Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

harpers.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 289 posts

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#111

Post by colordrops »

bayindirh wrote: post #110
colordrops wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mindfulness meditation as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh; pieced together practices from dozens of other meditation books. Lots of reading in philosophy. Some limited study of the occult and magick. Ritualistic psytrance parties; LSD and mushrooms.

Mixing practices considered harmful even if practices itself are not. Every practice regimen has a bigger system in work so, mixing and matching can create havoc on your body. Adding LSD and mushrooms on top of it is just lighting a big fire and calling storm on you. I'm not against LSD, mushrooms or other practice systems, but never seen any positive outcome from these kinds of experiments. Please, don't do it.

Understood. This was over 20 years ago. I've been recently picking up meditation practices again and approaching them unadulterated. Focusing on a particular type of buddhist meditation at the moment.

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#113

Post by blobbers »

thevardanian wrote: post #66
asymptosis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you're right, but I wasn't operating within a Buddhist or Hindu paradigm at that time. I was exploring a wide variety of practices as part of a novitiate with the Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros. Even if someone had told me that it was risky, I still would have had the attitude of, thanks, but I need to find this out for myself from experience rather than just take your word for it.

And that's fine. In fact that is itself a valid argument within the Buddhist/Hindu context. I would even argue it's basis of both "religions"; proof through self experience. So again, the point here is that it's important to be knowledgeable about whatever subject matter that you're taking part in, not least because of being respectful, but because that way whatever task is being undertaken can be done "correctly". I…

As someone ignorant, and I mean no disrespect by saying this...

this thread reads like an H.P. Lovecraft or Dan Brown novel. Please keep this thread alive, it's fascinating!

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#114

Post by blobbers »

asymptosis wrote: post #78
IAmGraydon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure it wasn’t the text color/background combination that caused your psychotic break?

hahaha :D

I clicked this way back link, and it reminded me of what the internet used to be.

It was so much cooler.

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#116

Post by rasengan0 »

Let's face it, unfortunate suffering arises. Not everyone is cut out for Guriji's 12 hour meditation session. I'm not. How about 2 seconds of meditation? What is meditation? How long? Where? in a 102 degree F room or subzero little hut? Are you alone in solitary or with people? Is focusing on Guriji's toy poodle a part of the style? Seriously are you really ready ? It's not a game or vacation to shangri la. I think a little self-awareness would have helped prevent these tragedies. There were errors in judgement with the meditation center in not contacting the attendee's provider regardless of sign off (imho with inpatient psychiatric ward, MBSR, basic Satipatthana/Vipassana experience) All of my meditation teachers, instructed: practice to your comfort level. Heck they let you sit in a chair?! It's not a race; there's no winning. Consistency, not more is key. I have not met any 20 year meditators who are "enlightened." They still go to the toilet like everyone else. The Dalai Lama gave good advice in the reply, study and understand what you're getting into before leaping into practice. Well, who knows maybe we can extrapolate Britton's 71.6% "moderate to severe impairment in their day-to-day functioning" on all meditating monks and nuns of the world. What a crazy psychotic bunch! No actually, I'd pin that on the "mindfulness" industry and the infantile society we have become.

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#117

Post by medstrom »

bayindirh wrote: post #97
majjgepolja wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Some of the methods try to modify the behavior or emotion without solving or removing the root cause. This practically buries them deeper and adds an emotional deflection layer preventing person him/herself or other people approaching it. This causes the emotion to ferment underneath that layer, and since it's prevented from venting itself, the person sometimes emotionally deforms more and everything becomes harder t…

Freud's hypothesis that you need to "vent" your emotions, called catharsis theory, has been discredited since like 2002.

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#118

Post by h0l0cube »

calt wrote: post #107
h0l0cube wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Goenka schools provide a questionnaire to determine mental health and any medications the student will need. Each teacher is different in who they will let in, and all those schools are volunteer run. I can see that some teachers could be reckless with course admissions, but all teachers would have managed multiple courses before, and would know the difficulties for everyone if they let someone in who has a histo…

The Goenka centers do have a filtering questionnaire, but I think they tend to just get so incredibly much wrong on their handling of psychological problems. It's infuriating. I will recommend that a friend does one, after giving some warnings, and making sure to talk with them afterwards, but I wouldn't blindly recommend anybody do one.

I imagine mental health issues are handled differently between schools and within them by the different teachers, but it's probably something that could be improved upon. There's probably also some merit to 'riding out the storm' for some people, but anyone with a family history of psychosis, or unmanageable psychiatric illness might want to think twice about attending, or at least be prepared to leave the course at first signs of trouble.

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#119

Post by medstrom »

h0l0cube wrote: post #83
galaxyLogic wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A true guru is one who has attained realization him/her self. But isn't that what all gurus say, that they are "true gurus". They would further warn you against anybody who doesn't agree with them as a "false guru"

Goenka (of the schools mentioned in the article) warns against gurus multiple times in his video lectures, and went out of his way to not dress or act like one. From what I heard, the recordings of him were by the insistence of other students, and wished that the actual teaching was taken up by a new generation. Unfortunately, playing back recordings scales very well, and they almost exclusively proxy as a teacher at…

What's your thesis here? It looks like you just want us to like this Goenka person.

Re: Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation

#120

Post by bayindirh »

medstrom wrote: post #117
bayindirh wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the methods try to modify the behavior or emotion without solving or removing the root cause. This practically buries them deeper and adds an emotional deflection layer preventing person him/herself or other people approaching it. This causes the emotion to ferment underneath that layer, and since it's prevented from venting itself, the person sometimes emotionally deforms more and everything becomes harder t…

Freud's hypothesis that you need to "vent" your emotions, called catharsis theory, has been discredited since like 2002.

Venting may be the wrong word. Since what I tried to say is not Freud's catharsis. Let' me try to explain again:

Every emotion/trauma affects you and these effects manifest somehow. These effects are self-regulated via feedbacks like "I feel X", "I'm not feeling OK", "Hey, this makes me happy" or "Why do I feel like that", etc.

Ignoring an emotion's or secondary effect's presence removes the self regulation circuit hence, allows it to run amok. Since person trained him/herself to ignore these emotions or its manifestations with great effectiveness, wounds grow deeper while practitioner pretends it's OK.

At the last stage, person permanently ignores the problem and pointing to it results in violent responses from the affected person.

I've met with people these symptoms. All of them practiced or was practicing self-affirmation / self validation practices with minimal or no supervision.

Every practice, done mindlessly is dangerous. Including Zen, Yoga and others.

Post reply on HN