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I can't help thinking that most of these examples of negative side effects are related to intensives rather than meditation/mindfulness itself. There's a world

• naasking 4y ago
  > Maybe it's just better for you in short bursts, not long marathons. Actual marathons aren't great for your body either, especially if it's not something you've diligently trained for properly, so that makes sense.
• jossclimb 4y ago
  I expect there will be higher cases of psychosis happening on intense retreats, but as anecdotal as this, I had it happen to me (albeit not as extreme as OP) after meditating for much shorter periods (approx 10 minutes up to an hour). I really did not see it coming. For some context, I don't know of any deep seated trauma that I have and I liked to think of myself as someone robust mentally. I experienced a deep realisation that our thoughts manifest from nowhere and not from ourselves (words fail me here) and that the construct of 'me' was completely false and was just a reverberation of my environment. I understood there was no me. This was really nice for about two weeks. I started to think that I should be looking to help other people and become a guru, perhaps write a book to help humanity, but then my ego (I expect) came back with a vengeance, kicked my ass and brought me back down to earth with a crash (maybe its a safety system). I experienced huge panic attacks like I have never had before, I carried this constant feeling of absolute dread in my soul, like a sense of impending doom. I have heard it described as the dark night of the soul. Some try to push through this, but I held back as i cannot afford to have a complete meltdown as I need to care for a young family and hold down a job. I spoke with a well respected meditator about this, and they said the some people are wired to have an accelerated experience and are able to obtain deep introspection with limited time on the cushion. I would say I am almost back to normal now. I had to stop all meditation and instead focused on health food, sleep habits and lots of exercise. My main mediation type thing is now running, it quietens my mind, but the grounding effect of the movement keeps me in a safe play pen to explore my reality. meditation is incredibly powerful, in the west we have confused it as being a corporate stress ball that you squeeze or like a lavender scented, candle lit bath while listening to Enya. The truth is, it can reveal incredibly deep seated aspects of ourselves that we are in no way prepared to witness, let alone accept.
  • cutler 4y ago
    “Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water.” We need the mundane earthly activities to balance any inward quests.
    • jossclimb 4y ago
      totally agree.
    • Cthulhu_ 4y ago
      That sounds pragmatic; in the end, you still have to return to the real world and get on with things like survive. Although this talk about becoming enlightened sounds like people have given up on themselves and realilty entirely to pursue something in their minds. It sounds like a self-induced state of tripping balls.
      • robertlagrant 4y ago
        Cthulhu discussion Buddhism. Am I tripping?
    • Southworth 4y ago
      One of my most treasured quotes. Glad to see it here.
    • yamtaddle 4y ago
      I've always taken it to (also) mean that one ought not expect rebirth in enlightenment, or some instant transformation of one's condition and even of one's spiritual (if you will) practice. It's not like graduating from school and moving into the workforce, where you stop going to classes and your life shifts radically in a short span. One day you're not enlightened, the next you are, and... that's the whole thing, congrats, you did it, now life goes on surprisingly-similarly to how it did before. "Oh, you're enlightened? That's nice. Now, on with what we were doing...."
      • deleted 4y ago
• ycombinete 4y ago
  There are often first-hand comments about the dangers of mindfulness practice here on HN. But when the commenters describe their practices they are so extreme that it was almost inevitable that they had negative effects.
  • threatofrain 4y ago
    It also makes me wonder whether it’s unusual people who select themselves into such extreme activities, and not that meditation is dangerous.
  • coffeebeqn 4y ago
    There’s quite a spectrum between a 10-20min almost daily habit and trying to actually reach “enlightenment”. These 10 day silent retreats are a lot closer to the Bodhidharma sitting in a cave end of the spectrum. Probably not the first people to go a little crazy attempting that in Buddhist history. Given the context I would imagine it’s mostly overachievers but that is not really a healthy approach to religion or mental health (going hard as a mf)
    • ycombinete 4y ago
      > Probably not the first people to go a little crazy attempting that in Buddhist history During the signup process for a 10 day Vipassana retreat, they ask for a lot of details about your psychological health. Even warning against doing the retreat if you’re not in a good mental place. So I’m sure you’re right.
• waboremo 4y ago
  Not entirely sure if any study demonstrating the benefits of meditation or mindfulness considers counting 9 to 1 repeatedly an act of either. That aligns much more closely with the advice given to those with panic disorders in how to ride out their panic attacks or prevent them when they feel coming on.
  • cal85 4y ago
    The comment didn’t claim it was an act of either, either.
    • waboremo 4y ago
      We're in a thread about mindfulness.
  • cyberbanjo 4y ago
    I'm not Buddhist or experienced meditator, but I have surely seen instruction for counting based mindfulness practices. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganana#Technique https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganana#Technique
    • zeknife 4y ago
      Rather, it is a concentration practice, and concentration facilitates mindfulness
  • wlonkly 4y ago
    Counting the breaths (usually up, not down) is the standard starting practice in zazen, Zen meditation. When you lose track you bring your mind back to counting again at 1, so it's more like "1.. 2.. shit. 1.. ugh. 1.. 2.. 3.." than anything actually involving 10.
• ystad 4y ago
  To add on. I think the key is probably to have a balance. Your life, work, sport, medity
• rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
  Meditation is a dose-dependent drug. Most people will reap most of the health benefits that meditation has to offer by sitting for 20 minutes a couple times a day. You can go much deeper, of course, but that's a philosophical / spiritual quest to gain a deeper understanding of yourself and the world around you - it's not a health pursuit. A multi-day meditation retreat is in many ways like running an ultramarathon: it's not really a healthy undertaking, per se, but you might learn something about yourself by doing it, and the way to do it responsibly is by working your way up to it over months and years of practice.
