that I still - years later - can't really put into the appropriate words. It felt like a veil suddenly lifted. The world exposed itself in all its complexity and aesthetic beauty. The integration and the interdependence of all things was suddenly visible to me without any mental filters. The abstractions were gone. The semiotics were gone. The dualism was gone. It felt like I suddenly and violently woke up from a deep slumber. There was this strong realisation that I was deeply embedded in the universe. The leaves blowing in the wind, the snail, the pebbles on the trail, the grass, the sky, the universe and myself in it were just one thing. I felt like I was suspended in the very "beingness" of it all. Back then, I had no means to integrate this existential experience into everyday life. The giant question marks it raised stuck with me over the years. Intense meditation practise can create very powerful shifts in perception of reality. In hindsight, I believe that I was way too inexperienced to wield the powerful tool that is meditation. I stopped meditation practice for a few years after this experience. I felt that I ventured too far offshore. I suddenly realised how deep and unexplored the ocean that is perception are, once we swim out of the shallow water. Back then, I decided to quickly swim back to shore and stopped my meditation practice for a few years. I've rekindled my meditation praxis with the same sangha a few years later. But I stayed vigilant to not venture too fast too far out into unexplored territories of perception.
    - jessermeyer 6y ago
      Namaste.
amznbyebyebye 6y ago
I just have to say what a well thought out response. There is so much caution given in the literature around the need for a teacher or guide who can help the student through these issues when they arise. I remember reading about it in the Munger school texts on Prana and pranic healing.
- kritiko 6y ago
  The problem, as laid out in the article and Willoughby Britton’s work, is that these teachers or guides aren’t trained in psychiatry. Telling somebody who is experiencing psychological distress to meditate through it seems like it can cause harm.
  - amznbyebyebye 6y ago
    Well I think that’s a bit of a straw man. Who’s to say that these teachers do not have training in traditions that have essentially evolved their own treatment modality for psychiatric ailments. Just because they don’t have formal training doesn’t mean the cultural traditions don’t have effective treatment for meditation-induced psychosis. Sure maybe Goenka and his school may be an isolated case where such training wasn’t provided (hence the need for an advanced master) that’s not to say there aren’t examples of masters (several of whom I’ve witnessed personally) that are able to handle the psychotic imbalance that arises from pursuit of these advanced practices.
  - avtar 6y ago
    > these teachers or guides aren’t trained in psychiatry Some are :) https://meditatewithtucker.com/about/ https://meditatewithtucker.com/about/ I'm not affiliated with Tucker, just been on retreats with him in the past. I'm sure there are other teachers out there with similar training.
prox 6y ago
The problem with the article and also with your comment is that we use one word “meditation” , while it is as diverse as any discipline. You do raise very good points otherwise! Buddhist vipassana meditation is a long way from a vast range of yogic type meditations, or Sufi meditations and so forth. This clouds the discussion. As someone who has instructed meditation, our lineage has many safe guards to make it mild for the neophyte to pick up and practice safely. First off all, not by renouncing the world, but by being part of it. Second to never overdo it. Third, no more than three pranayama breaths when you start. The yoga sutras talk about sthira and sukha, effort and ease, which should be in balance. Basically you wouldn’t send someone up mount Everest untrained. Nor is there a reason to for the layman interested in the relaxation of the mind.
- tugberkk 6y ago
  This! I read Zen tradition and their meditation is sitting, calming and contemplating on things (depending on their school). The word "meditation" is used for almost everything and in different senses.
  - pattt 6y ago
    Zen masters also rejected meditation as a means to the spiritual progress because there is no such thing in the tradition. Sitting quietly is more appropriate IMHO.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - krueger71 6y ago
    The first variant of Zen-meditation is often to count your breathing from 1 to 10 repeatedly. Sounds easy enough, but the mind starts to wander pretty quickly. If you get lost in your counting you just start over on 1 again.
    - yomly 6y ago
      Zen meditation seems to be the meditation I have experienced and practised. Both formally and informally. I am unsure this form could lead me to completely fall off the rails, but I also don't think I could sincerely practise it for more than a couple of days (with lots of rest) without just giving up from mental exhaustion. In the same way I wouldn't want to run a marathon tomorrow with no training (even though I have actually run one before). I suppose were I to subject myself to a week+ of meditation in my current state, I could conceivably "injure" myself if I were stubborn in my persistence. So maybe the warnings in this article aren't so unintuitive after all. Would love for someone knowledgeable to contrast this form to the other forms mentioned in this thread for someone who is open minded and not a complete outsider.
majjgepolja 6y ago
Any idea about how so-called self-hypnosis compares to meditation? In terms of side effects of overdoing it.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  Some of the methods try to modify the behavior or emotion without solving or removing the root cause. This practically buries them deeper and adds an emotional deflection layer preventing person him/herself or other people approaching it. This causes the emotion to ferment underneath that layer, and since it's prevented from venting itself, the person sometimes emotionally deforms more and everything becomes harder to solve. Part because person is blind to what's happening and has a very powerful defensive layer which prevents everyone (including psychiatrists) reaching from problematic emotions and trying to heal them.
