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My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

• WalterGR 5y ago
  Actual title: When Buddhism Goes Bad The author was practicing a specific kind of Buddhist meditation while at a 2-week meditation seminar. It sounds like he was meditating most of his waking hours? This is not about “mindfulness” as you probably think of it.
  • qwerty456127 5y ago
    One should meditate always, also also during their sleep. let alone while doing chores, walking and talking. Formal sitting meditation is just a minor part.
    • mangamadaiyan 5y ago
      Says who? (Citation needed)
      • justmedep 5y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Nhất_Hạnh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Nhất_Hạnh
        • beebmam 5y ago
          Sounds like cultish behavior to me.
    • mensetmanus1861 5y ago
      this is taking the advice literally IMHO. Most of the time you end up being in a calm and attentive state of mind where you are focusing on the present.
      • qwerty456127 5y ago
        Good for you. Most of the time I don't. Being particularly prone to daydreaming (or deep unconscious though productive hyperfocused flow state at best) and having attention problems is what got me interested with the subject in the first place.
    • nix23 5y ago
      Not sure about during sleep, but meditation is nothing else then to life and think in the present, give your brain a task and focus just on that, then the next one. If you go into the future or past do it intended.
      • qwerty456127 5y ago
        > give your brain a task and focus just on that Not really. It is important to maintain conscious. When you simply "focus on just that" you may then just wake up once the task is complete and find out you've went through it automatically like if it was a [non-lucid] dream. As about meditating while sleeping - I have not explored this part enough. Renowned Dzogchen teachers Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche have books on this subject. A Zen teacher quoted by Alan Watts also said "when you are hungry - eat, when you are tired - sleep" and explained that ordinary people don't actually follow this as they think about countless things while eating and see countless dreams while sleeping. If we go slightly farther than secular mindfulness dares to go and consider the Buddhist religious goal of after-death liberation, they say "dream yoga is not an essential part of practice, but how do you expect to stay conscious in death if you can't even stay conscious in sleeping"? As for me, I consider unmindfullness a voluntary death, throwing parts of the life time you have been given (by the G-d, or figuratively - whatever you prefer to believe, this doesn't change the matter) away. You only live and actually own/use your time when mindful. When you are not it just disappears. AFAIK even Immanuel Kant believed something like this.
        • Nursie 5y ago
          > You only live and actually own/use your time when mindful. When you are not it just disappears. This sounds both judgemental and obsessive, just so you know.
          • qwerty456127 5y ago
            Why? Now I'm here and enjoy the moment. Now I'm not and the body just lives on its own doing it's job like a robot could when I could be dead and not mindful of anything. A minute is gone. To me this seems rather simple. Perhaps my verbal abilities are not enough to explain. Once, as a schoolboy, I've heard about Buddhists who train to always stay consciousness while living, talking and whatever, I considered this amazing and have then progresses from 80% daydreaming an 19% struggling life to some way more (although still very far from 100%) present, more mine and more happy.
    • Nursie 5y ago
      And if one does, one may end up with mental health problems.
      • qwerty456127 5y ago
        If one does not, they end up with [often undiagnosed] mental health problems anyway. Everything is dangerous, you just should try your best to do it the right way under supervision of a qualified person and stop if it goes wrong.
        • Nursie 5y ago
          > Everything is dangerous This is not what is being promoted by the mindfulness/buddhism-lite industry that the article is talking about. > you just should try your best to do it the right way under supervision of a qualified person and stop if it goes wrong. This appears to contradict "One should meditate always"
          • qwerty456127 5y ago
            > This is not what is being promoted by the mindfulness/buddhism-lite industry Every industry is corrupt. But if you are lucky and smart enough you can actually get away with something good for you. Out of curiosity, I have even attended a course in extrasensory abilities once. Paradoxically, besides some useful self-regulation and some trance-based techniques they also taught observing your thoughts and feelings detachedly and taking them critically which has boosted my rationality and helped me so many times. And good for them, they were pretty serious about making sure people with mental issues are not allowed to participate. Sadly most of the industry don't care. > This appears to contradict "One should meditate always" Almost nobody can meditate intensely for long periods of time in the beginning. You just do your best to awaken from unconscious daydreaming and stay conscious as often and for as long as you comfortably can. If you try and immediately find out you actually can (although not necessarily comfortably) maintain undisturbed conscious concentration for long periods of time you should go to a doctor or a Buddhist teacher experienced in meditation techniques and things which happen to people on this way. Choosing the latter absolutely doesn't imply you have to take the religion and believe in their saints - you only really need the psychotechnical (and the philosophical maybe) guidance.
• qwerty456127 5y ago
  > The terrain of fractured, disruptive and altered states of consciousness has often been explored in Buddhist teachings through the centuries, but when these practices made their journey into Western culture, a sufficient understanding of the downsides of meditation was lost in transit. Why would one go on a serious retreat not led by a real Buddhist teacher? Is there a shortage of geshes already?
  • simiones 5y ago
    How do you tell a real Buddhist teacher from a fake one? What if you are interested in secular meditation and do not believe Buddhism or other religions are truthful?
    • eurasiantiger 5y ago
      Buddhism is not a religion per se. I’m sure there are cults around it, but as Dalai Lama put it: if science shows Buddhism to be wrong, then Buddhism must change. Good luck finding that sentiment in any actual religion. If you require more proof, make it a priority to seek understanding of ”Buddha-nature”.
      • denton-scratch 5y ago
        > make it a priority to seek understanding of ”Buddha-nature” Seriously? Buddha-nature teachings are regarded as heretical by many Buddhists. They assert that all beings have this buddha-nature innately, and that it is indestructible, because it does not arise dependent on causes and conditions. That is very much a religious view, and in direct conflict with the traditional teaching that ALL phenomena without exception arise dependent on causes and conditions.
        • qwerty456127 5y ago
          Regarding anything as heretical is a religious view. Discard it and check yourself through experiential practice and logical exercise. There are many Buddhist/Bön teachers who will never insist on you accepting any idea/dogma nor judge you for thinking different and only guide you to how to actually see it, without harming yourself. Needless to say, as a rather-rational thinker, this is the kind of gurus I prefer. Orthodox dogmatists are there for a different kind of minds. People are different and there are to be ways and teachers optimal for all kinds of them.
• JimTheMan 5y ago
  "Why my swimming practice, which involved me swimming the english channel every day, eventually led me to drown."
  • phist_mcgee 5y ago
    An unkind sentiment. Every individual is unique, and some can stomach challenges that would make others fall to their knees. It's our different strengths and weaknesses that make us.
    • JimTheMan 5y ago
      While terse, the sentiment was to highlight that maybe it isn't swimming that is the issue at hand here. It's swimming the english channel every day. A normal activity that when pushed to the limits of endurance, can overwhelm an individual. But that doesn't necessarily make swimming or meditation something to be feared or avoided.
• pantulis 5y ago
  As with many other types of exercise, practitioners are bound to have injuries. I'd even say the injuries the author suffered are equivalent to breaking a leg while running. This is the take away for me: > "I believe that these practices, with the correct framework, dosage, and education, can be a valuable tool for improving mental health. "
  • pantulis 5y ago
    While most people are safe --most of us struggle to keep a 30-min daily meditation practice- there is also a lesson to be learned: there is no such thing as a free, harmless lunch.
    • Dylan16807 5y ago
      If someone spends one or two entire days doing little more than eating, and then has a horribly unpleasant night, I don't think that disproves the free harmless lunch.
  • denton-scratch 5y ago
    > This is the take away for me Well, perhaps you haven't read the article; the OP is saying that meditation is dangerous, and that meditation teachers don't warn you of the dangers. Isn't that the opposite of your "take away"?
    • pantulis 5y ago
      It is a verbatim copy from the article, somewhat hidden in one of the last paragraphs (perhaps you didn't read the whole article? sorry could not resist!). Which was kind of surprising given the previous content, but it makes sense.
• pmoriarty 5y ago
  Also see "The Dark Knight of the Soul: For some, meditation has become more curse than cure..." https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-knight-of-the-souls/372766/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-...
• bserge 5y ago
  Ah yes, the realizations of pointlessness of life, inevitability of death and the prison-like construct of our physical bodies for our actual minds. Don't need meditation to get there. But more importantly, you're supposed to keep going and find peace with it. Not stop and run away in terror. You have yet to succeed at awakening.
  • adwn 5y ago
    > Congrats, you failed awakening. This is needlessly dismissive and condescending. It's like saying "Congrats, you failed running a marathon" to someone who suffers an injury after 20 kilometers.
    • plutonorm 5y ago
      And yet it has a grain of truth. Which tickles me.
      • saltmeister 5y ago
        you're both clowns in fact
    • bserge 5y ago
      Hmm, I didn't intend it that way, you're right.
• rolleiflex 5y ago
  Since this is a long article, here’s a summary for fellow readers — it’s mostly about the negative side effects of meditation that the author believes is under-documented or under-reported due to the ‘hype’ of meditation as the 21st century cure-all. He talks about dissociative experiences (which is well documented in medical research), it being a pseudo-religion, and lastly, his belief that the extended use of meditation is the ‘opposite’ of stoicism in the way that it can render a person not less, but more susceptible to breakage from smaller stresses, like one of a traffic jam. He also attempts to make a biological argument on how this works by invoking something he calls the limbic system feedback loop, however I have found that argument unconvincing due to lack of any actual evidence.
  • montenegrohugo 5y ago
    Appreciated!
  • raincom 5y ago
    Isn't (esp dissociative experiences) what is called "dark nights" in the Buddhist traditions?
    • automatic6131 5y ago
      Yes, this is mentioned explicitly in the article too.
    • bencollier49 5y ago
      The "Dark Night" is typically attributed to St. John of the Cross, although I'd be willing to believe that the term has been used in other traditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Night_of_the_Soul Ah, note the last paragraph in this article: 'In modern mindfulness practice, many authors have named a similar phenomenon in meditation as the dark night of the soul after the poem. It is often described as a lengthened and intense state of depression or ennui caused by errant or irresponsible meditation practices. Author John Yates compares it to a Theravadan term, dukkha ñanas, or "knowledges of suffering".'
• sgeorge96 5y ago
  Ffs just be normal.
  • CamperBob2 5y ago
    Also, if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.
  • rnd0 5y ago
    Ok, fine. First define "normal", then answer the question of "normal according to who". If it was just that simple, you wouldn't have entire industries (self help seminars, retreats, religious cults of all kinds, pop psychology, and so forth) built on looking for an alternative.
  • teekert 5y ago
    Have you ever met a normal Human being? And was it a nice experience?
• surfmike 5y ago
  I see a lot of defensive comments here, but this post made me aware of the fact that there are a lot of documented cases of adverse effects of meditation as well. TLDR: > Willoughby Britton is a clinical psychologist, neuroscientist, and associate professor at Brown University > The meat of Britton’s talks was the results of a 2017 paper she co-published with her husband, Jared Lindahl, called the Varieties of Contemplative Experience1. In it, they examined distressing and functionally impairing meditation experiences of 60 Western Buddhist meditators. They documented 59 types of adverse effects in their study, including involuntary convulsions, panic, anxiety, dissociation and perceptual hypersensitivity—a far cry from the mainstream branding of mindfulness meditation as a panacea for all our woes.
