17 Ways Mindfulness Meditation Can Cause You Emotional Harm

[AstralProjectee]

Take note all you meditation teachers here in the article bellow and everyone else that doesn't know the inns and outs of deep meditation. Certainly I've been almost lead down this path for a while. Read stuff by Pema Chodron if you have fallen for the wrong way to meditate, or to just to get a refeshing view on how were really suppose to meditate.

17 Ways Mindfulness Meditation
Can Cause You Emotional Harm
by MELISSA KARNAZE http://mindfulconstruct.com/2011/02/...motional-harm/

I'll have another look later - always look for chances to learn something new.

But what caused me a frown at the outset was "...When you’re not being mindful of how you’re treating your negative emotions.". I'm not sure. What's a negative emotion? Emotions are emotions. Some are nice, some are nasty. Sometimes nice ones can be nasty. Some nasty ones can be a catharsis.

But you're right. The tenets of this latest fashion seem a bit iffy. Of course one will observe the content of one's meditations in some way or another whether in a literal or metaphorical sense but when discomforting things crop up they have to be dismissed (in which case they have a hold over the meditator) or dealt with. I couldn't understand the bit about they aren't to be experienced - because the very fact that they've arisen is because they're being experienced.

Seemed like a lot of word play to me - but that's how it is in the Spiritual Industry these days. Some effort has to be spent validating and examining these things; and it's a shame that many will fall for stuff as a way into a more spiritual life when it's pretty pseud. Sad, that people who want to feel better - vulnerable sometimes - can get into this snake-oil merchant stuff.

But then....there's always someone who will get something good out of it.

The same applies to pretty much everything said, everything written about spirituality, techniques etc. Yet, the reason someone wrote about that technique is usually because it helped them.

What is mind-less in this area, is that people follow promises based on fear (of negatives)and desire (for positives). The article kind of points this out, but blames one specific type of meditation for it, rather than allowing the people who have found the detrimental effects of following an idea, to take that responsibility and learn something about themselves.

They may not have learned a meditation technique that benefited them... but they may have realised that they don't need to follow techniques.

If a person just thinks it's the techniques 'fault', then they will simply drift from following one fad to following the next, because they never realised their ability to respond, or their responsibility.

[nina1021]

Well said Ivy

[charly233]

Surely mindfulness meditation works for some people but not for others. One would need to be aware of the possible contradictions involved with the mindful meditation technique to benefit from it. Every technique has its limitations.

And one needs to be mindful of what one is doing to ones feelings through practicing mindfulness.

Personally I "meditate" just by sitting, walking, moving, standing, or lying down, without using any props such as radio, TV, books, internet etc. I find that periods spent quietly without these things helps me to calm down and to realize that actually we are always already in a state of meditation.

I don't worry about whether or not I am keeping still. If my body needs to move during meditation then I let it move. If I need to be still then I keep still.

The crucial thing for me is to have a break from noisy distractions and to go with the flow!

[Baile]

The wrong way to meditate... I ignore any and all collective 'wrong way versus right way' doctrine, religious, spiritual or otherwise. The 'wrong' anything is simply the soul feeling that something isn't right for it personally, and sensing that adjustments and changes of some kind are perhaps in order. It's an individual intuition.

Originally Posted by Baile

The wrong way to meditate... I ignore any and all collective 'wrong way versus right way' doctrine, religious, spiritual or otherwise. The 'wrong' anything is simply the soul feeling that something isn't right for it personally, and sensing that adjustments and changes of some kind are perhaps in order. It's an individual intuition.

I am in shock that I actually agree with you for a change.

[Gem]

I don't really agree altogether, because the tendency is to alter something because of discomfort, so it can be avoidance, too.

[Miss Hepburn]

Originally Posted by Gem

...the tendency is to alter something because of discomfort,
so it can be avoidance, too.

Lol!

I avoid all discomfort.

But, what others may call discomfort...grief, sadness, is a source of
growth and learning to me...and also a wonder to me to observe as
human emotion...fascinating stuff...these human feelings.

Btw, I do not do any form of Mindful Meditation ... I may observe
things thru out the day about the Mind...but, in formal meditation, the last
thing I would do is care about the Mind and it's thoughts...unless, those thoughts are focusing on
and, thus, opening my heart to my Beloved God, Lord,
Father, Creator, True Source, True Self...

That's just me...whatever works for someone else...fine.