  - medstrom 6y ago
    Freud's hypothesis that you need to "vent" your emotions, called catharsis theory, has been discredited since like 2002.
    - bayindirh 6y ago
      Venting may be the wrong word. Since what I tried to say is not Freud's catharsis. Let' me try to explain again: Every emotion/trauma affects you and these effects manifest somehow. These effects are self-regulated via feedbacks like "I feel X", "I'm not feeling OK", "Hey, this makes me happy" or "Why do I feel like that", etc. Ignoring an emotion's or secondary effect's presence removes the self regulation circuit hence, allows it to run amok. Since person trained him/herself to ignore these emotions or its manifestations with great effectiveness, wounds grow deeper while practitioner pretends it's OK. At the last stage, person permanently ignores the problem and pointing to it results in violent responses from the affected person. I've met with people these symptoms. All of them practiced or was practicing self-affirmation / self validation practices with minimal or no supervision. Every practice, done mindlessly is dangerous. Including Zen, Yoga and others.
  - 6y ago
colordrops 6y ago
Would you say these breaks are caused by negative low level physiological states like anxiety, without an obvious root cause to the meditator? Or do they experience something very specific that is outside of their comfort zone which is so unsettling that they are unable to process it? Or both?
- bayindirh 6y ago
  Zen practitioner and trainer here. Proper meditation is a very powerful journey inside and has the power to uncover a lot of trauma or bad experiences masked or buried by other coping mechanisms. It can be said that purification is the process of uncovering these traumas and/or problems and solving them definitively, removing all secondary effects in the process, hence making person more free. As OP said, the mechanisms are overly complex and extremely powerful. It's both not understood by modern science and very underrated by "woo woo" people. Coming to your point, these breaks are caused by being faced with these traumas unprepared or without someone to support you. If you're advanced enough, you can face them yourself and solve them. If you're not and somehow face them, a more experienced practitioner can help you to collect yourself and face them at a later time. These experiences push you to the boundaries or out of your comfort zone, for sure. In these cases, anxiety and other emotions are tip of the iceberg. If you're anxious about meditation, you wouldn't be able to focus properly. In Zen, the practitioner wouldn't search for a root cause since it's not obvious. So, you don't try to process what's happening real time. These root cause reveals itself later. Either by noticing real-life changes or enlightenment (completion of background processing). Hope that helps. If you have further questions, I'll try to answer.
  - colordrops 6y ago
    Perhaps I'm not being direct enough. In the past, through various practices and substances I experienced what felt like a complete erasure of all rules - if something could be thought, it could be made real. This spun out of control and felt extremely dangerous to me, and scared me to the point of emotional paralysis and near psychosis for months. It was not past trauma that frightened me but a complete unveiling of what seemed like infinite possibilty that my weak mind was not ready for. I hear a lot about waking up trauma and past experiences and what not and I feel I could handle these sorts of awakenings - I'm more curious about meditation opening doors to new realities that I may not be prepared for, unveiling of normally hidden layers our world, tests of death and dissolution, etc. Maybe this is the "woo" side you and the OP are talking about.
bambataa 6y ago
When you say "good tradition", what did you have in mind? I realise you probably were trying to avoid a flame war, but as a Westerner interested in meditation I find it extremely hard to tell what's good and what's not. Or which teacher is reflecting a school's standard teaching and which is doing their own, idiosyncratic thing.
cat199 6y ago
Not a buddhist, but 100% agree that this article is very lacking in depth in covering the hard fact that 'meditation' is not some singular practice - philosophical/spiritual/psychological context of the practitioner and intent will absolutely have a massive impact on how meditation 'experiences' will be internalized - is the 'insight' I had actually spiritually beneficial, or simply my own attachments/preconceived notions playing tricks on me? Christian monastics have written tomes about the dangers of spiritual delusion arising in the course of practice (prelest); Without getting into theological debate about core teachings between various religions, I'm quite sure the same is true for any serious spiritual/religious ascetic discipline; The tendency in our culture to divorce the practices from their philosophical underpinnings to make them more 'consumable' by the uninitiated as seems to have happened here is likely a big contributing factor in cases such as this one, and the article completely sidesteps the point by falling victim to the same thinking .. In a similar vein I also find it quite ironic that the article attempts to reconcile 'meditation' as one monolithic topic that is either 'good' or 'bad' within scientific literature, while at the same time ignoring that 'scientific literature' itself has many studies of differing results from differing psychological treatment modalities, many of which could be viewed as 'meditative' in some casual sense (e.g. CBT, so called 'mindfulness meditation', schema therapy, etc)