• Zababa 5y ago
  This is probably a relatively naive observation, but I've found that the way some people describe meditation and how their mind change is sometimes the same as how people describe their experience under psychadelics. These bad side effects of meditation sound a bit like a bad trip, but without being able to tell yourself that it's chemically induced and thus will stop in a few hours.
  • bingu 5y ago
    Yes. From experience I can attest that they are two doors to the same house, so to speak.
    • eurasiantiger 5y ago
      Meditation under the influence, on the other hand, is a door to the ocean.
      • jgilias 5y ago
        Do you swim in it in eternal bliss? Or do you drown in it?
        • eurasiantiger 5y ago
          Does ”you” ”swimming” or ”drowning” ”in” spatially experienced consciousness make sense?
          • the_doctah 5y ago
            >spatially experienced consciousness I understand it's supposed to be an abstract concept, but this statement still doesn't make sense
            • eurasiantiger 5y ago
              You experience your surroundings spatially through your senses every day. In the ordinary state of consciousness, this is sometimes called sense-experience. Now imagine experiencing your consciousness — cognition, feelings, memories — as the state of a boundless ocean, ”you” in this case being the ocean experiencing itself in this way.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• coldtea 5y ago
  >When Buddhism Goes Bad - How My Mindfulness Practice Led Me To Meltdown Well, meditation and buddhism are supposed to be a way of life, not a stress reliever or a passtime. You can't be living like a modern westerner in the rat race and do buddhism on the side (or merely try to half-follow some general tenets in your everyday totally non-bhudist life). Or rather you can, and thousands do, and there are fancy retreats and the like, but then you're a tourist to the whole thing, and what you do has little to do with the original spirit and what makes it work - which is all about context (even if there's a plethora of second rate, several times removed from the culture, snakeoil books in the shelves selling this exact approach). Leonard Cohen spending 5 years on the monastery got it far more right. >I relayed my experiences that afternoon to the two teachers who were overseeing the retreat of about 40 meditators. Aka, some random guys who've read some books, perhaps studied under another random guy in the same line of work, opened their own retreat (or work in one), and play the role of buddhist luminaries for lucrative western audiences.... >As an instructor in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), I spent four years teaching meditation as a full-time job. A longtime meditator, I have logged roughly 4,000 hours of practice over 10 years, including over 100 days on silent meditation retreats. I’m extremely knowledgeable of both Buddhist and secular frameworks of meditation, have read countless books on the subject, and have taken instruction from numerous renowned Western meditation teachers. In other words, they've made a mess of different practices, cultures, approaches, etc., mixing and matching, and always separating it from its context, from the culture they live in, from the environment, and from lifestyle commitments (aside from "medidation" itself).
  • Nursie 5y ago
    So to your mind this can all be neatly dismissed as "doing it wrong"? The guy in the article was a teacher himself, not someone just casually dabbling, and mentions that the people studying the negative effects are encountering trainers and teachers more often than casual meditators.
    • coldtea 5y ago
      Those are a dime a dozen. It's a scam industry, not very different from most martial arts schools or "holistic medicine", or things you can find in Sedona, AZ... You might find one rooted in the tradition/culture (and living it) practicioner in 1000, if you're lucky, but not in "mindfulness retreats" and corporate seminars.
• nabla9 5y ago
  (background: I have been doing zen meditation for 20 years. Several hours per day and participated in 50 intensive retreats or so). Absolutely. If you meditate so much that it starts to work, it's like any effective medicine or treatment. It has potential for adversarial side effects. Even mentally healthy people get into some crazy states and can experience meltdowns while meditating. I have seen several cases of people having full blown psychosis needing psychiatric care. Saying that if you get into a bad place you are not meditating right is also wrong. Buddhist tradition knows about these, but they are described in a way that often makes people think it's some kind of philosophical otherworldly metaphor. They can be pleasurable or horrifying or just weird. Japanese zen tradition calls all these just makyō (the realm of demons). Everyone who has meditated long enough has encountered them. You can read sutras to see Buddha fighting with crazy. Almost every honest autobiography from famous meditation teachers has mentions of them. Zen Master Hakuin had probably the most famous complete meltdown. He called it Zen sickness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku#Zen_sickness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku#Zen_sickness He had to stop and seek help. Many things that are worth doing and give meaning to life are not safe. -- Making things worse: Meditation attracts people with mental issues, and many treat them as a substitute to medication or therapy. Meditation is neither. It can be used as part of therapy, but it's not a substitute. Better get your therapy/medication right and then meditate moderately if that feels fine.
  • addicted 5y ago
    This is key. Meditation is not a substitute for therapy or professional mental health of any sort.
    • mapcars 5y ago
      This doesn't match my experience. Professionals can help you only to the extent they understand themselves. Do they understand nature of consciousness, mind, thought? Most likely they do not. Meditation is supposed to bring one to the state where you get control over those things and if it happens there is no question of mental issues for this person anymore.
• bluepizza 5y ago
  > In the aftermath, I floated for months in a state free of discontent. This is interesting. As a human, I always have something to be discontent about. It never stops, and it is not supposed to stop - as those are my instincts driving me. I love my mindfulness moments, and being able to look into my emotions. But I wouldn't want to stay months without discontent. Overall, several of the author's quotes point to a very extreme practice. He is mixing internal state and reality as if it was one and the same. These two factors are bound to lead to problems. But I don't see most people doing 30 min per say having these issues.
• plutonorm 5y ago
  I also experienced something similar. While meditating at work I experienced a state of profound bliss and extreme bodily sensations. What followed this was a disintegration where I dropped into an existential crisis that lasted for about a year. However during this time I faced a number of demons which I hadn’t been able to face up until that point. Now, about 5 years later I am in a good place and am ramping up my meditation practice once more. Meditation is what it says on the tin, a way to uncover real truth. It’s powerful and dangerous. It’s a path for truth seekers, who are willing to pay whatever it takes to see what is truly there. For me its a blessing. For most these experiences are ones of positive disintegration rather than negative. After the dark night of the soul has passed we find ourselves more fully integrated than before. For many that’s not something they were after and in this way I agree with the article, meditation is being miss sold.
  • maxduckworth 5y ago
    If you are open to sharing, what did you do, if anything, to make it through the year of crisis? Did you stop meditating like the author, seek outside help, continue meditating or something else?
    • plutonorm 5y ago
      I went to a therapist to work through the things that had come up. The existential crisis also led to a re-evaluation of the nature of reality - I now hold a panpsychist position. But the philosophical stuff, no therapist was going to be on my level and able to help. So that stuff I worked through on my own. I stopped meditating as a practice immediately. I toyed with it sometimes during everyday life, watching the trees go passed on the train, trying to be indifferent as strong emotions rocked me. I was mostly too preoccupied with redefining who I was to be bothered by further exploration. Also note that I was not strongly aware of the connection between the experience I had meditating and the psychological disintegration that followed. I considered it a possibility, but not a strong one. For me it was just an evolution that was in progress. A darkness that had to be faced and an existential horror that I had to make peace with. It's only after the fact that I can clearly see the connection. Perhaps it is coincidence, but I think it is more likely not.
• mlang23 5y ago
  > This terrain was fresh. I had never previously experienced a psychotic episode and have no history of mental illness besides occasional bouts of mild anxiety and depression. ... > Why did I start meditating? The short answer is that in 2009 I started a fist fight in a French Quarter bar over some jambalaya, a steamy kiss, and a stray comment I didn’t take fondly. The evening ended hours later after I broke a window with my fist, misplaced my shirt, and guzzled about 16 bottles of Miller High Life. YYMMV, but I feel the author is having problems they dont want to really accept. That is what the contradiction in the two quotes above indicates. Aside from that, I couldn't help but think about people having access to too many psychedelics. For a while, tripping can give you the most profound experiences ever. But after a while, it sort of becomes mondane, and this is when the bad trip probability suddenly skyrockets. Or, put another way, even Siddhartha didn't find awakening in the samana practices. They were only the first step (of three) to reach his goal. You can overdo everything, even the very very nice things.
  • icybox 5y ago
    Alan Watts used to say "When you've received the message, hang up the phone."
    • mlang23 5y ago
      Good point.
    • brodo 5y ago
      I think the biggest problem is that people who had an ego death experience are trying to experience it again by dosing up when it is largely a set and setting issue. Firstly, you can't have a life-changing, ecstatic experience of being connected to the universe every couple of weeks. Secondly, if you don't have some philosophical or religious framework to frame the experience, I imagine it can be really devastating.
      • mlang23 5y ago
        Consumerism paired with sensationalism. Some people take psychedelics like others consume television... To amuse themselves. Remember what Tim Leary wrote in the psychedelic experience? If you have hallucinations, you're doing something wrong. But that is getting a bit off-topic regarding the original post.
• golyi 5y ago
  I believe a lot of people are doing meditation in a similar way as they would do a workout session and it simply doesn't work. It's supposed to be your time off and enjoyable. I've seen a lot of starters that are extremely focused on doing at least 30 mins a day, and it's just incredibly hard. Start small, start with whatever you're confortable with, it could be a minute for all it's worth and increase progressively but make sure that that minute is mindful.
  • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    Definitely, to the point where in addition to getting a stipend to go to the gym from a previous employer, they offered to pay for a mindfulness / meditation assistance app. I mean they could also reduce the pressure to perform and to be on top of everything a bit. I get that enthusiasm is contagious and FOMO is a real problem in tech, but the company should have done more to slow people right the fuck down.
• diimdeep 5y ago
  4000 hours of meditation practice is a lot. I'm doing guided meditation(with Headspace) for 20 min each day and right now on 10 day streak and feeling good so far.
  • denton-scratch 5y ago
    Over 10 years? That's a bit more than an hour a day. That was the minimum that my former teacher expected of his students.
• saltmeister 5y ago
  "essential in the Buddha’s awakening" yes...experience something beyond... way above the stars and far across the sea you clown of a human being
• eurasiantiger 5y ago
  > And I didn’t have a history of any major trauma prior to the retreat Yeah, right. > in 2009 I started a fist fight in a French Quarter bar … I broke a window with my fist, misplaced my shirt, and guzzled about 16 bottles of Miller High Life … > That … represented a constant battle I had waged over the prior decade with anger and other negative emotions. I drank too much. I occasionally smashed printers that jammed. I had volatile relationships … Would put my money on unacknowledged childhood trauma.
  • littlethrowaway 5y ago
    Heh, a very similar thing happened to me actually, and while I agree about the fist-fight comment, I honestly didn't have any childhood trauma. Came from a loving, pretty privileged family, but I still went off the rails with a 10 day silent retreat! It's extremely easy to dismiss people like this, but, have a care, there are real people on the other end of your dismissive comments.
    • eurasiantiger 5y ago
      Suggest you book an appointment with a professional to talk about your childhood and family dynamics. Everyone has a different sense of normal unless we compare.
      • littlethrowaway 5y ago
        Heh, I have seen professionals, one literally said "I don't know why you're coming to see me!" ;) What I'm curious about: Are you suggesting that it is childhood trauma that will trigger a bipolar episode (rather than the 10 days of silent meditation 10 days in a row!) If "everyone" has childhood trauma, why don't we see a higher incidence of bipolar disorder in the population?
    • Zababa 5y ago
      I don't want to dismiss your personal experience, this is just a general comment. "a loving, pretty privileged family" is not uncompatible with "childhood trauma".
• ganzuul 5y ago
  We don't really have the language to discuss the subtle emotional states involved when experience turns uncomfortable. Music with movement is better at communicating it. People are going to keep poking around in their minds and finding things that disturb them. There is a lot to be said for learning to stay with the difficult things, if you can not yet afford yourself faith.
