Mindfulness's Misuse Exposes Dangers

kalibex

Dagobah Resident
Claire, a 37-year-old in a highly competitive industry, was sent on a three-day mindfulness course with colleagues as part of a training programme. “Initially, I found it relaxing,” she says, “but then I found I felt completely zoned out while doing it. Within two or three hours of later sessions, I was starting to really, really panic.” The sessions resurfaced memories of her traumatic childhood, and she experienced a series of panic attacks. “Somehow, the course triggered things I had previously got over,” Claire says. “I had a breakdown and spent three months in a psychiatric unit. It was a depressive breakdown with psychotic elements related to the trauma, and several dissociative episodes.”

_http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mindfulness-making-us-ill?_
 
kalibex said:
Claire, a 37-year-old in a highly competitive industry, was sent on a three-day mindfulness course with colleagues as part of a training programme. “Initially, I found it relaxing,” she says, “but then I found I felt completely zoned out while doing it. Within two or three hours of later sessions, I was starting to really, really panic.” The sessions resurfaced memories of her traumatic childhood, and she experienced a series of panic attacks. “Somehow, the course triggered things I had previously got over,” Claire says. “I had a breakdown and spent three months in a psychiatric unit. It was a depressive breakdown with psychotic elements related to the trauma, and several dissociative episodes.”

_http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mindfulness-making-us-ill?_

That is sad. I don't know who this person learned mindfulness from, but I don't know that a 3 day course is a good thing. Before the teaching of mindfulness, a person should probably be evaluated for psychological stability.

I do Mindfulness and swear by it for myself, but I would only recommend learning it from the MD John Kabat-Zinn who is credited with 'inventing' mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR). Or perhaps an authorized instructor of MBSR and for the purpose stated, or on a very tentative testing period basis. It's being used all over the world and seems to be producing good results as reported by practitioners.

Vipassana meditation is probably where mindfulness originally comes from, but it's said that it is very powerful. 3 days is not enough time to be guided through the first door, which is said to be an entrance to our "monkey mind" where there is chaos of thought and probably pointers to previous traumas.

Thanks for posting this, kalibex.
 
Buddy said:
That is sad. I don't know who this person learned mindfulness from, but I don't know that a 3 day course is a good thing. Before the teaching of mindfulness, a person should probably be evaluated for psychological stability.

That's a point made in the story - workplaces are seizing upon mindfulness as a cheap, one-size-fits-all panacea for over-worked employees...
 
kalibex said:
Buddy said:
That is sad. I don't know who this person learned mindfulness from, but I don't know that a 3 day course is a good thing. Before the teaching of mindfulness, a person should probably be evaluated for psychological stability.

That's a point made in the story - workplaces are seizing upon mindfulness as a cheap, one-size-fits-all panacea for over-worked employees...

I see, I had to go back and read the full article. The mindfulness they seem to be teaching/learning in the corporate setting primarily involves sitting and stillness, so that's probably more related to Vipassana which I think is irresponsible to teach that way. In contrast, MBSR is done while engaged in some activity which involves movement and doing something, hence the stress connection as it relates to active living. Big difference.
 
I think this is a highly subjective report. Just like with Yoga, they take a reformed tradition(in this case, probably a Goenka style Vipassana retreat) and use it like you'd take a Prozac pill. The problem here is that if your mind is a swamp and you do something to trigger something deep below, you need a skilled guide to help you get out of it, someone the person in the report probably didn't have.

I've seen someone enter psychosis just from having emotional experiences, it can be triggered by anything. And if you sit down and watch your thoughts for a few days, something is bound to come up. The problem is that you'd need to know many things about a person sitting on such retreats before you can conclude that it's the "dark side" of meditation that brought it up. There are too many factors- the person can be on the wrong diet or be dealing with emotional issues they haven't dealt with before.

You could also compare it to the way some entheogens trigger panic attacks in people because they were unprepared to have the deeper layers of their mind blown open. Compared to that, meditation is a much more controlled process. But problems are bound to arise if they take something from an older tradition, make it into a fad and then wonder why a weekend retreat for overworked employees may come with side effects that aren't so easily dealt with.

Like with the Cassiopaean Experiment, it's best to have done your research first and be mentally and physically in shape before you play around with your mind.
 