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  > Christian monastics have written tomes about the dangers of spiritual delusion arising in the course of practice (prelest); I wasn't aware of this. Could you point us to some of these writings? Curious to read more about it.
  - cat199 6y ago
    Sure - Don't have a good example of a work specifically focused on this - some excellent texts with significant portions dealing with this topic interspersed: (very dense theologically, and intended for actual practicing monks, fitting the topic, beware ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ladder_of_Divine_Ascent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ladder_of_Divine_Ascent "18–26: Avoidance of the traps of asceticism (laziness, pride, mental stagnation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophthegmata_Patrum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophthegmata_Patrum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philokalia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philokalia "On the Signs of Grace and Delusion, Written for the Confessor Longinos: Ten Texts" less familiar with western christian works, though i'm sure there are some.
justaj 6y ago
> Feel free to DM me if you want to chat more. How can people do that if HN doesn't have DMs and you don't have any information listed on your profile?
- haltingproblem 6y ago
  Fixed :)
haltingproblem 6y ago
Replying to myself to collect some observations and responses. - Someone noted downthread that meditation is dose-sensitive. This is is an incredibly useful observation. Most folks doing 30-60 mins of meditation a day are not at risk but doing an intensive weeks long retreat with 8-10hrs/day of cushion time is in a different risk bucket. - Second, there were many objections to using meditation as a singular monolithic phenomenon vs. distinguishing between the varieties of meditative experiences. I have struggled with this in the past too. For the sake of this discussion let's define meditation as a purposeful focus on an object of meditation with the goal of single pointed absorption. This definition is incomplete and inaccurate in measures. However I do think it encompasses a fair variety of meditative experiences. The object might be the breath, the flow of thoughts, mantras (prayer), visualizations or an analytical meditation. I include conscious breath work in this category - pranayama, wimhof - since you are consciously moving the breath/attention to create a heightened psychological state. Yogic/Vedic/Buddhist meditation practices - even Zazen - all ascribe to the state of one-pointed absorption, nay, union of the object and subject (shamatha/shiney). - More importantly for us all meditations - Vipassana, Mantra-based and Yogic - can create breaks as evidenced by experiences related else where in the thread. For the sake of this discussion we can transcend the varieties and just lump them as meditation. - Based on many conversations, I believe that meditation first amplifies the psychological makeup. If someone's mind has nervous tendencies or a tendency to mania then meditation will amplify it and bring it out. The analog of Crossfit and related intense regimens are useful here. Crossfit done without consideration for the body's deficiencies (e.g. lack of mobility in certain joints) - will lead to injury centered on the where the deficiencies lie. So if I have bad shoulder mobility, doing overhead cleans will probably cause a tear in my rotator cuff. Intense meditation has to be tailored to the individual and just like intense workout regimens, there has to be concurrent rehab of deficient areas. I unfortunately am not qualified to speak more about this. - Benefits of Meditation: There is a notion that meditation is beneficial and can cure things that ail us. I think this is a very mistaken idea bought about by commercialization and packaging of meditation. I break down benefits from meditative practice especially retreat into the following components but would appreciate hearing more on this: -- Greater focus. Focusing on the breath or another object greatly helps sharpen our ability to focus. This has obvious benefits in daily life rife with distractions. Greater focus also manifests as "mindfulness" or just awareness. A person who is mindful, as a result of meditation, is perceived in an interaction as present and focused. AFAIK, the world mindfulness does not occur anywhere in the Buddhist teachings and is a artefact of translation ;) -- Dopamine fasting - Removing all stimuli for a few days in retreat and simple sustenance amplifies the senses and rewinds the hedonic adaptation treadmill. Upon exiting retreat, this leads to feelings of euphoria on encountering everyday stimuli like food or a cup of tea or a flower. - Meditative absorption - Single pointed absorption in an object is a flow state and can be very pleasurable. Watching a sports event or a great movie is a flow experience where you forget the distinction between object and subject. Meditation makes this experience reachable on a daily/weekly basis to a accomplished meditator. - Finally, behavior change from meditative realizations. This is function of the framework of meditation - Vipassana, Yogic, Mantra, etc. For example, if I can realize that my states of mind are transient by experience than perhaps I will be more detached from them which might give me a superpower of acting far more rationally in the face of my own fleeting passions. In summary, meditation in an established tradition can be bring transformation, but approach it cautiously. A meditation retreat will not cure you and meditation is a journey like exercise and has to be repeated, ideally daily, to keep the benefits. The benefits might lie on the other side of a long journey. Meditation in all traditions is a means to an end - the end being realization or one-pointedness. Meditation in the modern context is stripped from its goal and made an end in itself. Meditation on its own, sans realizations, will not heal or solve any of our problems but can offer transitory benefits.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