• Mistletoe 4y ago
  Haven’t we all looked inwardly too much already? I’d list that as a top reason for the general malaise I see around me. I’ve never really found looking inward that useful, looking outward and acting outward and thinking about others has to be a 100:1 ratio on returns vs looking inward.
  • haswell 4y ago
    What is too much, and why would such introspection be a bad thing if it consistently leads to improved mental states? But I think more importantly, “looking inward” is not really the primary focus, but a technique to help one realize what is (and is not) already there. At one time I think I would have written a comment similar to yours, because I had not yet experienced the difference between the perspective-altering practice of “looking inward” through mindfulness and the lost-in-thought version, which looks a lot more like rumination and just experiencing the thought loop without perspective, which can be deeply painful. These practices are full of paradox. This isn’t to say the practice is invalid, but to highlight the fact that such practice is not intuitive or obvious. Evolutionary psychology is helping us unpack the illusions that lead to such apparent paradox. One such paradox being that looking inward through the practice of mindfulness is the thing that enables someone to look outward and actually see. Most people struggle to describe this in words, but it starts to emerge clearly with practice. Put another way, the premise is that we are all so lost in thought by default that we don’t even realize we are thinking. To claim that we can see outward in this state is to remain unaware of the possibility space of what is available to see, and to remain controlled by thought. You’ll still “see”, but this seeing is distorted by evolutionary reward systems, and what you think you’re seeing is still suspect. But seeing the truth about one’s own mind changes how one sees other people in deeply impactful ways. For me personally, my internal anxiety and self talk was so dominant that it made some outward pursuits feel nearly impossible. Once my relationship with thoughts/feelings started to shift, it didn’t just help with the anxiety in the sense that it subsided, it fundamentally shifted my relationship with the concept of anxiety, and made it possible for me to examine it from a broader perspective instead of just experiencing and being swallowed by it. You go from knowing that anxiety (etc.) is a feeling to experiencing that anxiety is a feeling, and one that appears alongside everything else in consciousness. The difference between these states is enormous.
• adamsmith143 4y ago
  I think stories like this relate to misunderstanding the point of meditation practice, the practice. The time spent may be helpful in of itself but really you're meant to do the practice and learn more about how your mind works and be able to have better control of your emotional states. Not retreat into meditating whenever you fell something other than contentment. Disappointing that you apparently didn't learn this from a Buddhist group and instead focused on the actual act of meditating as the useful thing.
  • starkd 4y ago
    I think the ones that "go deeper" are doing so because they don't know what else to do, what the next step is. But they have achieved some "success", so they keep doing it. It also feeds the rise of new gurus that think they are helping by spreading the message, but they are merely feeding a new ego. There are so many teachers and online gurus hoping to turn it into a vocation.
• starkd 4y ago
  I have a theory that meditation/mindfulness is essentially just an excercise in self-erasure. This can be beneficial to some degree in that we all need to erase those negative associations and question our assumptions. However, carried to an extreme, it can erase some of the associations we need to make in order to live and create extreme hyper-selfawareness. Or in other words, you open up your mind too much, your brains start to fall out.
• maxFlow 4y ago
  > These days I do 20 minutes a day of mind control which involves nothing more than counting down from 9 to 1 repeatedly. If it works for you that's great. However, I would say approaching meditation from a "mind control" exercise such as "counting down from 9 to 1 repeatedly" goes counter to its purpose and will hinder its full potential. If you're willing to experiment with other methods, try letting your mind wander and don't let it stick; just experience the ebb and flow. Twenty-minute sessions sound about right for me as well.
  • rdevsrex 4y ago
    User name checks out.
• m3kw9 4y ago
  Maybe the brain is smart, once you know meditation works, it then anticipates it to work. The expectation of it working interferes with the actual mindfulness and you take longer and longer. Is a law of diminishing utility thing and also a basic instinct for people to get used to stuff the more they are exposed
• SeattleAltruist 4y ago
  Yes. Moderation in all things.
• yamtaddle 4y ago
  > I would turn to meditation assuming it would help me get things done but it had the opposite effect of avoiding what I needed to face. Marcus Aurelius—quoted from memory, so probably not quite right, and it's in translation at any rate: > You can pass your life in a calm flow of happiness, if you learn to think the right way and to act the right way. I personally found the "think the right way" easy to get into, but without the "act the right way" it can indeed lead to apathy, detachment, and avoidance. Whoops.
• pmart123 4y ago
  I'm no expert, but this still seems like avoidance more than mindfulness. Obviously, meditating for six hours as a means to escape and avoid uncomfortable thoughts is healthier than blacking out or doing opioids, but it's still escaping versus being present, processing, and facing uncomfortable feelings and emotions.
• heydemo 4y ago
  One of the findings from researchers in the book Altered Traits is that largest (positive) cerebral changes were associated with time spent at intensive retreats. This is also very much a part of Zen practice (etc) so presumably practitioners have found some additional value in intensives over the years.
• blueprint 4y ago
  buddha was not enlightened through meditation. that is a dangerous falsehood that has been added by monks. he was enlightened through his accumulation of virtue through his specific practices of educating others while he was in the mountains. this placed him in turmoil. he left the mountains, and sat down under a tree to collect himself. it was only after he became calm that he realized that he had already attained the supreme enlightenment. you cannot attain it through any other means than teaching after entering a samadhi. but to enter samadhi means you have to stop your karma. even then, it can be reborn, just like anything else. the final enlightenment - that of a buddha - is to burn down all your karma. the greatest way to do this is the practice of true love. this is a path which will cause you to face inordinate difficulties and loneliness. most people are waylaid. "strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto Life and few there be who find it."