• littlethrowaway 5y ago
  Ha! I thought it might have been vipassana. My own experience of this (a 10 day silent retreat, not having done meditation before) was a full blown manic-psychotic experience (never having had any such thing before, nor in family history). If you're interested, I made some audio files [0] talking about what happened. I honestly think it's _insane_ that they (vipassana) will take regular people who haven't done meditation and allow them to do a 10 day silent retreat. I honestly think it's like taking a regular person and allowing them to go down a grade 4 or 5 river. They might make it, but they might get seriously hurt too. I actually raised this point with the local (New Zealand) health and disability ombudsman. I said that vipassana ought to have a psychologist to assess people as they left, or at least _something_ like that. Nothing changed as far as I am aware. I hope the author continues to get better. It was a long journey for me. [0]. http://livingvipassana.blogspot.com/2010/02/bipolar-chronicles.html http://livingvipassana.blogspot.com/2010/02/bipolar-chronicl...
  • mircea 5y ago
    How would you describe your psychological state before going to your first 10 day meditation retreat?
    • littlethrowaway 5y ago
      It was a long time ago now, 11 years or something. I think I was probably fairly happy, but, maybe at a little bit of a loose end. The main reason I went on it was because doing a meditation retreat was suggested at a leadership seminar I went to! I was keeping a blog and I thought it would be "interesting" to go on the course. I was right about that ;)
  • mandmandam 5y ago
    Bi-polar is specifically screened for as a contra-indication for retreats, at least Goenka ones (along with Reiki practice, interestingly). They may still allow a diagnosed individual on, but are supposed to give extra attention. What retreat did you go on, and did they ask about bi-polar experience pre-retreat?
• IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
  One item that i found intriguing is the research that negative experiences are more common than people think. One must wonder, why this is not common knowledge? Also, are there causation links, or not? My personal conclusion is that the sample is biased -- that is, some people seeking meditation are looking to self-medicate (subconsciously or not) on personal issues they wish to overcome. It would seem that perhaps a non-trivial portion of meditation practitioners are ending up with worse outcomes than they started out. One is left to wonder whether meditation practice should come with warning labels ( just like medication does for adverse effects)...
  • ljm 5y ago
    A lot of it can come from those self-help books that are, in reality, thinly veiled sales pitches intended to market the author as some sort of consultant. You'll only ever read about the happy path or the success story, with some lip-service paid to how difficult it is to actually do in practice. You'll rarely get the raw detail of it, or a fully authentic account. I'm not talking about quality literature here, but the short 250-pager you'd pick up in an airport bookshop that makes you feel good by the time you finish.
• krono 5y ago
  This "Buddhist meditation retreat" in a tiny cabin in the North Carolina mountains goes way beyond the practicing mindfulness the author describes it as. As with everything else in life: don't overdo it.
• shannifin 5y ago
  I've had some very negative anxiety-driven experiences with dissociation (depersonalization / derealization / de-something-zation), usually when traveling to somewhere I'm unfamiliar with. It usually only lasts for 5 to 15 minutes rather than hours, but it does sound a lot like what he describes. Relating this to meditation: On the rare occasion that I try meditating, it doesn't trigger anything negative, but I have found that I can induce such negative dissociative experiences on purpose (at least to some degree) by inducing a certain meditative-like thought pattern. It's hard to describe, but it has to do with time. It's like the mind is usually thinking at least a fraction of a second ahead, it's focused at least just a little into the future. If you break that, then meaningfulness seems to collapse and... it's not good, and you have to snap out of it. I wonder if meditating is triggering something like that for the author. Instead of meditating, mindfulness, thinking about your own thinking and purposefully trying to dissociate from yourself by conscious force, it may be more helpful just to find something that helps you relax. The point is to clear away stressful thoughts and thought patterns by letting the mind focus on something else rather than nothing (or itself).
  • e9 5y ago
    What you describe in your example about mind stop being focused on the future sounds like when sound and video on TV is not synchronized and you become aware that you are watching the TV
    • shannifin 5y ago
      Haha... I hate that. I studied animation for a while years ago and became hyper aware of sound / video synchronization for a bit, it was super annoying. (Not nearly as bad as derealization though)
• tommiegannert 5y ago
  > I relayed my experiences that afternoon to the two teachers who were overseeing the retreat of about 40 meditators. They were both kind, compassionate, and welcoming, suggesting various ways that I might alter my meditation practice to alleviate my symptoms > > In fact, in Britton’s study, 60% of the participants reporting distressing experiences were meditation teachers, rebutting Davidson’s argument that experienced meditators don’t end up in difficult territory. It sounds like a scary failure mode due to survivorship bias, where meditation retreats don't have experienced leaders, because those that have had adverse effects of meditation simply stop teaching it. I wonder how many other fields suffer from the same, where it's easy to deny anything could go wrong until it happens to you, and that removes you from the race. > A few months ago, I began dabbling with teaching mindfulness again, which may seem surprising. [---] I feel that I could do something for my students that wasn’t ever done for me: tell the truth. This is great, and I hope Dan succeeds in making it sustainable.
  • saalweachter 5y ago
    Finance comes to mind. You make money every year, until you don't.
• Nursie 5y ago
  Wow, there are a lot of judgemental and defensive responses here, from people who are allegedly working towards greater self knowledge and detachment... So many saying some variation of "he's not doing it right". Yet with ten years of practice, it doesn't seem like this person was just dabbling or dipping their toe in the water. Surely, even if they are "doing it wrong" that just goes to prove the point, that what's being taught and lauded so much as a panacea by some in the western world is potentially dangerous? And such dangers are downplayed or hand-waved away?
  • andrewzah 5y ago
    10 years doesn't really mean much by itself. If I incorrectly practice guitar for 10 years, I'll have experience of practicing the guitar incorrectly, and maybe RSI/health issues from not learning correct posture, etc. There is no rule that I'll actually get "good" at guitar by practicing that way. "that <what>'s being taught and lauded so much as a panacea" Lauded by whom? And <what> exactly? Buddhism? Meditation? Those are very different and learning from an experienced practitioner is important.
    • Nursie 5y ago
      > If I incorrectly practice guitar for 10 years, I'll have experience of practicing the guitar incorrectly, and maybe RSI/health issues Whether the person in the article practised incorrectly or not is not really the issue. The narrative on and praise for mindfulness in recent years has not included any warnings that there may be dangers. Quite the opposite, it is usually posited as an unambiguous positive. Your idea that this person was 'doing it wrong' is quite a hand-wavy posture to start with, especially as the author finds that such problems have been described by experienced practitioners. > Lauded by whom? The article mentions whom - the various interested parties in mindfulness, the great and the good that attend and throw conferences, those that throw workshops and run retreats. To some extent mainstream journalism and society at large, and even hacker news - mindfulness has been favourably covered here and in a variety of other places over the last several years, never have I seen a warning that you may experience mental health problems if you do it badly, or too much, or whatever. > Those are very different and learning from an experienced practitioner is important. Oh I'm sure they are, and I'm sure it is. Do you have evidence that the author was not learning from experienced practitioners? Or are you merely knee-jerking to the defence of something you personally like?
• denton-scratch 5y ago
  Lapsed Buddhist here. > The Arahat Daniel M. Ingram According to the instruction I received, there have been no arahants since a few decades after the death of the Buddha. Choose your teacher carefully. Many meditation teachers are charlatans; watch out especially for those who claim to be enlightened. > The type of meditation I had been practicing was jhana ...or "dhyana", if you go with the Sanskrit version. The OP spends a lot of his words talking about "mindfulness" and the industry associated with it. But if he was practising the dhyanas, he was NOT practising mindfulness as such. Practising the dhyanas is serious, headbanging stuff, involving deep, single-pointed concentration. The dhyanas build on mindfulness, which is really a basis for all practice; but single-pointed concentration is almost the opposite of normal mindfulness practice. The OP is correct that the "mindfulness industry" blames the faults of meditators for bad experiences. I've known people who survived bad experiences with meditation, but who were finally broken by being gaslighted by their teacher. The "mindfulness industry" minimises the risks of meditation practice. The industry generally claims to be secular, or at least, to not depend on a religious interpretation. If you folllow an openly-religious meditation teacher, you shouldn't hear that reassuring touchy-feely nonsense; instead you will be told that the path you have embarked on is dangerous, and that if you aren't prepared to stick it out to the end, then it would be better not to begin. And if you arrive at meditation as a result of psychiatric problems, step away quickly. You need to be mentally fit to undertake meditation practise.
  • mandmandam 5y ago
    > According to the instruction I received, there have been no arahants since a few decades after the death of the Buddha. I don't believe that is the standard view. I haven't heard it before at least. And it seems odd to me that anyone would claim this, seeing as no one knows every person who's lived in the last 3500 years. >The industry generally claims to be secular, or at least, to not depend on a religious interpretation. If you folllow an openly-religious meditation teacher, you shouldn't hear that reassuring touchy-feely nonsense I think you are labouring under some dogma, all due respect.
    • mping 5y ago
      In Mahayana tradition, there are many many Arhats (not only in the Mahayana but in the Hinayana too), and some Bodhisattvas, even today. Of course, they don't announce it but they were certified by Patriarchs.
• weavie 5y ago
  It should be noted that in the introduction to Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, Daniel does say: > people who do strong and intensive practice can hurt them- selves and freak out. Just as serious athletes can hurt their bodies when they take a misstep or push themselves beyond their limits, just so serious mental athletes can strain their minds, brains, and nervous systems, and strained brains can sometimes function in very strange ways. > To rewrite the operating system rapidly while it is running doesn’t always go so well in the short term or occasionally in the long term. Thus, while I will include nearly endless exhorta- tions to find the depths of power and clarity that you are capable of, I will also add numerous warnings about how to keep from frying yourself. > By “frying yourself”, I mean explicitly severe mood instability and psychotic episodes, as well as other odd biological and energetic disturbances, with some practitioners occasionally ending up in inpatient psychiatric facilities for various periods of time.
• m12k 5y ago
  A lot of people come into meditation/mindfulness with this preconceived notion that you sit down, close your eyes, focus on your breathing, and find your inner bliss. In my experience, nothing could be further from the truth. You sit down, close your eyes, focus on your breathing, and come face to face with the tornado of thoughts and emotions that is raging inside you. It's like running htop on your brain to find the runaway background processes that are consuming all your processing power. It's what you do once you get to that place that matters. In the eastern tradition, you're supposed to observe the thoughts and feelings with non-judgment, accept them for what they are without "running along with them", then let them be as you return your focus to your breathing. IMO that's good advice - up to a point. I think actually solving some of the problems weighing on your mind should absolutely be part of your toolbox. (Stressed about work? Maybe talk to your boss about setting more humane goals). And finally, for the really big things you find, that can neither be solved nor accepted easily (the skeletons and/or demons), you're going to want to supplement meditation with something else. Maybe just reflection, where you take time to actually dig into it instead of trying to let it go. Maybe therapy where you get help to unpack it. Maybe even medication to help you be less anxious when you try to unpack it. Whatever you do, don't scale up the duration of meditation if you find yourself dissociating. It's supposed to be intense, but not psychedelic. Start with short sessions (5-10 mins) and only increase the duration if you find that you're able to consistently return your focus to your breathing. If the thoughts and feelings take you for a ride that you can't get off, and you scale up the duration, then you're basically giving yourself a bad trip. Done right, it can be a kind of conscious garbage collection to help ground you and train your awareness to return to the world at hand. Done wrong, it can be gambling with your sanity, removing avoidance as a coping mechanism without anything to replace it.