akudha 6y ago

most of them are never the same ever after Can you share what happened to them? Also, you mentioned 3 week retreats. Can you share what changes (good or bad) you experienced during these long retreats?

jessermeyer 6y ago
I encountered this and wrote about it in other meditation thread. Here I've inlined it below. Meditation is a blade with no hilt. I _accidentally_ fell into a vipassana state of mind after the first time trying a particular religious chant, seriously, from out of the pains of boredom as a 20 year old. At the time I lived nearby mountains, and after 'coming to', I saw them through the window. I cannot describe to you the overwhelming feeling of beauty and awe that crashed over me. It was as though this was the very first time I had ever seen mountains. I think the best description I can manage comes from 'Both Sides Now' by Joni Mitchell. 'I've looked at clouds from both sides now From up and down, and still somehow It's cloud illusions I recall I really don't know clouds at all' The experience was so disorienting. As if I was seeing the mountains for what they were directly through my senses and not mediated by my knowledge of what mountains were like, linguistically. It changed my entire life -- weeks later later I lost my job and fell into a 5 year extreme depression / anxiety spell in the attempt to reconcile my adolescent religious upbringing with the continued insight from that experience. Absolutely worthwhile, in hindsight, but it cost me near everything for it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24186942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24186942
- tucosan 6y ago
  I attended a Zen retreat in my late twenties. I had very little experience with meditation practice back then. We meditated four times for 90 minutes each day for about 10 days. It was a beautiful experience. The sangha was great. The food was simple but very tasty. When we didn't meditate, we worked in the garden and prepared food together. On the 6th or 7th day of the retreat I took a walk alone through the countryside. The meditation practice had made me very receptive to all sensual inputs. Sound, taste, smell and colour felt like someone dialed them to their maximum values. I walked along a small trail and encountered a snail making it's slow journey across my path. I stopped, and just watched her as she worked her way towards the other side. That very moment I was hit by a realisation that I still - years later - can't really put into the appropriate words. It felt like a veil suddenly lifted. The world exposed itself in all its complexity and aesthetic beauty. The integration and the interdependence of all things was suddenly visible to me without any mental filters. The abstractions were gone. The semiotics were gone. The dualism was gone. It felt like I suddenly and violently woke up from a deep slumber. There was this strong realisation that I was deeply embedded in the universe. The leaves blowing in the wind, the snail, the pebbles on the trail, the grass, the sky, the universe and myself in it were just one thing. I felt like I was suspended in the very "beingness" of it all. Back then, I had no means to integrate this existential experience into everyday life. The giant question marks it raised stuck with me over the years. Intense meditation practise can create very powerful shifts in perception of reality. In hindsight, I believe that I was way too inexperienced to wield the powerful tool that is meditation. I stopped meditation practice for a few years after this experience. I felt that I ventured too far offshore. I suddenly realised how deep and unexplored the ocean that is perception are, once we swim out of the shallow water. Back then, I decided to quickly swim back to shore and stopped my meditation practice for a few years. I've rekindled my meditation praxis with the same sangha a few years later. But I stayed vigilant to not venture too fast too far out into unexplored territories of perception.
  - jessermeyer 6y ago
    Namaste.

