Dangers of Meditation

[hapl808]

I do think this is just kind of amusing (even if it's discussing serious illness and death), because of how often we get told to meditate, or do DNRS, or yoga. And that if it didn't work for us, then we didn't do it right, or hard enough, or long enough.

"Oh, you only meditated for 20 minutes a day? Well, do you even want to get better?"

Meanwhile on NPR:

A new podcast examines the perils of intense meditation​

 

[wabi-sabi]

Or for the heavy duty academic version, Brown University has a Meditation Safety Tookbox.

https://sites.brown.edu/britton/

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Wow..............fascinating

Imagining how exhausting such an undertaking would be.

 

[L'engle]

I remember hearing about those retreats 20 years ago. Seems like a bad idea.
I remember somebody who said they were reprimanded for making snow angels because it was 'a form of communication' which was forbidden at the retreat.

More like the dangers of joining a cult?

 

[maddietod]

This is nuts! Some random guy decided to make his fortune selling 10 day trips where you sit perfectly still with your eyes closed for 10 hours a day, and oh by the way we only feed you twice a day and we wake you up at 4 am. The sad thing is that his plan worked. For him.

 

[pamojja]

10-day vipassana retreats worked also for me, almost 30 years ago. So much, I did about 1 year of them, concluded with 2 years in Burmese forest meditation monastery. Without hearing the podcast, I too saw many serious shortcomings with the original organization I practiced with. Therefore, was about 10 years later kicked out by a high-ranking teacher of them.

I wanted to somehow bring something back, learned in silent meditation. Therefore enrolled in a training of Focusing-therapy, which sort of grasped the dynamics of personal change occurring also in sincere meditation - but in a counselling setting. However, myself could never touch that deep again. Probably for the simple fact, that hourly settings - even in therapeutic training - could be to daily mediations on a 1 : 10 ratio at the most only, in my case.

Found much meditation guidance in the original scriptures (translated, since I didn't want to learn an ancient language for that), and therefore my constructive criticism of the organization, finally kicking me out, was based on that.

Almost needless to say: one of my valid points were, that such serious meditation in the old scriptures was only considered beneficial with lots of preparatory practices long before heavy-core cushion pracice. And practicing for good health only, heretic and illusionary.

Despite so much in retreats, and now almost 30 years daily practice, I of course came down with chronic diseases (PAD, COPT, ME/CFS) at older age. Which I could bring the worst symptoms into remission again, with an all-out life-style changing and comprehensive supplementation approach. Now for 15 years. PEMs, however, took the longest, 10 years, to get rid again.

 

[pamojja]

Having glanced over the transcript, exactly my points I wanted to bring to the attention, to the then still living main teacher. He chose to ignore. Or rather, started to merely warn from aggravations with former psychological difficulties or substance abuse.

 

[pamojja]

Some random guy decided to make his fortune selling 10 day trips where you sit perfectly still with your eyes closed for 10 hours a day, and oh by the way we only feed you twice a day and we wake you up at 4 am. The sad thing is that his plan worked. For him.

A bid more nuanced. SN. Goenka comes from an industrial family in then Burma, and got his industries confiscated by the military junta. Since he already practiced - with which he got rid of life-long migraine, where nothing else allegedly had helped - and translated for other Indians in Burma, with the late meditation teacher Sayagyi U Ba Khin (the first of a tradition of teaching vipassana as and to lay people), he had more time to assist his teacher. When returning to India. He started to give such curses for nothing than donations. The rest is history.

Since it became so huge, with more and more voluntary assisting teachers with less training, it had to be standardized, where of course their quality suffered. One objective in this standardization was to make it more strict, for deterring some Indians coming for food only. For psychological differently textured westerners, this more militant trill can be quite devastating. Though as a first-timer or with medical exemption, one still gets dinners too. Also your expected to meditate from at least 5 AM only.

Other vipassana traditions in the west were mainly founded by former western monks, who often got additional psychological training to assist such sad accidents during or after retreats. Which still do happen there too. The difference is in charging $$$$,- for a ten-day retreat, while on Goenka's retreat one is only allowed to give a donation, as one see it fits, after a completed ten-day retreat.

 

[Jyoti]

I recently read of a man with a serious meditation practice (he says--60 hours a week on average) who found a correlation between more meditation and intracranial hypertension. The more he meditated, the worse it got. When he stopped meditating, the symptoms went away. His explanation, if I recall correctly, was that his practice dramatically increased blood flow to the brain and with any kind of stenosis or occlusion to the vessels that drain the brain, he was causing himself heightened pressure.

Moderation in all things?

 

[pamojja]

Moderation in all things?

If one considered and implemented all preparations for serious practice beforehand - which most haven't heard of before a first retreat - one is asked to balance all main 5 mental faculties: faith, effort, mindfulness, relaxation, and wisdom.

Too much straining effort could cause imbalance and headache also in a short session. And the longer strained, the likelier to accumulate in hypertension.