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Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

newscientist.com

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Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#281

Post by Shorel »

8bitsrule wrote: post #257
dTal wrote: post #26

It's important to bear in mind that meditation is a religious practice specifically aimed at causing ego-death. Yogis writing about the practice (before it became big business) freely admit all sorts of horrible-sounding mental side effects, but couch them in religious terms (and encourage the acolyte to push through until they achieve "enlightenment", which they describe as a profoundly nihilist state of being). Thi…

There are many, many forms of meditation, with many supposed goals. So to say that "meditation is..." is a reduction to absurdity. If you do something and you don't like the outcome, you stop. Driving a car may also lead to ego-death ... probably much more likely than from meditation. Yet we do it. There are certainly forms of meditation that are risky. There are also forms of Olympic sport that are risky. People dis…

> Driving a car may also lead to ego-death ...

Do you mean driving as a form of meditation or about having a fatal accident on the road?

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#282

Post by dhimes »

inv13 wrote: post #275
dhimes wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoiler alert: The whole realization is that the entire concept of you is artificial. The idea that there is an ever-present unchanging thing called "you" is fairly straightforward for the uninitiated to grasp. The idea that there is no "you" separate from "me" is harder— by a lot. What attracted me to it was how well it blended in with our modern ideas in physics. Not just the idea that a wavefunction never dies to…

My daily night routine includes looking at a picture of dinosaurs, and a high resolution picture of the hubble telescope[1] and realize that there is something that drove the making of all of this, the process of evolving, of galaxies, bacteries, dinosaurs, so on...being huge and getting big, as dinosaurs, galaxies, humans did. And the variety of those, and so on...None of those made any conscious decision of, for ex…

Wicked cool comment. I hope others see it.

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#283

Post by andrekandre »

tonyarkles wrote: post #53
bognition wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the difference between an objectively happy life and an objectively miserable life?

I’ll give you an example from my own life that meditation and therapy helped clear up for me. In my 20s, I would routinely get into yelling and screaming matches with girlfriends. There were two significant driving forces behind that: - that is how my parents interacted. Things are good, someone screws up, everyone yells at each other for a while, and the next day it’s as if nothing happened. There were addictions in…

i used to be a very argumentative person, and one thing i noticed was a big difference between "supressing" vs "releasing" the emotion or need to argue

supressing, for me anyways, always lead to more stress and then a huge random argument about totally irrellevant things... conversely, mentally imagining that im "letting go" of that need/feeling to make my point, was alot more effective

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#284

Post by orestarod »

nvader wrote: post #276
mpax wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that "life is meaningless" means that society cannot rely on you, because you'll do whatever strikes your fancy, whatever the consequences. How does "life is meaningless" imply "life is useless"? Also, why would nihilism entail radical individualism? The core of nihilism is that since the indifferent universe is without meaning humans have to give it meaning, quite the opposite of what you're implying.

If there were no meaning outside of humans, then every human would be free to construct their own meaning. This then leads to radical individualism, since no frame of meaning would be truer than any other.

That's what we do. How would letting others construct a meaning for us be better? The reason societies exist is because we lean to a human-centric meaning, not radical individualism necessarily, because we are hard wired to do so. But having a meaning imposed on you is not good, I think. Also, the reason we do good to society is because it satisfies us INDIVIDUALLY, not because we think it is efficient - there was no thinking involved in us being social beings, but evolution.

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#285

Post by h0l0cube »

lewispollard wrote: post #266
h0l0cube wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "instructors" there are given explicit instruction not to advise anyone and just get them to listen to the tapes (which are very much steeped in religious Buddhism). So anyone who's struggling, in a weird mindstate, and unsure what's happening to them, and goes to a course leader for advice, won't get any advice other than to buckle down and listen to the tapes, and that often results in misapplying the techniq…

That's true, it can depend on the volunteers and the locations of the centres themselves, so it's a bit of a gamble. I've talked to a few of people who've been travelling in Asia and attended Goenka retreats after huge benders, having never meditated before, because "why not, I've got 10 days left on my visa and need to detox". Then the teachers don't speak any English in some cases. Although one person I met who had…

> basically just checking if they do drugs or take medication or not is quite a risk

The questions were a bit more probing than that. One question was something like, 'How are your relations with your family?', and I think there were questions about mental history etc.

> Also true, to be clear I think that Goenka courses are great resources for people who have sat shorter retreats before or have a long-term, stable practice. It's the "jumping in at the deep end" type stuff that happens, partially because they're free and so easy to access, partly because of the "boot camp" style image, that's risky. Many people aren't inclined to dive into early Buddhist texts and make sense of its philosophy and practice before attending a retreat for the first time.

Much of the seriousness of the retreat is described on the dhamma.org website. I had read and understood this before I signed up. I think I may have even had to confirm that I had read this before I was able to apply.