amznbyebyebye 6y ago

I just have to say what a well thought out response. There is so much caution given in the literature around the need for a teacher or guide who can help the student through these issues when they arise. I remember reading about it in the Munger school texts on Prana and pranic healing.

kritiko 6y ago
The problem, as laid out in the article and Willoughby Britton’s work, is that these teachers or guides aren’t trained in psychiatry. Telling somebody who is experiencing psychological distress to meditate through it seems like it can cause harm.
- amznbyebyebye 6y ago
  Well I think that’s a bit of a straw man. Who’s to say that these teachers do not have training in traditions that have essentially evolved their own treatment modality for psychiatric ailments. Just because they don’t have formal training doesn’t mean the cultural traditions don’t have effective treatment for meditation-induced psychosis. Sure maybe Goenka and his school may be an isolated case where such training wasn’t provided (hence the need for an advanced master) that’s not to say there aren’t examples of masters (several of whom I’ve witnessed personally) that are able to handle the psychotic imbalance that arises from pursuit of these advanced practices.
- avtar 6y ago
  > these teachers or guides aren’t trained in psychiatry Some are :) https://meditatewithtucker.com/about/ https://meditatewithtucker.com/about/ I'm not affiliated with Tucker, just been on retreats with him in the past. I'm sure there are other teachers out there with similar training.

prox 6y ago

The problem with the article and also with your comment is that we use one word “meditation” , while it is as diverse as any discipline. You do raise very good points otherwise! Buddhist vipassana meditation is a long way from a vast range of yogic type meditations, or Sufi meditations and so forth. This clouds the discussion. As someone who has instructed meditation, our lineage has many safe guards to make it mild for the neophyte to pick up and practice safely. First off all, not by renouncing the world, but by being part of it. Second to never overdo it. Third, no more than three pranayama breaths when you start. The yoga sutras talk about sthira and sukha, effort and ease, which should be in balance. Basically you wouldn’t send someone up mount Everest untrained. Nor is there a reason to for the layman interested in the relaxation of the mind.

tugberkk 6y ago
This! I read Zen tradition and their meditation is sitting, calming and contemplating on things (depending on their school). The word "meditation" is used for almost everything and in different senses.
- pattt 6y ago
  Zen masters also rejected meditation as a means to the spiritual progress because there is no such thing in the tradition. Sitting quietly is more appropriate IMHO.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- krueger71 6y ago
  The first variant of Zen-meditation is often to count your breathing from 1 to 10 repeatedly. Sounds easy enough, but the mind starts to wander pretty quickly. If you get lost in your counting you just start over on 1 again.
  - yomly 6y ago
    Zen meditation seems to be the meditation I have experienced and practised. Both formally and informally. I am unsure this form could lead me to completely fall off the rails, but I also don't think I could sincerely practise it for more than a couple of days (with lots of rest) without just giving up from mental exhaustion. In the same way I wouldn't want to run a marathon tomorrow with no training (even though I have actually run one before). I suppose were I to subject myself to a week+ of meditation in my current state, I could conceivably "injure" myself if I were stubborn in my persistence. So maybe the warnings in this article aren't so unintuitive after all. Would love for someone knowledgeable to contrast this form to the other forms mentioned in this thread for someone who is open minded and not a complete outsider.

majjgepolja 6y ago

Any idea about how so-called self-hypnosis compares to meditation? In terms of side effects of overdoing it.

bayindirh 6y ago
Some of the methods try to modify the behavior or emotion without solving or removing the root cause. This practically buries them deeper and adds an emotional deflection layer preventing person him/herself or other people approaching it. This causes the emotion to ferment underneath that layer, and since it's prevented from venting itself, the person sometimes emotionally deforms more and everything becomes harder to solve. Part because person is blind to what's happening and has a very powerful defensive layer which prevents everyone (including psychiatrists) reaching from problematic emotions and trying to heal them.
- medstrom 6y ago
  Freud's hypothesis that you need to "vent" your emotions, called catharsis theory, has been discredited since like 2002.
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    Venting may be the wrong word. Since what I tried to say is not Freud's catharsis. Let' me try to explain again: Every emotion/trauma affects you and these effects manifest somehow. These effects are self-regulated via feedbacks like "I feel X", "I'm not feeling OK", "Hey, this makes me happy" or "Why do I feel like that", etc. Ignoring an emotion's or secondary effect's presence removes the self regulation circuit hence, allows it to run amok. Since person trained him/herself to ignore these emotions or its manifestations with great effectiveness, wounds grow deeper while practitioner pretends it's OK. At the last stage, person permanently ignores the problem and pointing to it results in violent responses from the affected person. I've met with people these symptoms. All of them practiced or was practicing self-affirmation / self validation practices with minimal or no supervision. Every practice, done mindlessly is dangerous. Including Zen, Yoga and others.
- 6y ago

