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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

#541

Post by lhorie »

denton-scratch wrote: post #536
lhorie wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One take I heard about yoga that kinda applies here is "if yoga is injuring you, your understanding of it is wrong" I think the underlying issue with all these asian-spiritualism-turned-western-nouveau-health is that western people sometimes come in wanting things to be intense, clinical and goal-oriented. But that's literally the opposite of what most of what these disciplines are all about. Asian health upkeep prac…

Tai Chi is intense and goal-oriented; it's a martial arts system. The katas look like some kind of calm "yoga in motion", but the katas are not the core of Tai Chi.

I mean, yes and no. It's a martial arts system in the sense that it incorporates combative mechanics, and I do know of people who attempt to incorporate it into combat against resisting opponents, but some people take issue w/ calling it a martial art because of quack "masters" claiming to be invincible (but then getting their ass kicked within seconds by some MMA dude), and also partly because the popular calisthenic variety is not combat-oriented.

IMHO the biggest dissonance between western idea of "intense" vs eastern is that westerners think of intensity as optimizing for burst amplitude (in martial arts' case, specifically honing combative prowess), whereas easterners think of it as a matter of consistent holistic development (core strength, balance, attention, etc).

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#542

Post by denton-scratch »

throwaway34241 wrote: post #480
throwaway34241 wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once had an intense, drug-like experience from meditation and even have a straightforward (if speculative) explanation for what went on. Basically, one day I was curious and I decided to try the concentrate-on-your-breath exercise to see if I could go for ~30 minutes of focus (using a timer) without my mind wandering or any conscious thoughts. It was unexpectedly really, really, hard. I had to try again and again p…

Also, if it's possible to get into some profoundly different mental state after 1 day of meditation, it makes me a bit curious (and a bit concerned) about what could happen in 10 days... If anyone else has had a similar experience and could weigh in if they've found an extended course helpful that would be really appreciated. I found it very, very difficult to get to no conscious thoughts for 30 minutes, so much so t…

> no conscious thoughts

That's not mindfulness. I don't know what it's called; it sounds like some kind of auto-fascism.

Noticing thoughts, and noticing that you've been distracted, IS the practice. Everyone has the running dialogue, all the time. One remarkable thing about mindfulness is the way it shows just how fast that dialogue runs. I had no idea that it was possible for me to have 30 thoughts in a couple of seconds.

The practice is really Noticing.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#543

Post by denton-scratch »

cranesnake wrote: post #461
avalys wrote: post #387

This thread is blowing my mind, although not for the obvious reason. I’m just astounded by all the anecdotes people are mentioning here that suggest meditation, mindfulness, etc. actually work , even the secularized, distorted, popularized versions we get here in the West. Previously I just assumed this was all a bunch of wackadoo woo-woo bullshit designed to separate dissatisfied California yuppies from their money.…

Every therapist I've gone to has suggested this meditation, along with cognitive behavior therapy and medication.

Health services recommend CBT because it's cheap and quick. If it works. There's no other psychological treatment as cheap as CBT.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#544

Post by kup0 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #377
kup0 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like "awareness" might be a good term to describe what they are meaning by "conscious" I think they mean conscious as in "to be conscious of", for example: I exited my house while daydreaming/thinking about other things, so I was not "conscious of" the fact that I did not bring my keys with me aka I did not have awareness or was not operating in the moment/mindfully because my mind was elsewhere I think they'r…

Exactly. The only problem with this explanation is "daydreaming/thinking about other things" doesn't really imply "my mind was elsewhere" it often is "nowhere" in these terms. Oftentimes I'm not unaware of something just because I concentrated my full awareness on something else, I may be completely unaware of one thing (I should have been concentrated at) and just slightly aware (like of in an ordinary non-lucid dre…

Thank you for your reply- I know what you mean by "nowhere"- and actually that's a good way to put it. I was having a hard time articulating that myself but I agree- often my mind is "nowhere" instead of "elsewhere".

