Meditation Is a Psychological Stressor and Should Not Be Recommended

[Cloudhands]

lmao

*a mild amount* its always been the neurotics who come in and say they did the one exercise they learned 3 times a day and had dreams of weird people visiting them.

The Dark Knight of the Soul

For some, meditation has become more curse than cure. Willoughby Britton wants to know why.

www.theatlantic.com

Buddhist Meditation and the Dark Night of the Soul

A "dark night" in this case is a disturbing or damaging meditation experience. How do these happen?

www.learnreligions.com

It's not even controversial that meditation can destroy your mind. It's even acknowledged by major religions that its a thing that happens and you need to meditate more (lol) to get yourself out of it. Redditors even know of people killing themselves over it and this is all from a quick 10 second google search. I wonder how many more meditation horror stories exist that are actively ignored and covered up.

Where i practice they always reccomend meditating less if you experience discomfort. Its like working out, theres tons of stories of people injuring themselves, but being mindful shouldnt be touted as harmful. Ive never personally seen a case of it harming someone, but ive heard about like 2 people experiencing psychosis. Theres just an overwhelming majority. No more need for this back and fourth tho ive made my thoughts quite clear

 

[AlexR]

*a mild amount* its always been the neurotics who come in and say they did the one exercise they learned 3 times a day and had dreams of weird people visiting them.

Where i practice they always reccomend meditating less if you experience discomfort. Its like working out, theres tons of stories of people injuring themselves, but being mindful shouldnt be touted as harmful. Ive never personally seen a case of it harming someone, but ive heard about like 2 people experiencing psychosis. Theres just an overwhelming majority. No more need for this back and fourth tho ive made my thoughts quite clear

Yes, you have made it quite clear that you know of a shocking amount of people that have experienced psychosis from something that is sold as harmless and only beneficial. Someone spraining their ankle or straining their bicep is not the same as developing psychosis lmao. If I knew of two people that developed psychosis from an activity, I would never go anywhere near that activity. The only times I have heard of or know someone that developed psychosis, it was either from drugs or meditation. Just truly ask yourself if you can name anything else that can cause mental illness in people you know besides drug and meditation lolol. I'd bet good money that you can't. It blows my mind how willing people like you are to defend things and say they're perfectly harmless when you know and have been told by the people teaching you that they cause psychosis. Talk about being a sheep.

 

[YourUniverse]

Hmm

 

[Peater]

I'm intrigued by the long dark night of the soul. When i had terrible anxiety years ago that's what i would have described that as.

 

[Quelsatron]

don't let Big Monk see this thread

 

[dhtsupreme]

In my research, and after having multiple people contact me in my past business to fix themselves of the serious damages they received from meditating, I discovered that meditation-induced psychosis is a very common phenomena and is completely brushed under the rug. This is exactly the same case with the irresponsible recommendation of psychedelics to resolve trauma or to "discover" yourself, and when people are irreversibly harmed, their experiences are ignored and not looked into more. Also, "science" does not say anything. It is a method for discovering truth, not a religion that dictates what is right and what is wrong. Cultures with history of meditation acknowledge that there are serious negative effects, they just don't care and chalk it up to some spiritual mumbo jumbo nonsense. Easy to explain something away when you can just blame it on demons or the energy of the universe and brush it under the rug.

Not going to work for everyone. It wouldn't work for you. You'd get psychosis and even higher serotonin

You call it spiritual mumbo jumbo nonsense but when you focus on your body you feel that "warmth" or "chi". Your awareness increases and can better feel your body. If someone has a dark past, there's going to be dark thoughts and feelings that come out. Meditation is used to sort through that.

 

[dhtsupreme]

In the reddit post you linked @AlexR . try reading the whole thread. This user answered it perfectly and helped the thread starter