  • Nursie 5y ago
    > Done wrong, it can be gambling with your sanity I think the point of the article is that it's not clear what 'wrong' is, and it's certainly not made clear that there are potential serious negative mental health consequences.
    • m12k 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
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• tralarpa 5y ago
  > As an instructor in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), I spent four years teaching meditation as a full-time job. A longtime meditator, I have logged roughly 4,000 hours of practice over 10 years, including over 100 days on silent meditation retreats. These numbers are telling everything you need to know about the the state of meditation in the Western world... His teachers were probably not much better.
  • dorchadas 5y ago
    Yep, it's totally divorced from the teachings it developed in. No wonder there's issues.
• NaN1352 5y ago
  Healing trauma is a much better approach, look into Julie Brown talks, "Nurturing Resilience" by Kathy Kain, Irene Lyons channel. Vipassana is a form of trauma healing anyway, to clear the nervous system from your past essentially, and then keep going further where the ego itself as a form of "contraction" in the entire musculature and nervous system, also lets go. The problem with those retreats is Vipassana is a completely outdated approach that was made for people living 1000+ years ago. The world, our lives drastically changed since. A buddhist on a podcast said "trauma is the human condition". Practicing gratitude, loving kindness, compassion are spiritual practices and also part of healing trauma... and should provide a much more stable ground for opening the body . Or for a purely physical approach Yoga is great, though after a while... yoga will also surface anger, etc... if it needs to be processed. I also did retreats 3 times. Yes I felt an immense love when I was there, and I was still miserable years later ... when I finally looked into therapy in general, and then trauma specifically. When you go into the body and build capacity to feel the intense emotions that may be there, some say possibly even inherited trauma from before birth, you need to balance it out with some kind of grounding. THAT grounding is somewhat provided on retreats by the safe environment, and whatevers going on energetically (very strange)... but essentially they dont teach you that or very little, so then they send you on your way and now you know how to intensely feel the body, but you have no tools to handle the intense levels of fear, anxiety, grief and so on..that may come up.
  • pmoriarty 5y ago
    "The problem with those retreats is Vipassana is a completely outdated approach that was made for people living 1000+ years ago. The world, our lives drastically changed since." The world has changed, but I'm not so sure people have.
• bloniac 5y ago
  Sounds like a psychotic episode.
• EdwardDiego 5y ago
  A former coworker of mine went to a silent meditation retreat. He's been recovering ever since.
  • mircea 5y ago
    Without more details you're just announcing your biases to HN.
    • EdwardDiego 5y ago
      He went on a silent meditative retreat, and had a psychotic break. That's it, that's the details. Your surprising defensiveness announced your biases. You monster.
• dvh1990 5y ago
  From my experience, what the writer is talking about is a transcendental experience that sounds awfully similar to what happens under psychedelics. Experiences like this are highly influenced by set, setting and expectations, and can go wrong. Meditation is an incredibly deep practice, and if you engage in it you must be aware that it is much more than a stress-relief tool. Many people meditate with the explicit purpose of reaching that state. When you keep that fact in mind, experiences like what was described in the article are desired and welcome.
  • stupidcar 5y ago
    If we're to believe the author, they meditated for 10 years and attended numerous classes, seminars and retreats. Clearly they were engaging it as more than a "stress-relief tool". The article I will take as a single data point, about one person's experiences. But comments like yours, and others in this thread, worry me far more. Collectively, they exhibit the dismissiveness, defensiveness, condescension and victim-blaming that is absolutely typical of members of religions/cults both spiritual and secular. Anyone who can describe the experiences related in this article as "desired and welcome" has lost any sense of perspective.
• draw_down 5y ago
  This is just sad to read. You wonder what is the point of all this stuff. Imagine inducing trauma in yourself for no discernible reason. Why, why?
• kovacs_x 5y ago
  my $.02 on this- just because you're not diagnosed and having "just anxiety and agression", doesn't mean youre ok and might be quite opposite- it's probably for a reasons, that your conscious mind protects you from, something you dont know and have forgotten, and no simple evaluation will find this out but when you yourself "stirr up" your unconcious mind, all this started to "leak" into conscious mind and it took you by surprise as you thought of yourself as "highly experienced". to me the cabin episode sounds like a LSD trip gone bad and no proper, experienced sitter resulting in a traumatic experience.
• briantakita 5y ago
  > Why did I start meditating? The short answer is that in 2009 I started a fist fight in a French Quarter bar over some jambalaya, a steamy kiss, and a stray comment I didn’t take fondly. The evening ended hours later after I broke a window with my fist, misplaced my shirt, and guzzled about 16 bottles of Miller High Life. My girlfriend was not happy. I wasn’t happy. Something had to change. > That speck in time represented a constant battle I had waged over the prior decade with anger and other negative emotions. I drank too much. I occasionally smashed printers that jammed. I had volatile relationships with women. My mind wandered uncontrollably. > I spent my last day in Los Angeles riding on a Segway, buying legal marijuana and staring at some turtles in an on-campus pond at UCLA > Yet, somewhere six or seven years into my practice, whatever progress I was making petered out. I was experiencing a growing sense of bodily agitation and began self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. Looking back, it was also during this time period that I had my first dissociative experiences, in which elements of my sense of self became separated in a way that impaired my ability to function. Perhaps he has some unresolved deep-seated emotional processes that have not been mastered, seeking a silver-bullet "cure", whether it be meditation, drugs, or alcohol. He would need to take responsibility over these "low-level" pains & train his psyche, body, & soul to handle this feedback mechanism in a holistic way, seeing these pains with his conscious mind, instead of disassociating his consciousness from them. Blaming meditation, drugs, alcohol are blaming the symptoms of a deeper issue. People recoil after touching a hot surface for good reason. Note that dissociation is the conscious psyche's firewall against trauma. > I was halfway to awakening. Building consciousness is a continuous journey, not a waypoint where you can be halfway toward, since there is no end. > Before her death, Vogt sent two emails to the retreat center about her challenges, at one point writing that she thought her distress was “a sign that I need to give up my life for a more pure one.” She probably needs a better framework to view her life. This is where upbringing & social conditioning come into play. > In sifting through a patchwork of spiritual, psychological and biological frameworks, I have had to mix and match and to trust less in the words of experts and more in my intuition. It’s been, like much in life, an inside job. People desire a simple silver bullet to solve all of their problems. Life is complex & the map is not the territory, so it can be disadvantageous to be too dependent & only focus on the map. > If you’re a meditation teacher or hold a powerful position in the mindfulness industry, perhaps take a moment to question what sort of legacy you want to leave. Transparency, honesty and humility are often the core values of religion, but are typically abandoned the moment a sacred idea is critiqued. > Is it the fate of the Western mindfulness movement to follow this trend? Is there some wiggle room around the idea that more awareness is always better? Is there potential for a pause in our desperate attempt to prove that we’ve found a magic bullet for all our ills? He acknowledges the "magic bullet" singular tool to solve all problems mindset as being problematic. > My faith did not crumble gradually — but collapsed like a Jenga game, leaving me to pick through the ruins and to wonder, with tremulous apprehension, if anything was salvageable. This sounds like the Shamanic Journey, where the soul is cut to pieces to be reassembled. Kindof like refactoring code.
• ljm 5y ago
  I can relate to this a lot, also with my own experiences of Somatic Experiencing and forms of therapeutic breathwork. I did a few retreats myself, with the knowledge going in that it would be fucking brutal and that I could bring a lot of shit to the surface that I'd repressed for years. I had a therapist before, during, and after, as the primary focus was healing integrated with tantric practises. Even then it was 6 years of deep introspection, an enormous amount of suffering, and eventually a complete mental break that led to a few suicide attempts, self-harming and a year or so on medication. I didn't blame the retreats for that, or the meditation, and I still don't. I just didn't have the capacity to deal with it all and I never had a good coping mechanism in the first place, yet I was still facing this incredible amount of torment head on. Truly staring into my own abyss. I would not recommend this, or any kind of deep meditation, to anyone. Not unless they have a support network in place and only if they understand that it is a difficult journey that can and will see things getting worse for you before they get better. These days I'm off the medication, and I'm a different, more resilient, more self-aware person. Enough to know that what's done is done, the past is exactly that, and there's a lot more for me in the present moment. I am still very fond of what I learned through Tantra in that sense, and I'm glad I found my way through enough of that past trauma to start being able to live with it.
• blunte 5y ago
  Is it surprising that extended, intensive mental practice (in this case, mindfulness style meditation) can reshape how our brains work? As babies, we form our sense of being - from what touch "feels" like to what food tastes like - from our experiences. And we tend to go through life adding and slightly modifying those fundamental neural pathways we've built. But if you then do a 180 and start practicing and reinforcing very different pathways, where will you end up? In the article, where he ended up seems bad indeed, but that is relative to where he started (and where most of us live). Probably many of us here have at one time or other spent way too much time and focus on one obsession. Take chess, for example. If you spend hours a day focused on chess, it will absolutely reshape the way you think, and that will bleed over to non-chess moments. You may find yourself sitting at a restaurant, mentally playing out the possibilities and scenarios of an impending conversation with the server where you will attempt to avoid having to buy dessert (because you don't want it, or whatever your reason). Or you may find that in the middle of a meeting, you suddenly only exist on a chessboard, stuck in a game problem you have been trying to find a good answer to. But with this mindfulness meditation, especially since it also explicitly closes off external reality, you will be building some very strange new paths in your mind. Stay there too long, and perhaps you get lost. The old wisdom is probably worth heeding here: all things in moderation.
• CretinDesAlpes 5y ago
  This is an interesting discussion as I wasn't aware that meditation could go wrong if done improperly (never really thought about it). I have only started mindfulness recently, here in the UK via an NHS approved course (though not free...) called BeMindful. I haven't finished the course but so far I like it, and I am wondering what would you suggest for the best next steps? So far the list I have to explore is: * Thich Nhat Hanh and https://plumvillage.org https://plumvillage.org * Joseph Goldstein * Sharon Salzberg * Apps (though I am a bit reluctant): Ten Percent Happier, Headspace
  • damontal 5y ago
    Try Gil Fronsdal. He’s a good gentle meditation teacher. There’s a podcast of his talks and guided meditations or you can find them here https://www.audiodharma.org/teacher/1/ https://www.audiodharma.org/teacher/1/
• SMAAART 5y ago
  The journey to the center of self in anything but easy; the ones who do it seriously, will eventually face their own demons; and it's not easy to look deep into the mirror. The mirror, just like the abyss, will start looking back at you, and it's ugly AF.
• nprateem 5y ago
  Kundalini syndrome. Not great. Widely written about but you need to know where to look. Gopi Krishna is probably the most widely known case, but you only have to peruse Reddit's Kundalini subs for more. That's my issue with all this mindfulness stuff. A load of Westerners ripped the guts out of practices to shed the "dogma". But that "religion" they chucked out was the result of generations of people interpreting these strange experiences and is supposed to provide some kind of map of the terrain. Only since not everyone experiences spontaneous Kundalini events most of them don't understand the symbology. I'm told a guide is invaluable, if you're fortunate enough to track down someone legit.
