Serenity Now!
My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
221–230 of 419 posts
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 su…
Mindfulness as practiced by people in the west in the fashionable fashion gives people a sense of superiority.
Thats the crux of what is spelled out at length, could the study be improved? Maybe.
But I see no evidence here of anything else, so until it is replicated or failed to replicate it will be my opinion.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#223When I read articles like this, I’m reminded that you can overdose by taking any extreme. It was a great read discussing their experience, but seems to warn a very small dedicated group who will take it to the extreme when very few will ever do so in the first place.
The stoics, buddhists, and taoists all had a similar idea of moderation of two extremes. The similar idea of having a dark night of the soul because you are imbalanced in some way leading to a crisis of faith. Even Shugendo/Yamabushi practices are a long extended journey where meditation is met with physical exhaustion. Thus it balances itself out.
It’s a lifelong practice and seems the awareness is doing its job of making one aware of the pain to work through. I don’t think Buddhism is the problem here, the over attachment to it seems to have left the author with suffering.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#224I can't help thinking that most of these examples of negative side effects are related to intensives rather than meditation/mindfulness itself. There's a world of difference between 20 minutes a day and 10 days in a retreat looking inward. Maybe it's just better for you in short bursts, not long marathons. I once experienced negative effects after joining a Buddhist meditation group while at university. Every time I…
I think stories like this relate to misunderstanding the point of meditation practice, the practice. The time spent may be helpful in of itself but really you're meant to do the practice and learn more about how your mind works and be able to have better control of your emotional states. Not retreat into meditating whenever you fell something other than contentment. Disappointing that you apparently didn't learn this from a Buddhist group and instead focused on the actual act of meditating as the useful thing.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#225Doing intensive meditation retreats is a Navy Seal hell-week for your mind. If people took that into consideration, they would be better prepared for the results. It's much better to start with a simple meditation practice or go on a shorter retreat (1-3 days), build up a base and periodically dip your feet in deep waters. There are too many people in the west who treat it like an extreme sport and get burned out in…
I think some of that is the type A crowd being competitive about their meditation practices. It’s partly status seeking whether they realize it or not. Coupled with a mental health crisis I can see that being a terrible combination. Most people aren’t going to go on retreats or try to climb the enlightenment ladder like this.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#226When I read articles like this, I’m reminded that you can overdose by taking any extreme. It was a great read discussing their experience, but seems to warn a very small dedicated group who will take it to the extreme when very few will ever do so in the first place. The stoics, buddhists, and taoists all had a similar idea of moderation of two extremes. The similar idea of having a dark night of the soul because you…
> I met her by happenstance, nine months before my disastrous retreat. She was leading a conference called “Do No Harm” in Los Angeles about adverse effects of meditation.
This among other parts make me wonder if the author doesn’t have another side to the story of their life. They mention the drinking and the drugs, but…
I wonder what would have happened had they not gone to this event, not known there was someone out there educating on the bad sides of meditation, etc.
No offense to the guy at all, but I consider the narrator unreliable.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#227I 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…
> 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. I found quite a few signs of egotism in the writer, so I'm not surprised that he experienced a great wrench in confronting his sense of selfhood. And then lashes out at the teachings…
I’m not sure if anyone could read that story and not at least heard some of the B-side track.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#228Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#229I can't help thinking that most of these examples of negative side effects are related to intensives rather than meditation/mindfulness itself. There's a world of difference between 20 minutes a day and 10 days in a retreat looking inward. Maybe it's just better for you in short bursts, not long marathons. I once experienced negative effects after joining a Buddhist meditation group while at university. Every time I…
I have a theory that meditation/mindfulness is essentially just an excercise in self-erasure. This can be beneficial to some degree in that we all need to erase those negative associations and question our assumptions. However, carried to an extreme, it can erase some of the associations we need to make in order to live and create extreme hyper-selfawareness. Or in other words, you open up your mind too much, your brains start to fall out.
Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)
#230Reminds me a lot of Overtraining Syndrome (OTS), the condition where your body stops responding positively to the stress of endurance sports and essentially stops recovering quickly. A 20 mile run no longer makes you faster, instead the fatigue from it just settles inside your body. I remember reading that while training for an ironman and getting a bit spooked. But then I realized that the folks who suffer from OTS…
Yeah I had similar thoughts about OTS when training for one myself — but I think it’s a lot easier to push into that hypothetical 99.99 percentile than you think.
Like maybe 1/20 people will ever do something as intense as a triathlon, in general. So we’re already at 95%. Then maybe 10% of triathletes will do a full Ironman. 99.5%. Of that top level who train for an Ironman, half are not training that hard and just having fun. 99.75%.
So if you’re someone who is training hard for an Ironman, you’re already well beyond the 99th percentile. But still only a small fraction of people who train for an Ironman have any issues with it. But if you’re at that level, you’re already close to the top and it’s not a crazy stretch to think you could get there if you got a bit carried away.
Similar with meditation, I think the analogy works. If you’re consistently meditating for 10min per day for several straight months, that’s more than most people would ever do.