Re: Mindfulness's Dangers and Sensing Exercises

Mindfulness can be harmful to your spiritual progress, if you are doing it wrong. That is why in the Work sensing exercises are connected to self-observation:

Self-Observation & Levels of Sensation
Though it wasn’t until many years after I left the Gurdjieff Foundation that I understood and formulated much of what follows, it is helpful to realize from the very beginning of self-observation that “sensation” can be experienced at many different levels, depending on one’s degree of relaxation and attention. Though Gurdjieff himself does not define these levels of sensation, at least not in any of his published works, they become quite clear in a deep, sustained work of self-observation. These levels include the automatic sensation of aches and pains; the deeper sensation of muscular tensions and contractions; the more subtle sensation of temperature and movement: the uniform “prickly” sensation of one’s skin; the living, breathing sensation of one’s internal organs, bones, tissues, and fluids; and the integrative sensation of the body’s energy circuits, connecting all the organs and functions of one’s being.
Those who continue the work of conscious relaxation through a deepening contact with their own bodies may eventually come to one more level of sensation: the profound, all-encompassing sensation of space and silence that lies at the heart of our somatic being. Though this was seldom discussed in the Gurdjieff work, it is, based on my own experience, an important stage in the work of self-observation. It is only through the experience of sensation as both space and silence that our awareness can embrace and welcome the whole of ourselves. It is this embrace, this welcoming, that is the beginning of self-transformation..

Now here is what a Taiji Practitioner has to say about the Artificial-Mind (Ego) and the Deep-Mind (Self):
True Taiji Mind
… Then, before the brain to body functioning can be brought under the control of the Deep Mind, the body control must first be harmonised into one. This is when the movement of the peripheral parts of the body become subordinated to the movement of the centre, the stage of "whole body moves as one", when co-ordinated strength begins to appear. As all stages overlap, this preparatory level, develops some awareness of the 2 most easily discovered internal sensors – joint-position sensors together with muscle sensors for the simple states of contract and relax, a result of training extremely accurate movements while attempting to remove all double-contraction. Training these 2 while holding the idea of going deeper, may, if the instructor sets a correct example themselves, cause the student's mind to sink, when traces of the Deep Mind will begin to appear. As automatic concentration on the 5 external senses fades, consciousness may then begin to re-centre itself within the body at the source of these 2 initial internal senses. This phase is when people really begin to practise Taiji and is, as Master Huang explained, usually entered after 4 to 10 years of reasonable practise.
Deep Awareness
… Pain, pressure and temperature sensory receptors are distributed most evenly throughout the body. When the body is resting quietly they give rise to sensations of tingling, fullness and warmth, in that order. The sufis also look for heart beat, pulse and body heat. The Yogis look for heartbeat, heat sense, smooth muscle digestive process, joint sensors within their Yoga postures. Buddhists use the sensations of breathing – rib movement, muscle change, pressure change in the chest to attempt the first step away from the superficial-mind. Note that the internal sensors are not connected with the 5 internal senses of Yoga philosophy which are just the mental correspondences of the 5 external senses. (Yoga philosophy enumerates 11 senses in total – 5 external senses, their 5 mental correspondences and the mind itself.) In making effort to re-focus the mind from the 5 external senses to the 5 internal senses, people strengthen the mind on the etheric level. Looking for the 5 inner senses pulls the mind deeper, while concentrating on those 5 senses stabilises the mind on that level. When people stabilise there, they will also begin to become truly aware of the body's energy – the etheric component of the Personal-energy-field.
Clearly distinguish 5 internal senses from 5 external senses.
The Deep Mind is woken and strengthened at its lowest or etheric level by concentrating on the 5 inner senses: joint-position, muscle-state, pain, pressure and temperature. They are the most natural and certain entry into the Deep Mind.

(5 outer senses - sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch - perceive the outer world and are connected to superficial-mind. Concentrating on them may just make superficial-mind stronger).

Of the 5 inner senses, pain and joint sensors along with the muscle states of contracting and relaxing are the least important as they are also partially accessed by the superficial-mind.

Pressure and temperature sensors along with the muscle states of stretching and un-stretching mainly activate the deepest levels of the brain and the etheric levels of the Deep Mind.

I think, there lies the danger in the practice of mindfulness: if just try to be in the here and now without sensing the body, you just strengthen the ego. You reach your deep self only by sensing the body. That is why Gurdjieff was emphasizing e.g. the sensation of the legs in his exercises.
 
kalibex said:
Claire, a 37-year-old in a highly competitive industry, was sent on a three-day mindfulness course with colleagues as part of a training programme. “Initially, I found it relaxing,” she says, “but then I found I felt completely zoned out while doing it. Within two or three hours of later sessions, I was starting to really, really panic.” The sessions resurfaced memories of her traumatic childhood, and she experienced a series of panic attacks. “Somehow, the course triggered things I had previously got over,” Claire says. “I had a breakdown and spent three months in a psychiatric unit. It was a depressive breakdown with psychotic elements related to the trauma, and several dissociative episodes.”