  • physicsgraph 5y ago
    Whenever I read about a novice practitioner having a Kundalini experience, I wonder how experienced the retreat host(s) are. Or if the person had a mentor with sufficient experience. While there are many spiritual interpretations, there is also practical advice online for recovering. Walking outside (experiencing nature) is commonly suggested. Accidentally stumbling into this disorienting experience could be (and in the case of this author, was) traumatic.
    • nprateem 5y ago
      Kundalini goes up. Apparently to integrate the experience you need to bring it back down. This is the Descent of the Dove I think in Christianity (or the decent of grace). Whereas the kundalini is supposed to be hot sometimes described as liquid fire ("baptism of fire" - see where that comes from?), the descending current is meant to be cooling. The Taoists are most vocal about the decent, incorporating it into the Microcosmic Orbit practice. Some yogis do also mention it but for them it's related to a return to the heart rather than the lower dan tien. Anyway this is mostly theory for me at this point. I've seen enough to convince myself it's a real phenomenon but didn't see it through. I think I might not be too far off now though, but we'll see... As to your point about novices I have read that different people react in different ways. Some just seem primed for rapid progress while some have to work for decades.
• rofws 5y ago
  Is it possible that the author suffering from undiagnosed depression? I've been a regular meditator for a few years and one thing I've found is that the the initial stages, meditation enhances whatever you're feeling subconsciously. That is why some people have intense emotional experiences at the beginning. Secondly, mindfulness is not a 10 minute scheduled practice. It has to be followed throughout the day. However, you need to gradually ease into it, starting with 10 mins. It's like pouring milk into a glass. If you start gently, there won't be a splash. But if you turn your milk container upside down over the glass, there will be a big splash and possibly spilling.
• barrenko 5y ago
  The real point of meditation is immolation of the person doing it. Done correctly, no Buddhism or religion can help you. Vehicle is discarded after destination. Caveat empor, act accordingly.
• SyzygistSix 5y ago
  I am nowhere near the experienced meditator or Buddhist student that the author is but this part stuck out: " I described how on numerous occasions all my thoughts disintegrated and I bathed for extended periods of time in states of deep, non-conceptual bliss. I thought awakening was right around the corner " Isn't this particularly warned against in meditation? To me this is more akin to trance and in Buddhism, more akin to escapism and self-delusion. From a magical perspective, it seems obvious this guy was playing with fire. Just like the quote about how one can travel extensively and still leave all their preconceptions intact, people can meditate a lot and still leave their attachments intact. My impression was not that meditation leads to bliss; that's some New Age pap. It leads to awareness, and that includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. It sounds like the author may have delved into meditation enough to access the control panel, but that is a dangerous place to be. It's why there are so many safeguards built around it in the first place. I am just surprised that this was unexpected.
  • disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    So, the trouble is that meditation as a practice, was always embedded into a larger sense of spirit/community/whatever. The popularity of MBSR broke that largely, and now lots of people start meditating with the notion that it's just mental exercise (which it is, sortof) and are very unprepared for some of the negative side-effects (which are normally parts of the mind that your consciousness doesn't want to accept).
    • SyzygistSix 5y ago
      People like Aleister Crowley, Austin Spare, and modern psychonauts interested in chaos magic have worked/played in these spaces outside of established traditions and communities. And there have always been people like this. But they also fully expect some weirdness to occur. Meditation within a community and tradition is certainly a safer, and often more fruitful way to go about it, just like traveling anywhere with a group, a guide, on established paths, and with a good map. It's a good way to learn the ropes but some folks like to take more adventurous approaches.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• raincom 5y ago
  A similar story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19222467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19222467
• JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  A mind is a terrible thing to waste - or to tinker with haphazardly. I'm reminded of when Palm came out with "Graffiti", their stylus-stroke way of entering western characters into the thing. Folks were hospitalized with aphasia, where they couldn't figure out how to write normally any more. They'd jumped the well-work grooves they'd been in since primary school and couldn't find their way back. As adults we are a wired mess of stimulus-response formed by uncoordinated childhood and young-adult experiences. To start pulling those wires and plugging them in elsewhere, risks losing something. Maybe something you value.
  • julesnp 5y ago
    Folks were hospitalized with aphasia, where they couldn't figure out how to write normally any more. That's quite an extreme reaction. Do you have any links about this? I'm unable to find anything through Google.
• xiii1408 5y ago
  There was an excellent article in Harpers about this a few months ago: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/04/lost-in-thought-psychological-risks-of-meditation/ https://harpers.org/archive/2021/04/lost-in-thought-psycholo... I had no idea, but schizophrenic breaks and other psychological symptoms are not uncommon at meditation retreats, and staff are often untrained on how to deal with it. Sorry this happened to you OP, and I hope you're able to get effective help.
  • sbierwagen 5y ago
    Important sections: >As early as 1976, Arnold Lazarus, one of the forefathers of cognitive behavioral therapy, raised concerns about transcendental meditation, the mantra-based practice then in vogue. “When used indiscriminately,” he warned, “the procedure can precipitate serious psychiatric problems such as depression, agitation, and even schizophrenic decompensation.” Lazarus had by then treated a number of “agitated, restive” patients whose symptoms seemed to worsen after meditating. He came to believe that the practice, while beneficial for many, was likely harmful to some. >One case study, from 2007, documented a twenty-four-year-old male patient who had slipped into “a short-lasting acute psychotic state” during “an unguided and intense” meditation session. He was referred to clinicians following the onset of “an acute sensation of being mentally split.” He saw vivid colors, hallucinated, and was overcome with severe anxiety. At the height of the episode, he was tormented by “delusional convictions that he had caused the end of the world” and talked of suicide. The man had experienced one previous hypomanic episode and had a history of untreated depression. The authors posited that “meditation can act as a stressor in vulnerable patients.” >Even as academic interest in meditation has mounted, with hundreds of new papers published every year, the question of adverse effects has received little attention. Most studies don’t monitor for negative reactions, relying instead on participants to report them spontaneously. But the research that does exist is not reassuring. More than fifty published studies have documented meditation-induced mental health problems, including mania, dissociation, and psychosis. In 2012, leading meditation researchers in the United Kingdom published a set of guidelines for meditation instructors, noting “risks for participants,” including depression, traumatic flashbacks, and increased suicidal ideation. Four years later, the U.S. National Institutes of Health cautioned that “meditation could cause or worsen symptoms in people with certain psychiatric problems.” Jeffrey Lieberman, the former head of the American Psychiatric Association, told me he’d seen this in his own practice. “The clinical phenomenon is real,” he said. “There’s no question about it.” >[...] >Britton and her team began visiting retreats, talking to the people who ran them, and asking about the difficulties they’d seen. “Every meditation center we went to had at least a dozen horror stories,” she said. Psychotic breaks and cognitive impairments were common; they were often temporary but sometimes lasted years. “Practicing letting go of concepts,” one meditator told Britton, “was sabotaging my mind’s ability to lay down new memories and reinforce old memories of simple things, like what words mean, what colors mean.” Meditators also reported diminished emotions, both negative and positive. “I had two young children,” another meditator said. “I couldn’t feel anything about them. I went through all the routines, you know: the bedtime routine, getting them ready and kissing them and all of that stuff, but there was no emotional connection. It was like I was dead.” === There seems to be something of a catch 22 here. Normal people generally don't meditate. Some people meditate shallowly, and experience light effects. But if you're the kind of person who is interested in meditating for 10 hours a day, either to run away from something or go on some mental journey, then you lose your mind and either become a basket case or a yogi.
• theqabalist 5y ago
  Forgive me if anyone has said as much, but something that directly stands out to me about all of the comments heretofore mentioned is that they are treating a state of consciousness in a formalist way, as if the mind exists independent of the body. The brain's activities and the things the mind experiences are very much situated in the realm of bodily states. One state that is very common amongst people who follow certain paths is malnutrition. I am not necessarily going to try to start a flame war over which diet or whatever could cause which set of nutrient deficiencies, but I think its a salient point that he has self professed clinical symptoms (like convulsing muscles) and never sought medical help, only seeking more help from the same overly formal realm of rules. Additionally, the author mentions following all these buddhist frameworks, but in Theravada at least, part of the eight fold path is not drinking or doing drugs, yet he says he would drink and do drugs when he didn't get the jolt he wanted from the practice. Alcohol and drugs, while not necessarily inherently bad, are great at depleting the body of essential things like vitamins, minerals, and neurotransmitters needed for proper brain functioning. The only real treatment he gives to this is saying, "no preexisting conditions." Of course, I hope I don't have to explain that just because you haven't been diagnosed with a deficiency of some kind, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I also find his later comment that another practitioner had "no preexisting conditions except anxiety," to be particularly problematic. Anxiety is a preexisting condition, which lends some probability that his evaluation of preexisting conditions could be overly lax, and his consistent search for confirmation bias that Buddhism would solve his medical/biological problems could cause him to downplay actual preexisting conditions. Anyway, I agree with many of the other people that dark nights, etc are well known phenomena, so I don't want to downplay any of that. I just wanted to add to the conversation that nutrition is very important, and if you fuck that up, you can get really fucked up psychologically due to dysfunctional parts.
  • scotty79 5y ago
    I had pretty much the same symptoms as this guy with zero meditation, just caffeine overdose. When I stopped drinking coffee and tea all symptoms, including dread and feeling that something is very wrong, muscle twitching and other odd feelings went away. And I didn't even drink that much by coffee drinkers standards.
• ghostbrainalpha 5y ago
  How did we give the hacker news "hug of death" to substack.com ? This is basic text on page, pretty lightweight right?
• 5tefan 5y ago
  I have a soft spot for Buddhism teachings. Don't know ehy. But I don't have the habit of meditating. It comes easy to me to let go of things. I do okay to let go of emotions but some emotions stick and it takes an effort to kind of pull you away to not sink with them. You can't ignore that. You have to make that effort.
• Buttons840 5y ago
  There's a wide range of experience being lumped under the terms "meditation" and "mindfulness" here. Alice finds a 5 minute walk after lunch improves her mood and suggests it to Bob. Bob mentions his brother was injured while walking a marathon. The ensuing conversation ends up not being very productive. For some, "mindfulness" means sitting for 5 minutes and observing the moment without goals, judgement, or expectation. For the author, "mindfulness" means week long retreats. As someone who sometimes suggests meditation, I am not saying the author is doing it wrong so much as I am saying that what he is doing is different than what I am suggesting. That said, the author's warning is important. Be careful doing the mindfulness equivalent of a marathon, but if your interested a 5 minute walk probably won't hurt.
  • kixiQu 5y ago
    > In a 2019 Vice article, Davidson suggested that those who have meditation-related difficulties simply aren’t meditating correctly. > “I think that many of the people who are having difficulty and who are reporting that their problems are exacerbated by meditation are not meditating correctly, to put it simply and coarsely," he said, "Some might even say that they're not meditating. That they think they're meditating, but they're not really meditating.2” > His notion, contradicted by historical and contemporary accounts, is a fusion of victim-blaming and fundamental attribution error. Unable to entertain the possibility of deficiencies in the mechanism, he blames the meditator.
    • microtherion 5y ago
      The iPhone 4 School of Buddhism: "You're Meditating It Wrong"
• nerror 5y ago
  Interesting post, but part of the post feels fairly disingenuous. "One might wonder if these wounded meditators had preexisting conditions that triggered these experiences. Most of us don’t, a finding similar to Britton and Lindahl’s study, which reported that 57% of practitioners suffering adverse effects didn’t have a trauma history and 42% had no psychiatric issues at all prior to meditation practice." The framing is disingenuous. If you flip it, nearly half of people who have negative responses to meditation had trauma histories, and nearly 60% had previous mental health conditions.