colordrops 6y ago

Would you say these breaks are caused by negative low level physiological states like anxiety, without an obvious root cause to the meditator? Or do they experience something very specific that is outside of their comfort zone which is so unsettling that they are unable to process it? Or both?

bayindirh 6y ago
Zen practitioner and trainer here. Proper meditation is a very powerful journey inside and has the power to uncover a lot of trauma or bad experiences masked or buried by other coping mechanisms. It can be said that purification is the process of uncovering these traumas and/or problems and solving them definitively, removing all secondary effects in the process, hence making person more free. As OP said, the mechanisms are overly complex and extremely powerful. It's both not understood by modern science and very underrated by "woo woo" people. Coming to your point, these breaks are caused by being faced with these traumas unprepared or without someone to support you. If you're advanced enough, you can face them yourself and solve them. If you're not and somehow face them, a more experienced practitioner can help you to collect yourself and face them at a later time. These experiences push you to the boundaries or out of your comfort zone, for sure. In these cases, anxiety and other emotions are tip of the iceberg. If you're anxious about meditation, you wouldn't be able to focus properly. In Zen, the practitioner wouldn't search for a root cause since it's not obvious. So, you don't try to process what's happening real time. These root cause reveals itself later. Either by noticing real-life changes or enlightenment (completion of background processing). Hope that helps. If you have further questions, I'll try to answer.
- colordrops 6y ago
  Perhaps I'm not being direct enough. In the past, through various practices and substances I experienced what felt like a complete erasure of all rules - if something could be thought, it could be made real. This spun out of control and felt extremely dangerous to me, and scared me to the point of emotional paralysis and near psychosis for months. It was not past trauma that frightened me but a complete unveiling of what seemed like infinite possibilty that my weak mind was not ready for. I hear a lot about waking up trauma and past experiences and what not and I feel I could handle these sorts of awakenings - I'm more curious about meditation opening doors to new realities that I may not be prepared for, unveiling of normally hidden layers our world, tests of death and dissolution, etc. Maybe this is the "woo" side you and the OP are talking about.

bambataa 6y ago

When you say "good tradition", what did you have in mind? I realise you probably were trying to avoid a flame war, but as a Westerner interested in meditation I find it extremely hard to tell what's good and what's not. Or which teacher is reflecting a school's standard teaching and which is doing their own, idiosyncratic thing.

cat199 6y ago

Not a buddhist, but 100% agree that this article is very lacking in depth in covering the hard fact that 'meditation' is not some singular practice - philosophical/spiritual/psychological context of the practitioner and intent will absolutely have a massive impact on how meditation 'experiences' will be internalized - is the 'insight' I had actually spiritually beneficial, or simply my own attachments/preconceived notions playing tricks on me? Christian monastics have written tomes about the dangers of spiritual delusion arising in the course of practice (prelest); Without getting into theological debate about core teachings between various religions, I'm quite sure the same is true for any serious spiritual/religious ascetic discipline; The tendency in our culture to divorce the practices from their philosophical underpinnings to make them more 'consumable' by the uninitiated as seems to have happened here is likely a big contributing factor in cases such as this one, and the article completely sidesteps the point by falling victim to the same thinking .. In a similar vein I also find it quite ironic that the article attempts to reconcile 'meditation' as one monolithic topic that is either 'good' or 'bad' within scientific literature, while at the same time ignoring that 'scientific literature' itself has many studies of differing results from differing psychological treatment modalities, many of which could be viewed as 'meditative' in some casual sense (e.g. CBT, so called 'mindfulness meditation', schema therapy, etc)

