Best I can tell, the risk of psychosis is much higher with Goenka style retreats, although I don’t have hard numbers, only anecdotal evidence and theory that suggests it should be more common.
My experience has been that anything except long intensive retreats don’t move my mind out of its default attractor state, and that I probably waited too long to attend do long retreats, and all the advice goes in the opposite direction.
I mention this because all the talk of the downside of meditation have me thinking of a tweet that goes roughly like “why do both republicans and democrats pretend HRT does anything”. Goenka retreats have medium-strength effects on me, an intensive one-month retreat at home had a decent effect. I may be doing something wrong.
I constantly find myself needing to give opposing advice because I’ll read something and feel like it leaves out the other side. So, someone says meditation is great, I’m like, woah, there are risks. Someone says meditation sucks or not worth doing, and I extoll its virtues.
Apparently I’m forever cursed to push people back towards the middle way. 😜
My experience has been that anything except long intensive retreats don’t move my mind out of its default attractor state, and that I probably waited too long to attend do long retreats, and all the advice goes in the opposite direction.
I mention this because all the talk of the downside of meditation have me thinking of a tweet that goes roughly like “why do both republicans and democrats pretend HRT does anything”. Goenka retreats have medium-strength effects on me, an intensive one-month retreat at home had a decent effect. I may be doing something wrong.
I constantly find myself needing to give opposing advice because I’ll read something and feel like it leaves out the other side. So, someone says meditation is great, I’m like, woah, there are risks. Someone says meditation sucks or not worth doing, and I extoll its virtues.
Apparently I’m forever cursed to push people back towards the middle way. 😜