• sjayasinghe 5y ago
  I interpret the author’s difficulties and frustration as a byproduct of a particular misapprehension of Buddhist teachings in modern society. Many modern-day practitioners, both in the east and the west, are under the impression that simply by mechanically practicing mindfulness meditation they will eventually reach a state of enlightenment. Unfortunately, this is a misunderstanding that the Buddha himself addressed in the teachings. The Noble Eightfold Path is at the heart of Buddhist practice, and it’s structured such that “right view” comes in first place, while “right mindfulness” and “right concentration” come at the very end. According to these teachings, it’s impossible to attain the right kind of mindfulness conducive to the cessation of stress without first satisfying the precondition of right view. Without right view, the practitioner is essentially flying blind. The modern mindfulness movement in its zeal to secularize these practices is incapable of accepting the proposition that the right teaching has to be first grasped before embarking on the practice, as this contradicts the purely empiricist approach of mechanically practicing mindfulness with the expectation that this leads to enlightenment. The author’s comments such as “I thought awakening was right around the corner and now feel broken and betrayed” are indicative of such an expectation being broken. The Buddha explains the danger of misconceiving the teachings using the snake simile, in which the Buddha compares the teachings to a snake that has to be first grabbed by the head and then tail. Trying to grab the snake by the tail first will only result in being bitten. This simile can be applied quite literally to the structure of The Noble Eightfold Path, where right view can be interpreted as the head of the snake, and right mindfulness/concentration as the tail.
  • wizzwizz4 5y ago
    > as this contradicts the purely empiricist approach of mechanically practicing mindfulness with the expectation that this leads to enlightenment. This isn't really an empiricist approach. Empiricists look at what works, and (from what you're saying) this doesn't. I'm not sure what to call it, but that's the wrong word.
    • jessedhillon 5y ago
      In this sense, this person is talking about empiricism as the outlook that only what can be measured matters. Hours spent in meditation can be measured, but your embodiment of right view can't (or isn't, at least).
• w4llstr33t 5y ago
  I've practiced mindfulness and meditation for more than a decade. Mindfulness, as I've learned it, means being aware of your thoughts and feelings, introducing positive thoughts and feelings, and replacing negative thoughts and feelings. Meditation is also meant to be positive. You start with short sessions. The idea is to slow down and eventually stop your thoughts. From what I've heard, a lot people just fall asleep at Vipassana retreats, due to the long meditation sessions, which would not be very useful. The way I learned meditation is that short, focused sessions are better than long sessions where you don't focus / just fall asleep. Based on this article, it sounds like these extended sessions might even be dangerous for some (almost like sensory deprivation or psychedelics can be in some cases). Meditation on its own is not dangerous. The idea is to feel more grounded and centered after. The idea is to focus and develop your concentration. Otherwise, it's just "spacing out", which I've always been told is not meditation. If you space out and start to go into weird states of mind, that is not meditation, that is just dissociating / falling asleep / etc. There is a difference. There's nothing wrong with slowing down your thoughts. If people think that slowing down your thoughts is dangerous, to me that just sounds like the ego not wanting to lose its grasp. Egos can be almost as crazy as someone having a psychotic break. It's fine to let yourself rest in your natural state for a little while. Nothing wrong with that. In my experience, that actually makes you more balanced then someone overthinking their whole life / not being aware of what's going on inside themselves. I'm not a doctor, so get help if you need it, but one suggestion for a meditation practice is to start with 15 minutes a day, morning and evening. Set aside some space in your home and sit quietly for that period of time. Build up from there. Sitting in nature can also be helpful. If you start to feel weird, try to use your mindfulness practice during the day of focusing on positive things to get yourself out of it. Don't stay in a dissociated state, that is unproductive and potentially dangerous. If that doesn't work, stop and come back at a later time. Meditation and mindfulness are meant to support one other. They are not exactly the same, but they are related. When you start to meditate you will become aware of how many thoughts you are having (most people go day to day not paying that much attention). With mindfulness, you practice directing your mind in a more positive way (i.e. neuroplasticity, you are restructuring your mind with a positive intent). This helps your meditations be better and more productive, and helps your life be better and more productive. The way that I've been taught meditation and mindfulness are that they should be positive practices that support your life. If they are making life worse, something is off with that teacher or meditation school. Your own results can inform you if a teacher or meditation school is positive or not. If you're not getting positive results, that's not a good sign. These practices should make your life better.
• motohagiography 5y ago
  One could see how meditating could lead to a break like that. When you do something that connects your mind to the real and physical present inside your senses, which can suppress the reflections and noise from the way we interpret the representations of the world around us, coming back is jarring and panic inducing. This bad meditation effect sounds like the same effects of hyper-paranoia from cannabis, or a "bad trip," on hallucinogens, which can have dramatic short term and pervasive long term effects.
• josyulakrishna 5y ago
  I can only say that, please do not practice any advanced kind of meditation without a guru/experienced teacher and don't do drugs or alcohol if you are meditating.
  • blix 5y ago
    I've been starting a personal meditation practice, but I have no teacher outside what I read (mainly Easwaran). Do you have any recommendation for how one might find an experienced teacher while living in the west?
    • josyulakrishna 5y ago
      I can't say anything about how to find a teacher in the west, but usually its good to be with a satsang (set of people who do the same practice with an aim for the truth) at least in that way they can be guided in the right direction.
• BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  It's not unheard of. After spending a year in a meditation center I have been in contact with several people that burned out. My teachers forced me to take more time off to avoid this. Meditation is wonderful, but it's powerful. Something powerful can be misused to hurt yourself, otherwise it wouldn't have much of an effect. A saw that can't cut your fingers will not be very practical. Having a proper environnement helps a lot to limit this, and the right people with you, but it's not bulletproof. I feel my practice is too taxing sometimes and slow down. One should not create an idea of what the path looks like and force a way into it until some kind of landmark is reached. Espacially with our lifestyles, going steadily, but gently, is important. I have several friends, including myself, that reverted to using intoxicants, material comfort or distractions for a while because we couldn't handle more. Then after some time, went back to a more strict practice. Or didn't and accepted to stay at that level. It's hard, pace yourself. Other practitionners should not judge you, we all have struggles.
• gerbilly 5y ago
  The guy who invented this, the historical Buddha, recommended many more techniques than just vipassana. I think what happened in the west, is that—aside from zen centres/monasteries which draw upon a wider, established set of traditions and practices¹—we have focused too much on a single technique. Especially in clinical settings. I imagine that to get your therapy to be approved in clinical settings, and to get funding, you have to publish papers and your paper can't be a survey of hundreds of differing 'treatment' approaches. You would get more traction by isolating a potent subset, preferably a single one, and then using it and publishing your results. None of what I said above is to imply cynical motives to the researchers doing this, it's just the usual reductionist worldview applied to a tradition spanning thousands of years, and what happens when "early results are promising." tl;dr: Buddhism is more than just Vipassana. There are multiple techniques that complement, counteract each other. The Buddhist 'system' included different approaches for different personality types. More is not always better. [1] Not that 'tradition' is sufficient to insulate these organisations from problems either.
• SubiculumCode 5y ago
  I feel like saying something spooky like, "If you leave the front door open, you never know who will walk in", but the fact is that meditation is just a practice that emphasizes and strengthens certain brain states/EEG rhythms, neural synchronies, and given heterogeneity in brain structure, connectivity, and genomes, there will be no guarantee that this will be an entirely positive shift in neural dynamics. For analogy, for many people keeping themselves busy at work keeps themselves from constant rumination of a traumatic past.
• DantesKite 5y ago
  "I was a guitar string being tuned beyond its highest range. The string popped. A spike of fear slashed through my guts. And that’s when I split apart." I read on Twitter about this one guy who gave himself brain damage by constantly working for months on end while programming. It's interesting that a few others described a similar sensation. Their brain feeling like a guitar string. There's a moment where they can detect something goes wrong. It seems like they put themselves through a very stressful situation and triggered a cascading effect.
  • acuozzo 5y ago
    > I read on Twitter about this one guy who gave himself brain damage by constantly working for months on end while programming. Link? I'm interested.
    • bckr 5y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27003207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27003207 https://archive.is/KD74v https://archive.is/KD74v "So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain"
      • Trasmatta 5y ago
        I remember that thread, the "I burned all the glucose out of my brain & gave myself seizures" isn't how things work. It seems like he has unresolved mental health issues (which I'm sure were either caused or exacerbated by burnout), and came up with a rather strange self diagnosis.
• i_dont_know_ 5y ago
  I definitely feel bad for the guy, and I hope he got/gets the full help he needs. That having been said, I think there's something about meditation traditions that come from and are part of monastic traditions vs. meditation techniques that have been removed from their monastic roots. Basically, he was meditating at monk-like levels, and if he were actually in a monastery, he would probably have gotten help at some point beforehand. Maybe he was neglecting part of his health, or emphasizing one technique over another without being fully-rounded in his approach, or a number of other similar things that would have been caught by a community/teacher in a monastery. They literally have hundreds of years worth of meditation troubleshooting under their belts, though some of it is codified in ways that directly intertwine with religious beliefs/practices. But when you try to remove the practice from the culture surrounding it, there's a danger that you left behind some important pieces. I find it kind of scary that he mentions there are recovery groups and such, especially for meditation teachers. I mean, it's awesome that they're supporting each other and recovering, but this seems like a red flag that maybe the a-religious form of meditation as it's being taught and marketed right now needs to go back to the source and figure out what monks are doing differently, or, even better, make sure they immerse themselves deeper into the source cultures to be able to troubleshoot adequately. I guess it's like eating an olympic athlete's daily meal while ignoring the rest of their training regimen as "religious superstition" and getting drastically different results and being surprised.
  • jbgt 5y ago
    Indeed, in Theravadin Buddhism the Buddha is said to have taught monks and laypeople skillfully, to their appropriate level. The Anapanasati Sutta, which is about Englightement through mindfulness of the breath, is cited by many teachers as "the shortcut to liberation". But the target audience of the discourse was an assembly of the most developed monks to give them the final tweak. For laypeople, in for example the Kalama Sutta, the Buddha teaches simple things on how to develop Morality and Confidence, which are with Right Understanding the starting points of the Path. I am always amazed at the simplicity and clarity of the teachings. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.065.than.html https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.065.th...
  • treebot 5y ago
• ggggtez 5y ago
  Isn't this a repost of a repost, where the underlying facts are that he did a bunch of drugs, and then blamed his bad trip on mindfulness? Edit: yeah here it is > I was experiencing a growing sense of bodily agitation and began self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. Looking back, it was also during this time period that I had my first dissociative experiences So, guy takes a bunch of mind altering drugs for years, admits to having difficulty controlling his emotions his entire adult life, and yet blames meditation for his psychological instability. Definitely been posted here before. Completely unreliable narrator. Meditation is not a replacement for psychological help based on the practice of medicine. The guy probably needs to talk to an actual psychiatrist who has worked with former drug addicts, not just ignore his problem with feel good retreats The truth is he probably fucked up his meatware with drugs. The meatware malfunctioned, and he let it go untreated for years
• rain1 5y ago
  I've been meditating for years and never had any problems.
