Nahemah wrote:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/th ... s-practice
...A core aspect of practicing mindfulness is to attempt a withdrawal from the streams of thought that have to do with current challenges of every form, whether they have to do with difficulties with a particular relationship or the tasks that one has to perform on that day. Unfortunately, such a withdrawal supports our natural, hard-wired tendency to be “cognitive misers” leading mindfulness practitioners to use the practice as a means of escape from having to think about difficult problems and arrive at reasonable solutions. Psychiatrist David Brendel summarizes this danger of mindfulness practice as follows:
“Some people use mindfulness strategies to avoid critical thinking tasks. I’ve worked with clients who, instead of rationally thinking through a career challenge or ethical dilemma, prefer to disconnect from their challenges and retreat into a meditative mindset.”
...These included reports of depersonalization (feeling detached from one’s mental processes or body), psychosis (loss of contact with reality) with delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized speech, feelings of anxiety, an increased risk of seizures, loss of appetite, and insomnia. The authors especially cautioned vulnerable people such as those with PTSD to be particularly careful when undertaking mindfulness practice. Their main point was that participants should be screened carefully for their suitability before undertaking this practice, and its teachers should be properly trained and supervised....
We do sometimes get folk coming here who've experienced psychotic breaks through practices which they should not have rushed into, with classic forms of meditation and chakra work seeming to be the most prevalent for this recently, but there have been other causes too.
More later.
One thing that bugs me about that article is it doesn't differentiate between mindfulness and meditation. At the beginning of TFA they discuss meditation and call it mindfulness. I think it is important to differentiate between them else the whole article becomes confusing. Usually meditation is only done for a certain amount of time in a more restful mode. Mindfulness is something you do all the time. They both have to be done together or not at all otherwise FAIL.
I do see the PTSD thing maybe why you referred to it. If only we had a better written article.
We should write it ourselves as discussed in this OF thread [What do you want to see more of in 2017???]:
http://www.occultforum.org/forum/viewto ... 28&t=40161
Even Daniel Ingram's MTCB doesn't discuss any specific caveats for certain mental ills.
Sometimes I wonder if we're putting the brakes on too much. I feel like I have a secret I can't share with anybody.
