I just want to add that for some people the 'freak out' is psychosis, or other serious mental condition that needs immediate treatment.
There are many people who come into meditation to fix something because they have a sense that something is going wrong with them. Meditation has become very popular and there is strong incentive to avoid mentioning possible negatives. Then you just ship out damaged people from the back door and make them think it was their fault.
Meditation if practised as designed brings also negative mental states as part of the process. It's not just feel good hum-hum. People should seek professional mental help if they need and not to try some intensive meditation retreats that drive them into the walls.
I go to long meditation retreats regularly, but I don't recommend them to anyone. It's not the same for everyone. It can seriously harm some people.
I would add to it that like anything else in the world jumping on a deep end is the quickest way to learn something but some % will drown.
Walking is a good exercise for anyone. Would I recommend a 7 day backpack though wildness... maybe not if you heard about it from a friend of a friend as a good way to reconnect with the nature.
> People should seek professional mental help if they need and not to try some intensive meditation retreats that drive them into the walls.
Psychosis triggered by a very unexpected and emotionally strong event doesn't need immediate treatment. You may put yourself back together in a short amount of time and actually getting help may be worse in the long run as you will probably start adjusting variables in your life, like taking meds or getting closer or more distant to particular people, that not necessarily lead to the self-improvement you need.
The whole point of those long retreats is to be able to push yourself to those limits knowing that you will have some days to rest after and that people that are used to handling psychotic people after they had a reveal or something will be around to help you.
Of course as mostly everything that involves a 10 day long gathering with idiosyncratic strangers you need to be careful.
> Psychosis triggered by a very unexpected and emotionally strong event doesn't need immediate treatment.
People may come back without treatment but once you had a psychosis the propensity to get it again has increased. That's why it's usually good to seek help even if the symptoms go away.
while this is valid, one should take it with a pinch of salt of Not Invented Here Syndrome as meditation is generally a practice of the 'East' and there is a nervousness that it is a gateway drug to the eastern religions for the Christian / rational 'West'.
Asian monasteries have their share of weird and broken monks. Sutras and biographies are full of descriptions of people getting mentally ill. "Meditation sickness" is well documented.
Japanese Zen Master Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769) wrote about his struggle with severe mental illness (Zen sickness he called it). He had to drop meditation practice for several years.
What percentage of cases that take that advice end up on the ever expanding array of drugs with unknown side effects?
We're conducting a massive experiment with the mentally ill right now feeding them experimental pharmaceuticals and I get the strong feeling we will end up being judged just like lobotomies were.
Unfortunately you can only give the treatments you have available. Maybe someday in the future we will have perfect treatments for all of our mental and emotional ills, but that day isn’t today.
Unless maybe you are suggesting we should do nothing, instead?
There are many people who come into meditation to fix something because they have a sense that something is going wrong with them. Meditation has become very popular and there is strong incentive to avoid mentioning possible negatives. Then you just ship out damaged people from the back door and make them think it was their fault.
Meditation if practised as designed brings also negative mental states as part of the process. It's not just feel good hum-hum. People should seek professional mental help if they need and not to try some intensive meditation retreats that drive them into the walls.
I go to long meditation retreats regularly, but I don't recommend them to anyone. It's not the same for everyone. It can seriously harm some people.