However, it's likely a lot of people just skip this like the T&Cs on their Facebook account. So I do agree with you, it would probably be to the benefit of the students to at least be aware of the seriousness of the course, and for this to be better communicated.

I had maybe sat 10 or so 1-hour meditation workshops just casually at festivals before I took my course. I had very little about Buddhist philosophy or practice, so I was very much diving in at the deep end, but I entered the course knowing it was a serious psychological intervention from the introduction on the website. During the course, I found the discourse tapes enough to give a satisfactory explanation of what I ought to be aiming for, and sometimes they even pre-empted questions or conflicts I had in my mind.

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#286

Post by volume »

LisperFan wrote: post #126

For a couple years I practiced meditation from 30 minutes to a couple hours per day. I was introduced to it when I started practicing the Wim Hof method for health reasons. I tried to adhere to a zen style of emptiness. It made me extremely happy, greatly increased my satisfaction with life and improved my relationship with my wife. The downside for me came when I was driving or in public. I became very anxious becau…

Since you mention your happiness a coupe times I wonder: Can you explain how you go about gauging, assessing, calculating or feeling how happy your are?

Since you have practiced meditation regularly for a couple years, what do you think about the idea that chasing happiness is also something to let go of?

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#287

Post by tomhoward »

kanyethegreat wrote: post #274
tomhoward wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I was just chatting with a friend about our experience with this kind of thing; each of us has done large amounts of subconscious healing work over many years, and each of us has experienced some (at-times quite serious, in my case) anxiety as we progressed, to the point where you really start to question whether it's beneficial or if it's doing more harm than good. With continued work things turned around, and…

I've been very interested in doing this kind of work. Any general advice you can give or beginner directions you can point me towards? Thanks!

I've written some docs and have a Discord group where we share experiences and insights.

Feel free to email me (address in profile) and I can share the material and invite you to the group.

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#288

Post by tonyarkles »

andrekandre wrote: post #283
tonyarkles wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll give you an example from my own life that meditation and therapy helped clear up for me. In my 20s, I would routinely get into yelling and screaming matches with girlfriends. There were two significant driving forces behind that: - that is how my parents interacted. Things are good, someone screws up, everyone yells at each other for a while, and the next day it’s as if nothing happened. There were addictions in…

i used to be a very argumentative person, and one thing i noticed was a big difference between "supressing" vs "releasing" the emotion or need to argue supressing, for me anyways, always lead to more stress and then a huge random argument about totally irrellevant things... conversely, mentally imagining that im "letting go" of that need/feeling to make my point, was alot more effective

You nailed it, friend.

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#289

Post by hutzlibu »

Shorel wrote: post #280
hutzlibu wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"major changes in cognition can go either way. Be careful!" I read some spiritual books about LSD in my late teens and I almost believed the "holy spiritual drug changing consciousness" motive. But I was cautious and never took it and wanted to wait for the right time (it never came so far). One of the main reasons of waiting longer was, that I met some LSD gurus in real live - who where just retards. So I focused mo…

Very interesting. I am right now thinking about simracing as a way to meditate. You totally have to just focus on perception, no thinking, no ego, no self, nothing but the car and the road, and you repeat, and repeat, and repeat the track, over and over. It works your mind, without any harmful effects (that I know of).

You mean basically a repeative videogame?

Well, I kind of do that from time to time. Play old videogames my mind can do it in autopilot mode. But I do not consider that too helpfull for myself. Sometimes it is. But on average I would say not.

You still have the flickering screen, which I think is not god for my head for too long. And I have the screen already for work, so I rather go outside, when I can.

One very simple technic to calm the mind while walking (or running or sitting) is use peripheric vision. Meaning the gaze is not focused, but wide. Seeing all at once. My theory is, that this uses more brain processing power, which leads to useless thoughts going silent. And breathing. And feeling. And smelling. And listening.

(so a nice area is recommended)

Re: Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety

#290

Post by Shorel »

hutzlibu wrote: post #289
Shorel wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting. I am right now thinking about simracing as a way to meditate. You totally have to just focus on perception, no thinking, no ego, no self, nothing but the car and the road, and you repeat, and repeat, and repeat the track, over and over. It works your mind, without any harmful effects (that I know of).

You mean basically a repeative videogame? Well, I kind of do that from time to time. Play old videogames my mind can do it in autopilot mode. But I do not consider that too helpfull for myself. Sometimes it is. But on average I would say not. You still have the flickering screen, which I think is not god for my head for too long. And I have the screen already for work, so I rather go outside, when I can. One very sim…

> You mean basically a repeative videogame?

I mean more about the experience of driving. Clicking buttons is quite different to feeling the road through the steering wheel. In a normal video game you can just memorize the timing sequence.

I am trying to highlight the "focus on perception" part of the experience.

I would love to go and drive in an open road somewhere remote. And see and smell all these real things.

But I can't use my car right now (without paying a fine for breaking quarantine) so I use simracing.

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