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
> Christian monastics have written tomes about the dangers of spiritual delusion arising in the course of practice (prelest); I wasn't aware of this. Could you point us to some of these writings? Curious to read more about it.
- cat199 6y ago
  Sure - Don't have a good example of a work specifically focused on this - some excellent texts with significant portions dealing with this topic interspersed: (very dense theologically, and intended for actual practicing monks, fitting the topic, beware ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ladder_of_Divine_Ascent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ladder_of_Divine_Ascent "18–26: Avoidance of the traps of asceticism (laziness, pride, mental stagnation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophthegmata_Patrum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophthegmata_Patrum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philokalia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philokalia "On the Signs of Grace and Delusion, Written for the Confessor Longinos: Ten Texts" less familiar with western christian works, though i'm sure there are some.

justaj 6y ago

> Feel free to DM me if you want to chat more. How can people do that if HN doesn't have DMs and you don't have any information listed on your profile?

haltingproblem 6y ago
Fixed :)

haltingproblem 6y ago

Replying to myself to collect some observations and responses. - Someone noted downthread that meditation is dose-sensitive. This is is an incredibly useful observation. Most folks doing 30-60 mins of meditation a day are not at risk but doing an intensive weeks long retreat with 8-10hrs/day of cushion time is in a different risk bucket. - Second, there were many objections to using meditation as a singular monolithic phenomenon vs. distinguishing between the varieties of meditative experiences. I have struggled with this in the past too. For the sake of this discussion let's define meditation as a purposeful focus on an object of meditation with the goal of single pointed absorption. This definition is incomplete and inaccurate in measures. However I do think it encompasses a fair variety of meditative experiences. The object might be the breath, the flow of thoughts, mantras (prayer), visualizations or an analytical meditation. I include conscious breath work in this category - pranayama, wimhof - since you are consciously moving the breath/attention to create a heightened psychological state. Yogic/Vedic/Buddhist meditation practices - even Zazen - all ascribe to the state of one-pointed absorption, nay, union of the object and subject (shamatha/shiney). - More importantly for us all meditations - Vipassana, Mantra-based and Yogic - can create breaks as evidenced by experiences related else where in the thread. For the sake of this discussion we can transcend the varieties and just lump them as meditation. - Based on many conversations, I believe that meditation first amplifies the psychological makeup. If someone's mind has nervous tendencies or a tendency to mania then meditation will amplify it and bring it out. The analog of Crossfit and related intense regimens are useful here. Crossfit done without consideration for the body's deficiencies (e.g. lack of mobility in certain joints) - will lead to injury centered on the where the deficiencies lie. So if I have bad shoulder mobility, doing overhead cleans will probably cause a tear in my rotator cuff. Intense meditation has to be tailored to the individual and just like intense workout regimens, there has to be concurrent rehab of deficient areas. I unfortunately am not qualified to speak more about this. - Benefits of Meditation: There is a notion that meditation is beneficial and can cure things that ail us. I think this is a very mistaken idea bought about by commercialization and packaging of meditation. I break down benefits from meditative practice especially retreat into the following components but would appreciate hearing more on this: -- Greater focus. Focusing on the breath or another object greatly helps sharpen our ability to focus. This has obvious benefits in daily life rife with distractions. Greater focus also manifests as "mindfulness" or just awareness. A person who is mindful, as a result of meditation, is perceived in an interaction as present and focused. AFAIK, the world mindfulness does not occur anywhere in the Buddhist teachings and is a artefact of translation ;) -- Dopamine fasting - Removing all stimuli for a few days in retreat and simple sustenance amplifies the senses and rewinds the hedonic adaptation treadmill. Upon exiting retreat, this leads to feelings of euphoria on encountering everyday stimuli like food or a cup of tea or a flower. - Meditative absorption - Single pointed absorption in an object is a flow state and can be very pleasurable. Watching a sports event or a great movie is a flow experience where you forget the distinction between object and subject. Meditation makes this experience reachable on a daily/weekly basis to a accomplished meditator. - Finally, behavior change from meditative realizations. This is function of the framework of meditation - Vipassana, Yogic, Mantra, etc. For example, if I can realize that my states of mind are transient by experience than perhaps I will be more detached from them which might give me a superpower of acting far more rationally in the face of my own fleeting passions. In summary, meditation in an established tradition can be bring transformation, but approach it cautiously. A meditation retreat will not cure you and meditation is a journey like exercise and has to be repeated, ideally daily, to keep the benefits. The benefits might lie on the other side of a long journey. Meditation in all traditions is a means to an end - the end being realization or one-pointedness. Meditation in the modern context is stripped from its goal and made an end in itself. Meditation on its own, sans realizations, will not heal or solve any of our problems but can offer transitory benefits.

deleted 6y ago

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