level 1
Slowmovinglight

1 year ago·edited 1 year ago

Is there any way you can avoid this in general life, guaranteed? Of course not, sometimes some people experience periods of depression, hopelessness and fear. Feeling depressed and hopeless and afraid it might happen certainly isn't an effective strategy for avoiding it, you'll agree?
"The dark night" is a rare and unlikely phenomenon discussed in meditation circles that can be "triggered" for a small few people by intense meditative practice. Other things that can trigger it are losing a job, starting a new career, the birth of a child, the end of a relationship, the death of a parent, the start of a new relationship, leaving home for college, there's many things.
It's an acute depressive episode caused by a dramatic and intense life changing experience. Meditation can induce dramatic life changing experiences. Almost all of them result in increased hope, euphoria and bravery for the majority of people when experienced. Sometimes, for a small number of people a small number of times, there is the opposite initial result, that has to be manouvered through, before the stormy waters pass and you reach still waters on the other side. But it's a minority and unlikely experience that for most of the small number of people that happen to experience it lasts a short amount of time, and can be navigated smoothly through to something beautiful on the other side.
Say you want to try rock climbing. Most people just climb rocks and have fun, nothing bad ever really happens, they just get better at rock climbing and have fun. Almost all people. Still, the internet would have you believe there's a 101% chance all the skin is going to be ripped off your body and all your bones smashed to smithereens, guaranteed.
You'll be fine. You can stop any time you want. Do a little bit for six weeks, see how you feel. There's no call to fear monsters in the shadows because 100 people on the internet spend all their time telling everyone everywhere a monster in the shadows took a really big bite out of them that one time and it'll get you too. There's a few billion people on the internet. Work out the odds. You'll be fine. Nothing bad is going to happen. Just have fun. It's meant to be fun. And for almost everyone it is.



level 2
Chairman_Mittens

1 year ago

That was an amazing response and beautifully written! Thank you for spending the time to write that, you've alleviated all my fears about this. Thanks again.
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level 2
FriendlyImplement

1 year ago

Now THIS is actually a helpful and coherent answer. Thank you. Hope OP sees this.
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[ArtIt]

Meditation has its benefits, though I have never been able to do it more than a several days in a row. The meditations start irritating me and I quit. Ocasional meditation surely brings benefits. If I just watch the second hand on a wall clock for a 3 minutes in the morning I can do during the day much more, including easily switching between the tasks. I did once a transcendental meditation on a train going for a job interview, and I had a slim chances of getting the job, but the meditation made me calm enough to read the thoughts of the people who did interview me. So I got the job.

 

[Zpol]

I wonder what type of meditation everyone is talking about. In my experience it's a very broad term and most people seem to think it has something to do with quieting the mind or else something spiritual. One thing that's for sure is most people are not on the same page when they discuss it.
My sister says meditation is thinking solely about the present moment, and not what she has to do in the future or what has happened in the past.
For me, I do slow breathing and count my breaths, I make no attempt to quiet my mind or achieve some sort of existential enlightenment. It's the same shooting hoops but with the added benefit of slow breathing (which reduces anxiety regardless of meditation practices). The other benefit is that when researching health topics, I found myself much less likely to get stuck on any one idea or theory and I could see things in a different light. Inability to 'see outside the box' has landed me in some pretty stupid places, like low carb, vegan, etc.

The unexpected thing that I noticed is that my concentration at work improved drastically and I was much more productive. This is the dark side of meditation in my opinion. Corporations can use meditation techniques to reproduce this unquestioning productiveness in their employees and create automatons.

Personally, I think it would be unwise to take up a meditation practice unless you understand it and know the pros and cons. And definitely do not expect peace of mind or enlightenment to happen. Also, there's plenty of other ways to achieve single pointed concentration and there are other breathing techniques you can learn without counting breaths.
Meditation should never be forced on someone to achieve the purported benefits. If it's forced then no doubt some people are going go crazy.

 

[dhtsupreme]

I wonder what type of meditation everyone is talking about. In my experience it's a very broad term and most people seem to think it has something to do with quieting the mind or else something spiritual. One thing that's for sure is most people are not on the same page when they discuss it.
My sister says meditation is thinking solely about the present moment, and not what she has to do in the future or what has happened in the past.
For me, I do slow breathing and count my breaths, I make no attempt to quiet my mind or achieve some sort of existential enlightenment. It's the same shooting hoops but with the added benefit of slow breathing (which reduces anxiety regardless of meditation practices). The other benefit is that when researching health topics, I found myself much less likely to get stuck on any one idea or theory and I could see things in a different light. Inability to 'see outside the box' has landed me in some pretty stupid places, like low carb, vegan, etc.

The unexpected thing that I noticed is that my concentration at work improved drastically and I was much more productive. This is the dark side of meditation in my opinion. Corporations can use meditation techniques to reproduce this unquestioning productiveness in their employees and create automatons.

