Ten years of trying to meditate

I have practiced Autogenic Training for years on and off; for the past two years I have been practicing it regularly. I have observed very positive effects on my life, particularly a growing sense of confidence and enjoyment in and for life. When physical and emotional tensions are let go, old memories come back vividly in my mind, new hopes emerge, and my life seems to be made up of fragments that, on the whole, seem to make sense. My tension headaches are gone, poof, vanished.

Autogenic training is an easy practice, much easier than traditional meditation practices, the teachings of which are, at least to my Western mind, impenetrable. I have read quite a few books on meditation, breathing, jhanas (sp?), listened to practitioners and teachers, and for the life of me I cannot make sense of 95 percent of it. In part, I think, my confusion occurs because those teachings don't make a lot of sense, there is an intellectual short-circuit that causes people to create concepts and practices that don't make sense because they have to "chase" or follow or build on other concepts and practices that don't make a lot of sense. A vicious circle of nonsense.

Something similar happens in martial arts. Movies and books showed the mystical and magical abilities of traditional martial arts practitioners: breathing, ki energy, horse postures, "watch how the eagle soars." I think, at least for Westerners, the pinnacle and climax was reached with Bruce Lee, who philosophized and kicked (but never on stage against other "experts") at the same time. And not with the brutal methods of Western boxing, but with a single finger. But, as we saw in mixed martial arts fights, empiricism-as usual and as expected-won out against magic, spirits and brutal training that made no sense; fighters who trained following empirical methods of training and fighting (develop the methods, test them, accept them if they work, abandon them if they don't) were throwing traditional martial arts practitioners out the proverbial window.

I would encourage many of those who have tried traditional meditation for years and faced all sorts of problems, from losing months to developing pathological conditions, to try Autogenic Training instead: easy, rewarding, accessible. And it works.

I can't reply to your other comment, so I'll do it here, and this will likely be my last comment in this thread, because I don't think you're being a very good discussion partner.

I explicitly noted that there are probably rare cases where meditation leads to negative experiences (and I am not distinguishing between traditional methods and so-called secular methods, the risk should be the same for both, according to my model). But that is my point: these will be rare, and not extreme, except in people with pre-existing mental health issues. Normal, healthy people simply do not develop psychosis from meditation practice. Furthermore, there is no body of research or evidence known to me that shows that the (small in both effect size and frequency) risks are changed by the meditation practice or tradition. The research that we have shows small effects for meditation in any direction, but is overall positive regardless of tradition. My proposed experiment was an attempt at distinguishing between secular methods and traditional Buddhist methods, in an attempt to find any evidence of the massive effect size you claimed (5-10%!). This is the crux if the disagreement, not "can meditation EVER be dangerous in ANY circumstances", but "Under what circumstances, and how dangerous". I say, "Only in rare cases where there are underlying mental health issues regardless of tradition". You say, "Commonly (5-10%), for people who don't do Buddhism, and almost(?) never for those following Buddhist teachings". (I'm not actually sure if you think Buddhism removes all risk or is just much less risky, but either way I disagree.)

You made an outrageous claim that you've still provided no evidence for, and you've constructed a straw man of my argument to knock down. You're not arguing in good faith.

I'd be happy to reset if you want to discuss the relative difference in risks between Buddhist and secular methods (evidence on other meditation traditions would also be welcome), but I'm not going to argue with you about the words I've written and their plain meaning.

> Normal, healthy people simply do not develop psychosis from meditation practice.

Again, this is a huge bold statement, on what basis are you making it? You are the one making outrageous claims, and constructing strawmen. If I am a bad discussion partner, you are a dire one.

> not a fan of the snark but the content is great

In all seriousness, I think my snark was in reaction to my impression that the content was really lacking. It feels like the intent was more to bulk out content and cultivate an audience than actually help or usefully inform your readers. You described a very common problem at some length, and some things which _didn't_ resolve your search, and then without reaching a solution, you just tell us to come back next time for more content ... possibly but not necessarily including what actually helped you develop a practice.

I empathize with the unsatisfying search. But I question the value of describing _only_ the unsatisfying portion of the search as a means to promote your next article.

I'm inherently a skeptical person. There are far too many arguments and lines of reasoning that make sense, but are wrong. :D To that end, I will often try and argue against things that make sense to me.

And don't take my claim too strong, here. I obviously don't /know/. I have some strong doubts, sure; but doubts are not themselves evidence against. Your very point on weights not absolutely working is essentially my point.

I bring in consciousness, as that is what it sounds like when you say that one needs to think on something. Consciously and deliberately. Otherwise, I can think a lot on a program I'm wanting to write, but make zero progress on it.