• dogman144 5y ago
  “Sam Harris never warned me about this!”
• Uhthrowaway 5y ago
  'Enlightenment' appears to be thrown around liberally while it is clear that few people achieve it (if at all that word refers to a concrete state) perhaps spiritual practice mixed with great expectations underlines the same lack of clarity or understanding and trust which lead the west to esoteric ego infalting practices.
• TL_DR 5y ago
  Stop spiritual fornication and turn to the living God. Jeremiah 2:13 John 14:6
• barkingcat 5y ago
  Horrible premise. None of this is Buddhism and "using" Buddhism doesn't do what you want it to do. It's like someone saying "I tried to go to confession at the Catholic church but I don't feel any better after killing and raping. This doesn't work!" or saying "I went and got baptized but I don't feel any different! I'm supposed to be saved! Where are my just rewards and I'm supposed to be able to see Jesus!" erm ...
• pphysch 5y ago
  Sounds like a bad trip. Not saying it was in this case, but I could definitely imagine seedy retreats putting a little something "extra" in the evening supper to boost the spiritual RoI of their service offering.
  • deleted 5y ago
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• pphysch 5y ago
  Western "Buddhism" as repackaged solipsism is totally antithetical to the teachings of the Four Noble Truths. Probably because the Four Noble Truths are antithetical to Christianity, liberalism and capitalism, the core aspects of Western culture.
• wonderwonder 5y ago
  Do poor people have breakdowns? Always read about rich or middle class people having breakdowns or burning out. Dude is on a Buddhist retreat and has a meltdown, but I feel like poor people rarely get like this, they just trudge on.
• ejfox 5y ago
  ah, my favorite type of hacker news post: "smart" western person finds a thing he doesn't understand, begins to understand 25% of it, and then decides to "fix it" like it doesn't have centuries of history and learnings around it
• rickbad68 5y ago
  It sounds to me like the author had a severe anxiety attack for the first time. And just throwing out a wild guess that they possibly had recently experimented with ayahuasca or some other form of DMT.
  • KingFelix 5y ago
    it would be interesting to know this. and/or what other things he was involved with prior to his experience
• leksak 5y ago
  I'll acknowledge some bias on my part as someone who has experienced more disassociative episodes (unrelated to meditation) than I care to have had but I think some of the replies here are very callous given how scarring I've found those experiences to be. My first contact with mindfulness-based meditation was cognitive behavioural therapy through mental health professionals and haven't received any warnings to heed. Seemingly, the author has had to endure their fair share and maybe a modicum of sympathy is warranted - at least.
  • Rastonbury 5y ago
    If anything some of the comments here prove his point that those invested in the practise have an interest to protect it and therefore say the author was meditating the wrong way. It's honestly so weird reading comments like those on HN of all places.
  • denton-scratch 5y ago
    I also did CBT; and I also was passed on to an 8-session mindfulness course. I hated CBT; and having 30 years' experience of mindfulness training from a proper Buddhist teacher, I found the mindfulness sessions awfully shallow.
• stevebmark 5y ago
  The end goal of mindfulness is to make you realize that you don't exist, and to make you realize you don't have free will, and there is no you. While it's all true, it's not a good place to leave someone without a next step. It can be useful to make people realize that their thoughts aren't their own, which can help with anxiety. Maybe it can also lead to meltdowns like the one in this article if you continue the practice long past "I don't exist and I have no free will."
  • t0mbstone 5y ago
    I think you might have a misunderstanding about the end goal of mindfulness. There is more than one way to practice mindfulness, but the goal of any mindfulness technique is to achieve a state of alert, focused relaxation by deliberately paying attention to thoughts and sensations without judgment. This allows the mind to refocus on the present moment.
    • stevebmark 5y ago
      I don't think that's a goal, that's a side effect of realizing you don't exist and have no free will and no agency.
• deleted 5y ago
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• JesseMeyer 5y ago
  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.
• the-alchemist 5y ago
  I try to follow the more science-y literature and news on meditation, so here's my take. Diana Winston [1] runs the Mindfulness Education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC). In her book, The Little Book of Being, she describes a mental breakdown--for lack of a better word--during an extended meditation retreat, just as this author. She spent a year as a Burmese nun, too. In it, she talks about how she would cry every day on some retreats, even in front of her meditation teacher. Looking back, she credits the experience to some psychological issues (my words, not hers). Sam Harris PhD, one of most unforgiving people of bad science, has a great meditation app, Waking Up [2], which I really like. In it, he specifically says, if this is causing you harm, or you're losing touch with reality, STOP immediately. He likens it to exercise. Exercise is great for you; hell, it's one of the best things you can do for your mind and body, and the research is very clear on this. But, some exercises might be bad for you. If you have a bad shoulder, DON'T DO PUSHUPS. If you have bum knees, STOP JOGGING. You need to talk to a professional to find out how to do work around your specific injury. Most of us aren't able to self-diagnose our psyches like this. It's almost impossible. There are, however, trained meditators out there of various religious and non-religious persuasions that can help you on your journey. My two cents, and others have mentioned this too, is that removing some of the "Eastern aura" of meditation is great for us in the West. Less robes and incense, more love and kindness. The Dhali Llama has said that the Buddhism that he here in the West study is some of the "purest" there is. But there's thousands of pages in Buddhist literature about all the demons and bliss you can experience during meditation, and how to approach it and understand it. Put it into context, some one to tell you, "Keep going, you're starting to get it", or, "Stop, you're doing it wrong, you're doing more harm than good." BUT going on a 10-day silent meditation retreat, even one day, is insane if you've never meditated. Much like running an ultramarathon with no training. If your body doesn't break down, your mind certainly will. Personally, when I started meditating, I couldn't do >5 minutes at a time. Took me weeks to get to 20 minutes. And you gotta do the reading or join a group to help you understand what you're going through, which also was very helpful for me. [1]: https://twitter.com/dianawinston https://twitter.com/dianawinston [2]: http://wakingup.com/ http://wakingup.com/
• camdenlock 5y ago
  > I thought awakening was right around the corner and now feel broken and betrayed While I feel sympathy for the author, I can’t help but think that this is ultimately a self-caused problem. You shouldn’t be absorbing yourself in a meditation practice with the goal of “awakening” or “enlightenment” or whatever. That’s dragon-chasing nonsense which will lead you to bad times.
• kazinator 5y ago
  Major selection bias here. From a 10,000 foot view it looks like: "Flaky dude attracted to Buddhist retreats who uses words like jhana had a freak out. Say it ain't so ..."
  • exo-pla-net 5y ago
    That's what you see at 10,000 feet? Nothing about the frequency of nervous breakdowns/psychosis among meditation practitioners with no personal nor family history of mental illness? I think you might need some prescription lenses at that altitude.
    • deleted 5y ago
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• alex_duf 5y ago
  As someone who experienced countless panic attacks, I find the description of his symptoms to be very on point with my experience. I've hit rock bottom about 10 years ago, experiencing these about three times a week. The road to building myself back was pretty long and is still an every day effort, but nowadays I only experience these once or twice a year, if any. If that's of any help to anyone, I've found countless of little things that put together helped a lot. They aren't ground breaking by any mean, just sharing my experience and tips: - Therapy. yes, good old fashioned therapy. Shop around to find the right person. - Life change, I moved from one country to another. Spoiler alert, the panic attacks followed me, but it certainly gave me more confidence. - Identify your triggers. It took me years, but my trigger was a stomach inflammation that I identified as being my heart having an issue. So I changed my diet, stopped smoking too. - Exercise. Finding what you like is a long and painful process, I only found what I liked around 30. For me it was hiking, then climbing, then more recently (pandemic), yoga. I hope that's useful for someone.
  • hellbannedguy 5y ago
    I found his description of a Panic Attack well documented. I have never convulsed though. My panic attacks were very brief compared to the authors. "The next four hours were a hellscape of terror, panic and paranoia. There were almost no thoughts, only my body begging to escape my skin, convulsing like a fish fighting for life. The fear was a bottomless trench." The last line hit home with me. I've only had one bad Panic Attack. What I didn't realize is how it would affect my anxiety levels in the following years. I'm on a long half life benzodiazepine, and a drug they give to opioid addicts, but the anxiety is still there. I have noticed my anxiety levels impiroved a bit with age.
    • CountDrewku 5y ago
      I'm guessing the "convulsion" he's talking about was just adrenaline tremors. I had these a lot after panic attacks, my legs would shake like crazy. The thing I read that basically made them disappear was that if you watch animals like a zebra or something after they been chased by lion... they usually twitch and shake all over. I used to get really upset and more panicky when they happened which just made them even worse. It's a completely normal response after an adrenaline rush and it's actually a sign that your body is calming down.
• m3kw9 5y ago
  “ In 2011, I sat my first meditation retreat in the Vipassana tradition of S.N Goenka. I spent ten days in silence, focusing on my breath and body for 10 to 12 hours a day. It was grueling, but toward the end of the retreat I had a life-changing experience.” In hindsight sight, maybe he should have got out on top.
• mcguire 5y ago
  In the midst of all of the "You're just doing Buddhism wrong!" comments, I would like to point out the PLOS One paper mentioned in the article, "The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists" (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0176239 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...). "In one of the only prospective studies to use qualitative methods to deliberately ask about adverse effects, Shapiro (1992) [67] found that 63% of meditators on an intensive Vipassana retreat reported at least one adverse effect, with 7.4% reporting effects negative enough to stop meditating, and one individual hospitalized for psychosis." It appears that mindfulness-based meditation is being prescribed or promoted with no regard to the side-effects.
  • thevardanian 5y ago
    I mean... That's exactly what the "you're just doing Buddhism wrong" crowd is saying. There's a vast variety of methodologies and approaches to meditation, that come with their own effects, some bad some good. This is all quite well documented among the practitioners over the centuries. And beyond documentation, that's also why it's heavily suggested that one have guru or someone to actively guide and judge "progress", at least among the Hindus.
    • Retric 5y ago
      The study was looking at guided meditation which consisted of 60% of it’s sample. So, suggesting a guide on it’s own doesn’t solve the issue.
      • thevardanian 5y ago
        Having better guides is exactly what will solve the issue though. Unless you're making some kind of inherent argument, where all meditation is inherently nebulous and impervious to methodological approaches. The guides may or may not be qualified. So the real problem is the lack systematization of it in meditation, more specifically a more reliable metric to judge "guides". As the extensive literature on meditation quite clearly outlines the limitations and dangers of various practices. Tantra for example is quite clear about the dangers of practicing it.
• avalys 5y ago
  This thread is blowing my mind, although not for the obvious reason. I’m just astounded by all the anecdotes people are mentioning here that suggest meditation, mindfulness, etc. actually work, even the secularized, distorted, popularized versions we get here in the West. Previously I just assumed this was all a bunch of wackadoo woo-woo bullshit designed to separate dissatisfied California yuppies from their money. The fact that it could be dangerous and mentally destabilizing, and lead to such dramatic changes in personality and outlook as described in the linked articles and reinforced by replies here, is obviously reason for caution - but it also signifies strong evidence that this a very powerful and effective practice. I’m much more interested in learning about meditation than before reading the article.
  • cs2733 5y ago
    Ha! I salute your openess.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • avalys 5y ago
    This article might as well have said “The Shenrikki school of telekinesis is popular, but if you’re not careful while practicing you might accidentally crack the foundation of your house or give your spouse a concussion, and no one will warn you about this. ” and then a bunch of people jumped into the thread to say “Yes yes, this happened to me, and my home insurance didn’t cover it!” My reaction is: wait, what, really, this is an actual risk here?!