_http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mindfulness-making-us-ill?_
Isn't a more likely explanation that she had not truly "gotten over" those things after all, on a deeper level? If the mindfullness practices involved can be that powerful, then I agree that the application like this sounds irresponsible, but it doesn't make sense for mindfulness to "revive" and supercharge resolved traumas.

[Edit: Hit the wrong button and posted too early, just finishing the post.]
 
HowToBe said:
kalibex said:
Claire, a 37-year-old in a highly competitive industry, was sent on a three-day mindfulness course with colleagues as part of a training programme. “Initially, I found it relaxing,” she says, “but then I found I felt completely zoned out while doing it. Within two or three hours of later sessions, I was starting to really, really panic.” The sessions resurfaced memories of her traumatic childhood, and she experienced a series of panic attacks. “Somehow, the course triggered things I had previously got over,” Claire says. “I had a breakdown and spent three months in a psychiatric unit. It was a depressive breakdown with psychotic elements related to the trauma, and several dissociative episodes.”

_http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mindfulness-making-us-ill?_
Isn't a more likely explanation that she had not truly "gotten over" those things after all, on a deeper level? If the mindfullness practices involved can be that powerful, then I agree that the application like this sounds irresponsible, but it doesn't make sense for mindfulness to "revive" and supercharge resolved traumas.

[Edit: Hit the wrong button and posted too early, just finishing the post.]

I agree, i feel that it is more like a latent and underlying turmoil, somehow, this small practice could have triggered states she was not really ready to manage.

When in mindfulness I think that the mind "vibrates" differently, to our everyday constant routine, so if in this unfamiliar state, these memories came up and she had no experience on how to manage the emotions under the state of mindfulness as opposed to the state of routine that she is used to, I would think that this can throw her off balance.

We are taking her account only, we don't know if she had other evident signs of something else in her everyday behavior, but if she had this awareness or self-concensus that she had "gotten over" them, It is my guess that she repressed the emotions and function through the personality she constructed around the suppression , when unfamiliar states popped up, the original memories and the emotions resurfaced over the superficial emotions that serve as memory mechanisms and coping mechanisms for those events, on the shattered personality.

My idea from what I have observed is that in our everyday routine, we have a certain "frequency" even in our thinking, we can't always be remembering everything or recall emotions with the same intensity all the time, so them mind kinda gets numbed and use helpers, and moves at a certain frequency. When we are removed from that frequency slightly, or as in her case, at the emotional level, we experience changes in perception, apparently her case was severe.
 
[quote author=HowToBe]
Isn't a more likely explanation that she had not truly "gotten over" those things after all, on a deeper level? If the mindfullness practices involved can be that powerful, then I agree that the application like this sounds irresponsible, but it doesn't make sense for mindfulness to "revive" and supercharge resolved traumas.
[/quote]

I agree. Depending on how mindfulness is taught, understood and practiced, results can be very different.

For example, one somewhat popular understanding of mindfulness is to pay attention to whatever is there in the present moment. Depending on the specific context in which such a practice is used, it can lead to different outcomes. If someone who has significant traumatic memories from the past sits down to an intensive mindfulness meditation session, stuff is going to come up which is very likely to overwhelm the person, as was most likely the case reported in this thread. As Peter Levine (and others) have shown, trauma reactions are mostly visceral. Without the aid of the body and breathing (and perhaps therapeutic help) it is very difficult to override the visceral reactions to dredged up traumatic memories simply by sitting and paying attention to whatever is coming up.

But even in cases without trauma, the popular understanding of mindfulness is limited. Mindfulness has largely been taken from Buddhist meditation techniques. In the oldest surviving Buddhist texts, the Pali canon, mindfulness has a different meaning than the popular understanding today. Mindfulness involved keeping something in mind - not passively sitting and watching whatever comes up. The original form of mindfulness practice was quite inextricably bound with the qualities of "directed thought and evaluation" and sat on a foundation which included a strong practice of virtues. Whatever came up during meditation was to be examined with attention and evaluated according to some guiding principles. Buddhism originally was concerned with recognizing suffering and what caused the suffering, and then used practices and techniques to cultivate a path which led to the secession of suffering. So mindfulness implied keeping the basic tenets of the teaching on suffering in the forefront and using them as tools to evaluate and deal with whatever situation came up in life and meditation.
 