Personally, I think it would be unwise to take up a meditation practice unless you understand it and know the pros and cons. And definitely do not expect peace of mind or enlightenment to happen. Also, there's plenty of other ways to achieve single pointed concentration and there are other breathing techniques you can learn without counting breaths.
Meditation should never be forced on someone to achieve the purported benefits. If it's forced then no doubt some people are going go crazy.

I'm talking about basic mindfulness meditation, qigong, wim hof method, yoga etc.

It's not quieting the mind or something spiritual. It's just increasing awareness. you notice a thought/emotion, recognize the info it's giving you, and let it go. If you do that for 5 minutes, eventually your mind is going to run out of things to tell you. Soon it'll quiet down and you have all the info you need. You'll start to see patterns in your behavior and implement change afterwards

You don't drown out your thoughts/emotions, or forcefully stay in the present like a robot, you simply listen. You sort through the piling stock of mail peacefully, you don't burn it. At least not before reading it lol

 

[nickvdg]

I used to practice Transcendental Meditation (TM) for a while. I think it brought me into a parasympathetic state at times where I should have been much more alert en proactive. I think it even made me irritable at times. This might have also had to do with me being vegan at the time, but TM advocates 2x20 minutes a day. In the beginning I was sometimes stressing about not being able to meditate in my break at work. If you have to cram in your meditation practice because some guru says so, think twice about what you are trying to accomplish. For me, a calm mind comes from having my stuff organized, started the day well, getting my exercise/movement in and doing work I love. If you have loose ends in your life, you can't 'namaste the bear away' (a sentence I learned from Jullien Pineau, Strongfit)

 

[Cloudhands]

I'm talking about basic mindfulness meditation, qigong, wim hof method, yoga etc.

It's not quieting the mind or something spiritual. It's just increasing awareness. you notice a thought/emotion, recognize the info it's giving you, and let it go. If you do that for 5 minutes, eventually your mind is going to run out of things to tell you. Soon it'll quiet down and you have all the info you need. You'll start to see patterns in your behavior and implement change afterwards

You don't drown out your thoughts/emotions, or forcefully stay in the present like a robot, you simply listen. You sort through the piling stock of mail peacefully, you don't burn it. At least not before reading it lol

Then he makes this lmfao

Bill Gates, Real-Life Supervillain, Says Meditation Is His New Favorite Habit (2018)

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/05/bill-gates-says-meditation-his-new-favorite-habit-helps-him-focus.html Bill Gates may be the most high-profile case of meditation-induced psychosis in the world. He claims to have started the habit in 2018, just a few years before creating a plan to block out the...

raypeatforum.com

To quote the late @Travis , this guy is "weapons grade stupid", just entertaining at this point.

 

[AlexR]

Then he makes this lmfao

Bill Gates, Real-Life Supervillain, Says Meditation Is His New Favorite Habit (2018)

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/05/bill-gates-says-meditation-his-new-favorite-habit-helps-him-focus.html Bill Gates may be the most high-profile case of meditation-induced psychosis in the world. He claims to have started the habit in 2018, just a few years before creating a plan to block out the...

raypeatforum.com

To quote the late @Travis , this guy is "weapons grade stupid", just entertaining at this point.

What was that one quote?? "When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser." It seems to be very fitting for you. I think you should quit the meditation. It doesn't seem to be helping with your self-control or emotional stability and you are clearly wasting your time and even potentially experiencing negative effects from it.

 

[AlexR]

Other things that can trigger it are losing a job, starting a new career, the birth of a child, the end of a relationship, the death of a parent, the start of a new relationship, leaving home for college, there's many things.

How does this refute anything I have claimed? If anything, this is more evidence that meditation is a serious psychological stressor. If it is in league with things like losing your job and the death of your parent, then it clearly proves that it is not 100% safe. It's even more shocking that it's coming from somebody with a favorable view of meditation and they admit that meditation can cause severe psychological stress and then explain it away like it is somehow a good thing.

 

[dhtsupreme]

How does this refute anything I have claimed? If anything, this is more evidence that meditation is a serious psychological stressor. If it is in league with things like losing your job and the death of your parent, then it clearly proves that it is not 100% safe. It's even more shocking that it's coming from somebody with a favorable view of meditation and they admit that meditation can cause severe psychological stress and then explain it away like it is somehow a good thing.