    • seanc 5y ago
      I forget where I heard it, but someone once said "The mind is like a boomerang. If you throw it, there is a very good chance it won't come back."
    • beaconstudios 5y ago
      if you want to continue in that vein of complete scepticism, you could just claim that all those people are experiencing a placebo effect.
• calkuta 5y ago
  Like psychadelics, these meditation practices are a journey to the limits of our consciousness. Acceptance of all that comes is an essential starting point.
• odomojuli 5y ago
  "As I lay there musing in the brisk darkness, I suddenly sensed a tightening inside me. It was as if I was being ever so gently wound. Then quickly, the pressure intensified, and I breathed in rapid-fire staccato and violently shook. I was a guitar string being tuned beyond its highest range. The string popped. A spike of fear slashed through my guts. And that’s when I split apart." This has come up in a number of threads about burnout which frequent Hacker News. It's anecdotal per account and I've found weak evidence to corroborate its actual basis however... I think it's interesting that a lot of people report hearing the same thing: a guitar string, bending and snapping in their head. More specifically, a bass guitar.
• pajtai 5y ago
  Everything has a down side. Exercise is the most helpful thing you can do for your health, but you can break your leg running... or even die of a heart attack while running. This is a great article to highlight how little most people think about what the "healthy" amount of meditation is and how to know if you're over doing it or are suffering an injury from it.
• jb_schirtzinger 5y ago
  Uh taking drugs and then meditating is probably going to lead you straight to the demon that disposed you to taking drugs to start with.
• bruja_gorda 5y ago
  The author is a lost cause. He messed himself up following the teachings of clueless gurus. Then, when he realised he was just damaging his mind, he switched to different gurus. Now he's teaching meditation again, so he is himself taking on the mantle of the clueless guru, spreading around his mental illness to more unknowing victims. This never stops. These people never face reality. The lure of the supernatural, of enlightenment, of insights, of metaphysical experiences, is too strong and they eventually lose the ability to tell the difference between reality and the crazy teachings of their books and their masters. Madness is the loss of the ability to discern the boundary between reality and imagination. Meditation is just one of the many ways that supernatural and metaphysical sects have to push the mind beyond that boundary, lock the door behind it and throw away the key.
• ohgreatwtf 5y ago
  lotta zen bhuddist teachers on prozac
• thinkyfish 5y ago
  I've found that many people (myself included) start down the path of Vipassana(analysis) type of meditation too early or from a position where we weren't prepared for the consequences. I wish I had spent more time with metta(compassion) and samatha (calmness) meditation and build up stability/forbearance and kindness/compassion first before starting to de-construct experience. It is said that one type of meditation leads to the others and even with Vipassana you might have the realization that "I'm suffering because I was doing a thing, I laid the trap and stepped in it" and achieve peace of mind, but that won't happen on a schedule. I would recommend any busy person to avoid Vipassana until they have more experience and focus more on sense-calming (avoiding sensuality), and compassion/generosity practice. It will bring a quicker (though possibly less deep) taste of the peace of mind that is possible.
  • jmfldn 5y ago
    Strongly agree. It seems quite common in the west to go into the deep end without the necessary foundations. Certain ethical behaviours, strong compassion for others, a desire to do this for the good of the world not just for yourself etc. These are all essential parts of any spiritual path and just trying to reach straight for insight is potentially dangerous imho. I'm not a Buddhist as such but for me every aspect of the eightfold path is utterly essential and mutually supporting.
  • Ayesh 5y ago
    Exactly what I wanted to say too. I was born Buddhist, studied at two Buddhist schools, and we were practicing meditation every day for nearly 90% of the year. Reading that this person practiced Dhyana sounded very odd and irresponsible. What a vast majority of people here practice is Sathi (calmness) and Meththa (compassion), because it helps in regular activities and always have a positive impact. Meditation practices like Anussathi, Vipassana, and Dhyana takes a lot more preparedness, and almost always is mentored by a monk.
  • denton-scratch 5y ago
    Trungpa's presentation of Vipassana is quite different from most other versions; he has it emerging spontaneously from Samatha ('calm abiding').
• hunter-gatherer 5y ago
  Wow. Like a few others have commented, I'm surprised to see the amount of positive associations people have had with meditation. I'll admit, I definitely never thought the benefits of meditation were anything more than the placebo effect, though I've also never had reason to give meditation any real thought as a solution to my problems, because I've fortunately always been able to cope and function through them to find solutions. This article definitely opened my eyes a bit, however. That being said, I've been actively weight lifting or doing other sports since I was a teenager, and I often wonder if that has helped contribute to my successes. For example, proper weight training takes years of practice to develop a solid mind-muscle connection, and I find both the moments between sets and the repetitions themselves help train mental focus. This is especially true with heavy weight lifting because you need to visualize the movement before you do it, and as you're going through the movement you need to focus carefully on your muscle tension throughout your body. For those who have never seriously trained, it is probably easy to dismiss that weight training can have a positive impact on one's ability to focus. I assure you, a few sets of heavy squats takes a toll on the nervous system as well as the musculoskeletal system. Likewise, I find that when I am in a proper training regimen, it is easier to eat better and easier to sleep deeper. I've never done any guided meditation, so if there are any active athletes who have practiced meditation as described in the article, I'd be interested to here your thoughts.
  • astrange 5y ago
    I don't understand why people would think meditation does nothing. Your brain is connected to the rest of you and reducing stress is good for it even if that's all you believe you can learn to do. But otherwise, paying attention to things is a skill that can be exercised just like muscles are.
• cranesnake 5y ago
  Vipassana and Marijuana lead me to a full-blown psychosis for 2 weeks in a medical center which unraveled my mind and the perception of my world. But I also feel I have a deeper understanding of myself and how balances in my mind work, having now recovered. I was forced to reconstruct my mind manually. Before this my control over my depression and anxiety was null, but now I may be getting off of medication soon.
• CountDrewku 5y ago
  The guy just had a panic attack and didn't know how to deal with it. Getting kinda tired of the sensationalist articles acting like they discovered some unheard of horror that no other person has ever known.
• theptip 5y ago
  > In fact, today mindfulness meditation is primarily used as an off-label treatment for mental health issues I think this perhaps goes too far; MBSR is pretty well documented and is not “off label” — I’m fairly sure there are FDA approved apps for mindfulness therapy for example. If you are meditating 30 mins a day and it’s helping your symptoms, I don’t think this report should be justification for you to stop. This is not MBSR. If you are going for Jhana, you are way off piste from the “mindfulness meditation” path. The authors retreat was full-day meditation for many days in a row. This is the DMT of mind altering substances, where light mindfulness meditation could be compared to a glass of wine. I do strongly agree with the authors point that the western conception of meditation omits the scary/mind-altering stuff that can happen when you go deep, and it’s important to have a full picture of the risks and benefits before you embark on that path. I just worry that this sort of article without appropriate caveats might make people unjustifiably scared of light meditation, which as far as I’ve seen doesn’t result in this kind of dramatic reaction and does have clear benefits. I’d recommend “Mastering the core teachings of the Buddha” for a no-BS deep dive on what going deep looks like. Particularly the section on “the dark night of the soul”. https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight/30-the-progress-of-insight/5-dissolution-entrance-to-the-dark-night/ https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight...
• vajrabum 5y ago
  Hakuin, one of the most famous Japanese Zen master's, got "Zen Disease" when he was in his 20s and doing intense meditation. The symptoms sound very similar to what was in the article. He recommended a particular meditation as a cure. No clue about the efficacy of that, but this problem is clearly not unknown even among entirely orthodox practitioner's who presumably have qualified teachers. https://buddhismnow.com/2015/09/12/zen-sickness-by-zen-master-hakuin/ https://buddhismnow.com/2015/09/12/zen-sickness-by-zen-maste...
• jl2718 5y ago
  Every time I read something like this, the author turns out to be a regular drug user. I don’t necessarily have anything against that, but, having been sober my entire life, and having experimented heavily with natural hallucination methods such as lucidity, I seriously doubt that this level of intensity is possible. Aside from actual near-death experience (been there), it is extremely hard to hold onto even mild sensation without breaking lucidity. And if it takes drugs to get there, then don’t call it meditation, and don’t blame meditation for the side effects. I’m not an expert, but, for the others like me, I think the best you may hope for in meditation is the ability to not be bothered by thoughts and distraction, the zen master being Grigori Perelman, who would not let a million dollar prize distract him from picking mushrooms.
  • _mhr_ 5y ago
    What is "lucidity"? Do you mean lucid dreaming?
    • jl2718 5y ago
      Yes.
• superduperycomb 5y ago
  Anecdotally mindfulness increases my neuroticism by becoming too self aware. I’m curious if anyone else experiences this?
• riverain 5y ago
  Sounds like "走火入魔", a mental state mentioned in many Wuxia/Chinese-Kongfu-Fantasy novels when a rigorous 内功修炼(internal training/meditation)goes bad, which I thought was a myth.
• Nancy59 5y ago
  I found many problems with this article. The author of this article seems to assume that Cheetah house has all the answers!!! (Perhaps this article is an ad for that place.) Regarding his statement “symptoms diagnosed by a therapist” – does the author know how psychiatry comes up with ‘diagnosis’ of so called “mental disorders” using checklists? I can cite many academic articles, but maybe just have a look at the following article: Psychiatric Drugs Increase Suicide. CAMPP’s Film “Prescripticide” Exposes the Harms By Dr. Chuck Ruby. The author of the article discussed here also does not seem to understand Buddhism, although he says he has read many books. For example, it is best to leave Jhana practices (i.e., deep concentration practices) to monks because developing them needs a great deal of commitment and an incredible amount of patience. Also, these Jhana practices are not needed for full enlightenment [See the sutta reference AN 4.170: In Tandem]. Considering his following statement at the end, I am hoping that the author will understand things better with time: "A few months ago, I began dabbling with teaching mindfulness again, which may seem surprising. However, I believe that these practices, with the correct framework, dosage, and education, can be a valuable tool for improving mental health." Mindfulness has helped me beyond words - I think it has saved my life. I am so very grateful to have found it.
• MauroIksem 5y ago
  There is a great podcast called "Astray" that talks about how bad mediation and the search for enlightenment can go.
• id02009 5y ago
  My teacher describes this issue as such: meditation is like going to the gym. You don't send someone with broken arm to the gym to make them better. Even though gyms are generally good, they should be avoided when you're injured. Psychotic or neurotic mind needs healing, not intense training. This knowledge is present in genuine Buddhist schools that are not for profit organizations. The mindfulness industry have, sadly, the wrong incentives. As a Buddhist myself I hope this article helps a lot of people.
• naasking 5y ago
  > Yet, somewhere six or seven years into my practice, whatever progress I was making petered out. I was experiencing a growing sense of bodily agitation and began self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. Looking back, it was also during this time period that I had my first dissociative experiences, in which elements of my sense of self became separated in a way that impaired my ability to function. Lots of good discussion in this thread on how meditation can lead to problems, particularly intensive sessions like retreats, but I think it's important to highlight this paragraph from the article. If we accepted that meditation can induce alterered states of consciousness, like various medications can also do, it seems dangerous to wantonly start mixing such things without rhyme or reason. Dissociation seems almost inevitable.