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

My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

danlawton.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 419 posts

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#71

Post by detourdog »

dijit wrote: post #58
detourdog wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a hard time with this article. The pool the subjects were pulled from is suspect to me. They also didn’t interview any Rabbis, Priests, Mullahs,…. They study spirituality of a small subset of people pursuing it.

Mindfulness as practiced by the typical western audience (largely secular, young professionals) is well represented. If you want to take something else away or are looking for alternative discussions about the nature of spirituality itself: go ahead, but that's not the study for that. Only mindfulness meditation as practiced in western society in the fashionable way.

I disagree. The pool seems to be derived from students and professionals of mindfulness. I believe mindfulness can be practiced outside of that group. That group also seems like the most confused group of people practicing mindfulness.

Mindfulnesss practiced in a fashionable way seems like the bottom of the barrel of mindfulness.

Maybe I did read the article with the wrong point of view. I thought it was posted to support the notion that Mindfulness is flawed.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#73

Post by theodric »

coldtea wrote: post #48
Lacerda69 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

real Buddhism hasn't been tried yet

It has. My distinction is not about doing it well either or going to reach the "real" nirvana or whatever. I'm seeing it in the anthropological sense, as a particular historical artifact. It's truth is in doing it because you were steeped in a Buddhist tradition/environment, as opposed as doing it as consumer lifestyle choice/hobby.

"Real communism has never been tried" is a meme. GP is referencing this meme.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#74

Post by thih9 »

HeckFeck wrote: post #59
me551ah wrote: post #27

What he experienced is actually expected, deeper states of meditation bring out even harder experiences. Meditation is marketed in the west as some sort of a relaxation pill, designed to cure anxiety and other mental ailments. It's actually not. Meditation is a hardcore exercise for the mind and if your mind is not strong enough then deeper states will break you.

Curious. It sounds like meditation has been misappropriated in the same way as therapy. Therapy _should_ bring up difficult emotions and experiences from the past because they are often the root of dysfunction and frustration in the present.

There's additional layer of complexity: both "meditation" and "therapy" exist in various different forms. The above description might fit some methods better and some less.

E.g. some meditation techniques do focus on relaxation; some therapy types focus less on emotions and experiences from the past and look at the present instead; etc.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#75

Post by CitizenKane »

coldtea wrote: post #32
wodenokoto wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely something a Thai business man would do though.

Even the Thai businessman (and the whole country) has been quite removed from the culture that made Buddhism have a meaning there (as opposed to an empty shell). Though, even so, he'd still be far closer to it than someone in San Francisco who adopted it as a consumer lifestyle good...

I'm not sure where your experience is from, but Buddhism is an integral part of Thai life and culture and I've seen this play out on a pragmatic level in many ways.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#76

Post by richiebful1 »

samastur wrote: post #67
HeckFeck wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious. It sounds like meditation has been misappropriated in the same way as therapy. Therapy _should_ bring up difficult emotions and experiences from the past because they are often the root of dysfunction and frustration in the present.

And then what? I'm genuinely curious as a loved one rejects therapy exactly because she already knows what causes of her depression are and does not see any use in debating them further as they only bring her down. I don't have experience or knowledge to explain how it would help her.

A good therapist doesn't just talk about root causes, imo. A good therapist talks about healthy coping mechanisms, and ways to get out of negative thought cycles

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#77

Post by denton-scratch »

I have been told that Trungpa said "they always run".

The context was people on retreats jumping up from their meditation cushion and running away as fast as they can, not to reach some destination, but just to escape. I've never witnessed this, but I never did many retreats.

The practice wasn't the jhanas, it was meditation on emptiness. The idea is that when you achieve a certain level of realisation into emptiness, a sudden and irreversible change occurs, like a seismic shift, which results in terror. The practioner runs mainly to get away from the place where it happened (i.e., the cushion). Apparently they keep running until they feel safe.

I was told that the jhanas (roughly, single-pointed concentration) were particularly risky, because it's easy to do them wrong. Note that the jhanas are not a type of mindfulness practice; the author seems to conflate them.

> mainstream branding of mindfulness meditation as a panacea for all our woes.

The fundamental purpose of mindfulness practice in Buddhism is to convince yourself that your sense of selfhood is false. Because we are so strongly attached to the sense of selfhood, achieving that conviction is going to be a wrench. In western psychology, the loss of a sense of selfhood is called "dissociation", and is a pathology. McMindfulness ignores all that.

I once had negative experiences of meditation on emptiness; I was told to stop doing it. I'm quite certain that my experiences were not the result of any realisation!

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#78

Post by vanderZwan »

lr4444lr wrote: post #60
me551ah wrote: post #27

What he experienced is actually expected, deeper states of meditation bring out even harder experiences. Meditation is marketed in the west as some sort of a relaxation pill, designed to cure anxiety and other mental ailments. It's actually not. Meditation is a hardcore exercise for the mind and if your mind is not strong enough then deeper states will break you.

Sounds as conveniently unfalsifibale as any more patent pseudoscience.

Uh, how exactly? What's unfalsifiable about self-reflection leading to painful confrontations, or those confrontations being provocative in ways that can manifest differently depending on the person? To name just one superficial aspect of mindfulness.

Are you claiming that sports exercises are unfalsifiable? Because the principle is the same, except that we're talking about the mind instead of physical fitness.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#79

Post by hutzlibu »

samastur wrote: post #67
HeckFeck wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious. It sounds like meditation has been misappropriated in the same way as therapy. Therapy _should_ bring up difficult emotions and experiences from the past because they are often the root of dysfunction and frustration in the present.

And then what? I'm genuinely curious as a loved one rejects therapy exactly because she already knows what causes of her depression are and does not see any use in debating them further as they only bring her down. I don't have experience or knowledge to explain how it would help her.

"because she already knows what causes of her depression are and does not see any use in debating them further as they only bring her down."

Hard to advice without further knowing details, but I could relate in a way, that the global state of the world causes me depression, but I cannot change the root cause. But I can change my attitude towards things. Deal with the problems I can solve and accept the rest. Spot patterns, where I indulge myself into misery and choose a different track (if possible).

And if we are talking about a childhood trauma, this person wants to avoid, then you can compare it to a splinter that is still in the flesh, causing misery and infection - removing the splinter will hurt and it will bleed - but after the splinter is gone, the wound can heal for good.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#80

Post by fluoridation »

Karunamon wrote: post #65
lr4444lr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds as conveniently unfalsifibale as any more patent pseudoscience.

Anything as subjective as one's own mindset interpreted by oneself is incompatible with the scientific method in the first place. It's not the right tool for the job because it is impossible to objectively measure the results. That does not make those results any less real.

"Real" in what way? I would say that something is definitely real if I can agree with other people that it's there, while other things can at best be put in the "maybe" pile.

Whatever you experience while meditating, other people won't be able to experience it, so it can't go in the "definitely real" pile. So the fact that it can't be studied scientifically definitely does make it less real, in the sense that your can't say that it's real with the same confidence, even when you're the one experiencing it.

Post reply on HN