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My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

danlawton.substack.com

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Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#521

Post by shadowfox »

babyblueblanket wrote: post #240
throwaway_zen wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the “mindfulness industry” is full of charlatans and poor advice Thank you for saying this. There is an endless, dangerous trend of dismissing monastic traditions like Zen and trying to extract meditation from its context, under the assumption that teachings and formal practice are unnecessary. It happens in scientific research on meditation as well as on popular McMindfullness.

Isn't this a common/popular stereotype in so many movies? Hoity-toity protagonist believes they're more educated/better than the savages who follow old tradition, then have to eat some humble pie. An age old tale we can't seem to learn.

There are equal number of these where after a short training montage the protagonist is not only an expert in said tradition, but in many cases better than the long term practitioners.

So maybe people are focusing on the second lesson rather than the first.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#522

Post by iakov »

abledon wrote: post #437
mcguire wrote: post #381

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... ). " In one of the only prospective studies to use qualitative methods to deliberately as…

10-day vipassana retreat was worst decision i did in my life lol

Why do you feel like this? I'm wondering because I'm considering going on one next year.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#523

Post by eurasiantiger »

denton-scratch wrote: post #516
rtikulit wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“A teacher when one is required, no teacher when one is not required,“ or something like that. :) The Buddha is an existence proof of the possibility of direct independent observation and understanding.

A unique point of evidence, 3,500 years old. Not really "proof" of anything. And as a teacher, The Buddha has certain limitations - like when you ask him "I'm having problems - am I doing this right?" - answer came there none.

What about pratyekabuddhas? And why would one expect The Buddha to have an answer other than The Buddha?

Sincerely, a stream-enterer.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#524

Post by MR4D »

ljm wrote: post #210
_y5hn wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > "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. I was unsettled yet intrigued by Britton’s message. Some of the adverse experiences she had described were similar to challenges I had faced. But, at this point I was a decade into my intensive mindfulness meditation practice. I was too deep to get out. " There's…

Intensive meditation does seem to be oxymoronic, too. Meditation will take you down many unknown paths: difficult paths, painful paths, joyful paths... An intensive meditation sounds more like a doing, like hitting the gym hard on a 30 day diet plan, rather than a state of being meditative and progressively turning inwards. You can't intensively find your inner peace, as an intense thing isn't a peaceful thing. To my…

Not the op, but “intense” has a different meaning here. Your comment is still valid for people who don’t understand it.

There’s a saying, “if you see the Buddha, kill the Buddha” which effectively addresses the comment that I think you are making.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#525

Post by huge87 »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #315
rolleiflex wrote: post #12

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 medit…

> it’s mostly about the negative side effects of meditation that the author believes is under-documented or under-reported Before this article, I didn't know meditation could have any adverse effect. Until today, I haven' read a single depiction, a single mention of meditation going wrong. Except in fictions. So this claim that one does not simply learn about the negative side effects of meditation sounds very plausi…

This is true at least in part due to the monetization of mindfulness, as a previous poster stated. The import of mindfulness into western culture strictly as a tool to manage stress has turned it into a cure all for general audiences.

There are certainly risks. A long retreat may exacerbate existing psychopathologies like depression due to the extended isolation.

I'd liken meditation to something like exercise. Exercise is good in general, but you still have to manage and work around injuries. I wouldn't suggest you walk 5 miles with a sprained ankle. And so it is with meditation.

But yes, I also figure this isn't talked about enough - especially in the context of mindfulness as a product.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#526

Post by [deleted] »

krageon wrote: post #514
Aerroon wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it? You're stuck with yourself every waking moment. Every evening when you go to sleep you're trying to do 'nothing' where any random idea can pop into your head. Every morning you wake up and start out with your own thoughts. Are those times uncomfortable and distressing? Every time I take a walk I'm stuck in my head too.

Most people I've met (perhaps this is a cultural thing) spend most of their waking life trying to stave off "boredom" (using phones, books, trying to mentally distract themselves towards specific things), which as far as I can tell now means "I'm alone with my own thoughts and nothing to distract me".

[deleted]

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#527

Post by AlwaysRock »

groby_b wrote: post #462
AlwaysRock wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got ADHD and 7 minutes of guided mediation in the mornings changed my life. I didnt believe it would when a doctor suggested it. But it did. I cant really explain it but I sure wish I knew about it earlier in my life.

Any kind of guided meditation? Specifically focused on aspects of ADHD? And how did it change your life?

This shitty one time cost app is what I use: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.meditation...

Basically I went from having little to no control over racing thoughts to being able to focus much better. That is hugely helpful in work situations but also in life. I can actually give attention to people when speaking with them.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#528

Post by naasking »

shmageggy wrote: post #92
cyberpunk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, essentially.

That just seems wildly unlikely to me. We're talking about a practice whose goal is to manipulate the brain, an organ that has been called the most complex object in the universe, something that centuries of science have only begin to understand, and that comes with vast and poorly understood diversity across people. There are first hand and scientific accounts of this happening, albeit rarely, to experienced and kno…

> We're talking about a practice whose goal is to manipulate the brain, an organ that has been called the most complex object in the universe, something that centuries of science have only begin to understand, and that comes with vast and poorly understood diversity across people.

You seem to be comparing meditation to neurosurgery. I have no idea why you think this comparison is valid. Meditation is voluntary control of attention, which you've been doing all of your life, not neurosurgery. No doubt using this in novel ways will present challenges.

> To claim that a certain group of monks has figured out a foolproof and risk-free formula for exploring altered states of consciousness seems implausible.

Why? Democracy was invented thousands of years ago, and we've been through many other systems of govenment since, and yet now everyone believes that democracy is the best way to organize a highly complex global system of intelligent agents. Does it seem implausible to you that a system of governance that's thousands of years old is still the best we know?

Frankly, I have no doubt that a tradition that's thousands of years old and that has had hundreds of thousands of adherents in that time, could have worked out most or all of the challenges it raises. That's a huge sample set if you were analyzing this scientifically, and these spiritual practices were quite systematically explored.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#529

Post by gonehome »

coffeecat wrote: post #513
gonehome wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's decent empirical evidence of an effect. It's not a huge surprise when you think about it - therapy works because of helping people change how they think. The reason it's often dismissed by skeptics is because it's often surrounded by a lot of religious woo and other nonsense so people often dismiss the entire thing. I have a pet hypothesis that it can make anxiety worse if you're not careful due to Hypervigil…

I think you're on to something! Personally, after a short amount of mindfulness meditation (perhaps about 10 hours cumulatively; never more than 30 minutes per day), I began to struggle with uncontrollable awareness of bodily sensations. My consciousness would gravitate uncontrollably toward a certain bodily sensation, and I became unable to decouple my consciousness from the sensation. The harder I'd try to focus on…

Yeah - that’s largely been my experience as well, and I agree.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#530

Post by denton-scratch »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #523
denton-scratch wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A unique point of evidence, 3,500 years old. Not really "proof" of anything. And as a teacher, The Buddha has certain limitations - like when you ask him "I'm having problems - am I doing this right?" - answer came there none.

What about pratyekabuddhas? And why would one expect The Buddha to have an answer other than The Buddha? Sincerely, a stream-enterer.

I was told that pratyekabuddhas are rather odd, and very rare.
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