[quote author=from the original article]Then comes the meditation. We’re told to close our eyes and think about our bodies in relation to the chair, the floor, the room: how each limb touches the arms, the back, the legs of the seat, while breathing slowly. But there’s one small catch: I can’t breathe. No matter how fast, slow, deep or shallow my breaths are, it feels as though my lungs are sealed. My instincts tell me to run, but I can’t move my arms or legs. I feel a rising panic and worry that I might pass out, my mind racing. Then we’re told to open our eyes and the feeling dissipates. I look around. No one else appears to have felt they were facing imminent death. What just happened?[/quote] This is exactly what I have been thinking about since a few days. I mean this is a very essential problem that needs to be analyzed, I think. This is closely related to the issue of having difficulty of doing meditation. There is silence, darkness or dimness, slowing, stopping. This sounds like death!

Sleep is also like death in some basic terms and without a good sleep we can't find the energy and spirits to deal with our waking life occupations. Just like sleep, death is also needed, and as we know this is closely related to what we ordinarily experience after a death: 5D, spiritual home, contemplation, grounding, rejuvenation. And meditation is also supposed to be something like that. A small death to ordinary life, and contact with some central inner reality associated with the contemplation, grounding and rejuvenation of 5D. In my understanding of astro-cosmology, 5D is represented by the astro polarity of Leo & Aquarius, which equates to Being & Awareness, respectively. Both sleep and death and also meditation are supposed to recharge being and awareness.

In the case of general reluctance for meditation as a great refresher of being and awareness, I think a significant part of the problem is about the fact that people generally tend to lose their sense of existence in meditation because meditation in general appears to promote a transpersonal sense of existence, which is closely related to the definition of STO. But 3D STS is imbalancedly individualistic.

I believe that the beneficial thing behind sleep, meditation and death is a relatively pure and eternal sense of being that brings forth a proportionate awareness. And I think a great point of discussion in this context is about the question, "what is being/existence essentially?"
 
"what is being/existence essentially?"

I don't think anyone can answer this question, because it invokes reasoning for a movement. The STS way is to look for reasons and principles everywhere, which is not a bad thing of course. Soul searching is an essential part of our existence. My existence. This is my answer to this question. People look for different things in life.
But I think, in this particular case, this method of meditating is just way too much for some people. It is like teaching babies how to be adults in three days, it just can't happen. If you wanna light a cigarette, you don't burn down the whole house with it. Whoever the teacher is, I strongly disapprove of the meditating techniques applied. This is my personal opinion, I like to feel alive inside my body, something that wants to live, and something that wants to think about things, so why should I question my essence? Meditation is always good when there is no desire for achievement, it is meant to bring peace and nourishment for the soul.
 
Thanks for sharing your view, Stefan.

I think that the difficulty of approaching this question is somewhat associated with what makes meditation feel like death. Roughly, it is also related to the problem about monotheism and/or mental conditioning for exploitation.

I observe in myself that the problem is about continuously seeking a strict external authority over our existence and over existence in general. You know, even in 3D, people tend to deify celebrities, and we are told and we can already perceive that humanity is prone to readily deify 4D beings, which is probably one of the reasons for why 4D STO abstains from explicitly showing up in our life and why 4D STS seems to continuously check the will of humanity to want them to show up as gods. And there are 6D beings, some of which are our personal higher selves that we might occasionally be perceiving as God communicating with us implicitly, and some of which we have explicit channeled information from. They are much more suitable to be deified but their polarity of STO is at very high percentages, they are called "angels", who are extremely dedicated to serve rather than being served. And from the attitude of the Pleiadians, Ra and the Cs, we clearly see that they certainly don't want to be deified, and remember that regarding a question about who the Prime Creator is (as opposed to lesser gods, I think), the Cs gave the sharp answer, "You are 'Prime Creator'". As far as I can perceive from the channeled data that Prime Creator or 7D is 100% STO. Essentially, STO means "being"and this is the common denominator of everything that exists. And I think this is what the Cs mean in their statement, "All is 7th density." And along the same line, "As long as you exist, you are of the Prime Creator", and "There is no time, you dwell there {7D} eternally."

All of these emphases are against deification, against the most problematic aspect of monotheism; an absolute and exclusive deification of an external source. But in our story in 3D STS, we have somehow allowed ourselves to be severely traumatized and kind of enslaved by 4D STS and their extensions in 3D STS. Most religious, governmental, military and financial organizations are basically co-opted to maintain and deepen the overt and covert slavery of humanity. And it is such an indescribably blessing development that Russia and its potential allies now seem to be taking firm steps against the global organization of bloodsuckers as foretold by the Cs.