What are you talking about? The person explained how this can happen from any activity and how rarely it happens. The person worried about it got some perspective about it and is doing fine. Most people spend most of their lives running from their thoughts and stress. When they stop escaping, it can be a shock when they see how much they have to sort through

It's like storing PUFAS for years and how it takes time to reduce them even though you're doing everything right. It can get tough/worse before it gets better but it's not permanent. Ever heard of herxheimer reaction?

It's odd to have a discussion with someone like this. I'm not even annoyed just surprised some people can be this dense. We humans are naturally irrational, but you my friend are on another level. Congrats on being more human than the rest of us. Stay mindless

 

[AlexR]

What are you talking about? The person explained how this can happen from any activity and how rarely it happens. The person worried about it got some perspective about it and is doing fine. Most people spend most of their lives running from their thoughts and stress. When they stop escaping, it can be a shock when they see how much they have to sort through

It's like storing PUFAS for years and how it takes time to reduce them even though you're doing everything right. It can get tough/worse before it gets better but it's not permanent. Ever heard of herxheimer reaction?

It's odd to have a discussion with someone like this. I'm not even annoyed just surprised some people can be this dense. We humans are naturally irrational, but you my friend are on another level. Congrats on being more human than the rest of us. Stay mindless

I would appreciate if you used some of that discipline and self-control you meditators claim to develop superior levels of and refrain from personal attacks and keep focused on the topic, even if it’s clear that my case of meditation being harmful has been made painfully obvious to anybody not deeply invested in the meditation cult. Claiming negative effects are a herxheimer reaction is a classic move that quacks make to defend their harmful treatments. There are too many cases of people getting worse after a treatment, the practitioner tells them it’s a herxheimer reaction and to keep going, and unfortunately they simply do not get better or even get worse. These victims are then discarded by the practitioner as not having followed their instructions and not being faithful and diligent enough to complete the treatment. It is clear with meditation that the serious negative effects are not herxheimer reactions. Meditation is so harmful that it has the potential to induce mental and physical illness in the same way that traumatic life events do. Meditation instructors and monks do not even try to hide that fact, but they do try to fit it into their illogical frameworks of spirituality and mysticism to explain away their victim’s suffering.

 

[dhtsupreme]

Yeah but I wanted to deliver a personal attack

Plus I never claimed to have superior levels of discipline and self-control

Btw what's the mechanism behind the psychosis induced by meditation?

 

[lehmode]

If I'm honest I think it's you that has/had psychosis and high serotonin. Don't do it then and start really applying Dr. Peat's principles. Don't use the forum, read his articles. And stop telling other people to think like you. There's too many it works for and too little that suffer from it. Science shows it's more effective than ineffective. More beneficial than harmful. If the practice was harmful it wouldn't have existed for 1000's of years until today for science to uncover more about how good it is. It would have been lost in history. It works for me and many others here on the forum

All those things I mentioned are comparable. If you tried some of them yourself, you'd find many relationships between them. Many use meditation to enhance those activities and vice versa. I'm not even trying to convince you anymore. I'm providing perspective for those that want to try it and aren't sure. Like riding a bicycle you start with tricycles like a kid and move up. The process is a marathon and will never be a cure all

Amen

 

[AlexR]

Yeah but I wanted to deliver a personal attack

Plus I never claimed to have superior levels of discipline and self-control

Btw what's the mechanism behind the psychosis induced by meditation?

So before meditation, you delivered personal attacks without wanting to? It’s painfully obvious that meditation negatively affects the people who do it. The cherry on top is that it induces full-blow mental illness in some people and it is still considered to be a 100% safe activity with no downsides. At this point, I’m not convinced that there are any benefits to meditation beyond the relaxation it can induce. Nearly everyone who does it faithfully enough reports that they have some negative effects, but they explain them away with some spiritual nonsense they read online or heard from their teacher. I really don’t know of anyone who has improved from meditation and I know quite a lot who think they have, but it’s clear it has made them worse. It’s ironic because it’s supposed to build self awareness.

 

[dhtsupreme]

It's not painfully obvious. There's countless studies, showing actual mechanisms and brain regions that change and how it leads to improved physiology.

Meanwhile you still can't tell me one mechanism/way as to how it induces psychosis