Anxiety is in your body, not your mind

I'm a bit puzzled as to why the article suggests we should imagine ourselves as Neanderthals instead of homo sapiens? I understand that homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals and people today may have a few percent of Neanderthal DNA but the most relevant evolutionary context for us is just an earlier version of us, surely.

> People commit suicide for all sorts of reasons.

That's sadly true. Sorry for you if you've faced a suicide of someone close. I definitely think some people can practice some forms of safe types of meditation safely without ill effects, even if they don't have any awareness of the dangers. While some types of meditation are dangerous (it's hard to say if that's most or all types because I don't know what everyone else is practicing) and I think you need yoga for all but the safest and shortest ones, I think if you don't try any additional techniques beyond a very simple, and short duration meditation, you might be OK, even without doing it yoga. it's definitely possible but I wouldn't recommend it just to be on the safe side to cover all the cases.

just as an example like you think something so simple is just focusing on the feeling of your breath at the tip of your nose you thing is going to be safe for you. But if you do that long enough or if you combine that with another type of breath or another type of sound the effects can be really really extraordinarily powerful and you can begin to open up your body to all sorts of things and draw all sorts of energy and information into yourself. So you need to be careful and you need to know what you're doing and keep it short and I think yoga helps you both handle the changes that can go on as well as it encodes a sort of relaxed mindset where you don't want to go beyond your limits so you not going to try to push some technique, you know, out of frustration because you think you don't get it and if you push it you might injure something. just like with a physical sport like if you push things in this mental you or energetic space you can definitely injure things as well.

Having said all that , i definitely think the same technique can affect different people to different degrees.

> Just because one woman attended a meditation retreat before committing suicide doesn't prove it was the cause. Is there a statistically significant increase in the suicide rate following meditation retreats?

No no no I wasn't saying that. Sorry for you that you felt that way about it, but the meaning I was trying to get across was reflecting my own reaction to that article.

When I read that article I had quite a reaction to it, and what I've said above is only a summary or one aspect of that.

To try to help you out with seeing my view of the reaction I had to that article, I'll just try to recall that here.

I read that article and was sort of deeply moved by it. I was skeptical that the meditation was her problem at first, but the more I read the article, and recalled my own knowledge of these things, and also read how retreat practitioners noted these symptoms in many people, I started to form an idea that I intended to post on that discussion but posted a sort of summary above. The idea is based around the reality of "kundalini sickness" (which in any case I see as just one aspect or symptom of what can go wrong) and the sort of mania that can attach itself to uncareful practice of kundalini related techniques, other techniques, things related to opening chakras, and other things.

There's a lot of detail that's probably too much to post here, and in any case I'm not inclined to right now, plus I'm allowing some ideas and clarity to form for myself, I guess, about a lot of this stuff...but basically, after reading that article, I concluded it was likely that unsafe practice of these techniques could overwhelm people with energetic bandwidth and information, as well as overwhelm their nervous system. One of the symptoms of such energetic overwhelming is the mania I believe was described in the article as one of her symptoms (staying up for days, not eating), and one of the symptoms of the information overloading is psychosis as I believe was also described in the article as one of her symptoms.

I'm not trying to say for sure that this caused her illness that contributed to her suicide decision, but it definitely contributed in my view.

Aside from the causal question of suicide (which, to be strict, has to be someone's decision, so their decision is the ultimate cause, but of course there can be all sorts of reasons and factors that they choose to contribute to their decision), I'm sure that practicing these techniques in the sort of careless and unaware way that I describe above, that I'm pretty sure is common in the West (and actually probably pretty common everywhere in the world in this age), is extremely fucking dangerous, as I've said, and also a direct cause of a lot of pathologies and illnesses (at least mental illnesses) that people report after meditation retreats. I really think it's that simple: that careless application of these techniques can lead to bad outcomes, really bad outcomes, sadly, for people. And I think that's a direct result of how the west has productized it, rather than keeping it in touch with its roots and all the knowledge and wisdom and safety that surrounded it.

To be totally clear I'm not saying that "caused" her suicide, and I'm not even sure it contributed in her case to her suicide decision, but I'm totally sure that it contributed to the cluster of symptoms she presented (mania, psychosis) around the same time.

Thanks for your time to read this and I'm sorry for you that you got me wrong the first time. Hope you have a good day. I do have a lot more to say about these topics but it's probably not appropriate for this board, and I definitely don't feel like chatting more about it now. If you want to know more about this or are interested in this stuff, I reckon you join a yoga class, and then maybe you could search for kundalini sickness, just as an example of the sorts of things that can go wrong, but I wouldn't recommend trying this stuff, without yoga! :) :P xx

Yes, and that is a very bad idea as it often makes it much worse over time. Many people I have talked to who were or are drinkers, talked about their hangover as a certain weird feeling they can only stop by drinking. When asked a more detailed description, they describe full blown anxiety attacks. And they need more and more drink to stop them. I got many people to see a doctor and to stop drinking to attack anxiety that way. Liver damage apparently also makes it worse so... There are hard alcoholics who probably have this too but they also have physical withdrawel which is a much more difficult path; most people I mentioned above were having a few drinks per day to not feel like dying from this 'hangover' and could stop the same day without withdrawel (using alprazolam and therapy for instance).

Someone did the same for me a long time ago and I am very thankful for that still so I try to do it as well when I see possible sufferers. It is pretty crazy how little people know about it still, but they do light up when I describe all their symptoms.

Did you try medication?

Didn't read the article in detail, but as someone who is super problematic as far anxiety goes, I can safely say that tai chi practice does help me for the very reasons you've given : activating parasympathetic system by breathing, active relaxation, connecting mind to body and vice versa, grounding myself (ie connecting my sensations to environment), being in movement (that is, your brain is not thinking about stress alone, but participates in a complete action with your body), etc. (and not the chi/spiritual thing that brings everything together and explains the roots of the stuff but is, often, totally transformed by occidental culture into nonsensical bullshit).

But that's my own sample point, just works for me. It's tough to push yourself to practice half an hour a day or so. You have to have the will and when you're tired it's difficult :-/