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#545

Post by denton-scratch »

beaconstudios wrote: post #433
stjohnswarts wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how when the west gets something and does its own interpretation that it's "watered" down as if the west can do nothing right and we're all spiritually and morally bankrupt idiots.

the West has its own spiritual traditions, that the type of people who meditation is pitched towards have completely abandoned. Mindfulness and such are spiritual practices stripped of their philosophical roots and repackaged in a consumable form. If SE Asian companies were selling the Lord's Prayer as a quick de-stressing technique for busy atheist office workers, I'd say they were missing the point too.

> Mindfulness and such are spiritual practices stripped of their philosophical roots

Mindfulness is only stripped of it's "philosophical" (read: spiritual) roots, if you strip them. Perhaps you are confusing commercialised "mindfulness" with mindfulness.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#546

Post by beaconstudios »

denton-scratch wrote: post #545
beaconstudios wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the West has its own spiritual traditions, that the type of people who meditation is pitched towards have completely abandoned. Mindfulness and such are spiritual practices stripped of their philosophical roots and repackaged in a consumable form. If SE Asian companies were selling the Lord's Prayer as a quick de-stressing technique for busy atheist office workers, I'd say they were missing the point too.

> Mindfulness and such are spiritual practices stripped of their philosophical roots Mindfulness is only stripped of it's "philosophical" (read: spiritual) roots, if you strip them. Perhaps you are confusing commercialised "mindfulness" with mindfulness.

Yeah I'm specifically talking about the commercialised form.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#547

Post by denton-scratch »

lhorie wrote: post #474
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…

The general theme I'm seeing in this thread is that vipassana is not for beginners, not a panacea, and not representative of buddhism/meditation/mindfulness as a whole. There are multiple people downthread comparing intensive vipassana retreats to diving head first into high impact sports. The problems that the OP experienced appear to be directly related to this dynamic (doing a 10 day retreat a mere two years into…

Vipassana is not like a week at a spa.

No ten-day meditation retreat is for beginners. I had been meditating daily for ten years before I ever did a seven-day retreat.

You certainly don't need a ten-day retreat. Even a one-day retreat is rather extreme, for a beginner. A two-hour session, starting with instruction, and ending with 30 minutes of practice, is a reasonable way to approach Vipassana as a beginner.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#548

Post by denton-scratch »

thinkyfish wrote: post #441

I've found that many people (myself included) start down the path of Vipassana(analysis) type of meditation too early or from a position where we weren't prepared for the consequences. I wish I had spent more time with metta(compassion) and samatha (calmness) meditation and build up stability/forbearance and kindness/compassion first before starting to de-construct experience. It is said that one type of meditation l…

Trungpa's presentation of Vipassana is quite different from most other versions; he has it emerging spontaneously from Samatha ('calm abiding').

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#549

Post by naasking »

> Yet, somewhere six or seven years into my practice, whatever progress I was making petered out. I was experiencing a growing sense of bodily agitation and began self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. Looking back, it was also during this time period that I had my first dissociative experiences, in which elements of my sense of self became separated in a way that impaired my ability to function.

Lots of good discussion in this thread on how meditation can lead to problems, particularly intensive sessions like retreats, but I think it's important to highlight this paragraph from the article.

If we accepted that meditation can induce alterered states of consciousness, like various medications can also do, it seems dangerous to wantonly start mixing such things without rhyme or reason. Dissociation seems almost inevitable.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#550

Post by denton-scratch »

i_dont_know_ wrote: post #273

I definitely feel bad for the guy, and I hope he got/gets the full help he needs. That having been said, I think there's something about meditation traditions that come from and are part of monastic traditions vs. meditation techniques that have been removed from their monastic roots. Basically, he was meditating at monk-like levels, and if he were actually in a monastery, he would probably have gotten help at some p…

> recovery groups and such, especially for meditation teachers

Some meditation teachers will fuck you up. Especially if you're a woman (most teachers are men), and especially if you're involved in tantra. Choosing a good teacher is critical, and very, very difficult.

Trungpa was a superb teacher. But even he left a trail of damaged students in his wake (and not just women).

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