Back to the original issue... I think that due to the effects of a long history of traumatization, slavery, torture, brainwashing, etc., most people hesitate to make an independent definition or have an independent awareness of their being, or of being/existence in general. They have difficulty in getting keenly aware of their existence. They feel like their ambiguous existence is given to them by an external source and thus it is dependent on it. For this reason, I think, most people feel forced to embrace the status quo however evil it is. This might also be likened to the situation of a small child with a malignant parent or parents. The above-mentioned institutions in our life behave us like our malignant parents; as in, "they might be evildoers but they are our parents after all, we are dependent on them, we can't survive without them. They are the owner, controller and the definer of life and existence!" Of course, there are also many relatively positive influences in our lives and they are also a part of the definition of our existence but the evil status quo is there and very central and dominant.

And as meditation is kind of a temporary and small-scale death to ordinary life that we do without completely losing a basic awareness of our being a part of the ongoing ordinary life (unlike in sleep and death), this can make meditation difficult and somewhat disturbing because you are supposed to release your definitions of your life and existence in the status quo. As we are generally not taught or sufficiently guided about our existence independently of the status quo of the mundane life, meditation can feel like committing suicide or unwise at best. Personally, I don't generally have the patience and eagerness to wait more than a few seconds without an active thought process and expectations or anticipations. Then I try to consciously guide myself to have a deep relaxation, peace and rejuvenation but in many of these meditational efforts, I experience a sense of conflict because although I feel that I have access to such positive thoughts and feelings, I have difficulty allowing myself to actually experience them profoundly. I think this is partially because experiencing those positivities freely in this way is not something that I'm accustomed to and that it would require on my part a fundamental redefinition about what life and existence really is but that this is certainly not that easy because I don't seem to be able clutch the depths of my STS programming about what life and existence really is as opposed to what has long been fed to my consciousness across a bombardment of STS conditions that I have almost considered to be what life and existence is!

Lastly, I want to mention one of the mental practices that I'm testing in the process of seeking various solutions to this deeply entrenched problem. I tend to base it on the anti-deification suggestions above. It is also closely related to what is intended by a general meditation; releasing egoic anxiety, expectations, anticipations, endless seeking, etc. I stop. I mentally stop my identification with the life in the mundane status quo as much as possible. And this is not the most important part, it is rather an automatic result of the primary identification with or awareness of being the absolute being, again, to the extent possible. Nothing and nowhere further to do or to go. It is the absolute core of existence. I am that. Everyting is that. No expectation, no anticipation, no time, no seeking, no deficiency, no desire... just pure and perfect being that is the root core of everything that exists. I find this thought or concept to be extraordinarily relaxing, soothing, balancing, healing, etc. And I think this really helps me "gradually" get rid of the deep STS programs about the core truth of existence and life. By the way, I certainly don't mean that this will relieve us of the extremely vital necessity to always network for increasing our knowledge and awareness and counteracting the internal and external STS factors in our lives, I mean that it can just help just like a good sleep does.
 
kalibex said:
Claire, a 37-year-old in a highly competitive industry, was sent on a three-day mindfulness course with colleagues as part of a training programme. “Initially, I found it relaxing,” she says, “but then I found I felt completely zoned out while doing it. Within two or three hours of later sessions, I was starting to really, really panic.” The sessions resurfaced memories of her traumatic childhood, and she experienced a series of panic attacks. “Somehow, the course triggered things I had previously got over,” Claire says. “I had a breakdown and spent three months in a psychiatric unit. It was a depressive breakdown with psychotic elements related to the trauma, and several dissociative episodes.”

_http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mindfulness-making-us-ill?_

Yes, "mindfulness" is apparently now acceptable and rolled out for "employee education" in businesses. Who would have thought that?

But this story shows that some individuals are so damaged that even otherwise 'beneficial' teachings (I'm not excluding that "mindfulness" can be beneficial) can have the opposite reaction. This is a good reminder for all of us about the importance of external consideration (i.e. deep knowledge of the other individual) when trying to impart 'beneficial' teachings/practices which we know about. If we are not careful, the smallest 'well meant' remark can cause havoc. This was also observed by Gurdjieff.

It also confirms our stance that an individual must be completely psychologically healthy before any advances towards self-work can be undertaken.
 
Those of you who have read "Get Me Out of Here": Dr. Padgett tried a psychotherapy technique with the author at one point - I think it was having her lie on the "couch" staring at the ceiling while he talked to her in some way, but the feelings it brought up (and rapidly!) were too powerful and really destabilized her for a bit, so they didn't use that technique again during her therapy.

That sounds very similar to this situation.
 
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