That's sadly true. Sorry for you if you've faced a suicide of someone close. I definitely think some people can practice some forms of safe types of meditation safely without ill effects, even if they don't have any awareness of the dangers. While some types of meditation are dangerous (it's hard to say if that's most or all types because I don't know what everyone else is practicing) and I think you need yoga for all but the safest and shortest ones, I think if you don't try any additional techniques beyond a very simple, and short duration meditation, you might be OK, even without doing it yoga. it's definitely possible but I wouldn't recommend it just to be on the safe side to cover all the cases.
just as an example like you think something so simple is just focusing on the feeling of your breath at the tip of your nose you thing is going to be safe for you. But if you do that long enough or if you combine that with another type of breath or another type of sound the effects can be really really extraordinarily powerful and you can begin to open up your body to all sorts of things and draw all sorts of energy and information into yourself. So you need to be careful and you need to know what you're doing and keep it short and I think yoga helps you both handle the changes that can go on as well as it encodes a sort of relaxed mindset where you don't want to go beyond your limits so you not going to try to push some technique, you know, out of frustration because you think you don't get it and if you push it you might injure something. just like with a physical sport like if you push things in this mental you or energetic space you can definitely injure things as well.
Having said all that , i definitely think the same technique can affect different people to different degrees.
> Just because one woman attended a meditation retreat before committing suicide doesn't prove it was the cause. Is there a statistically significant increase in the suicide rate following meditation retreats?
No no no I wasn't saying that. Sorry for you that you felt that way about it, but the meaning I was trying to get across was reflecting my own reaction to that article.
When I read that article I had quite a reaction to it, and what I've said above is only a summary or one aspect of that.
To try to help you out with seeing my view of the reaction I had to that article, I'll just try to recall that here.
I read that article and was sort of deeply moved by it. I was skeptical that the meditation was her problem at first, but the more I read the article, and recalled my own knowledge of these things, and also read how retreat practitioners noted these symptoms in many people, I started to form an idea that I intended to post on that discussion but posted a sort of summary above. The idea is based around the reality of "kundalini sickness" (which in any case I see as just one aspect or symptom of what can go wrong) and the sort of mania that can attach itself to uncareful practice of kundalini related techniques, other techniques, things related to opening chakras, and other things.
There's a lot of detail that's probably too much to post here, and in any case I'm not inclined to right now, plus I'm allowing some ideas and clarity to form for myself, I guess, about a lot of this stuff...but basically, after reading that article, I concluded it was likely that unsafe practice of these techniques could overwhelm people with energetic bandwidth and information, as well as overwhelm their nervous system. One of the symptoms of such energetic overwhelming is the mania I believe was described in the article as one of her symptoms (staying up for days, not eating), and one of the symptoms of the information overloading is psychosis as I believe was also described in the article as one of her symptoms.
I'm not trying to say for sure that this caused her illness that contributed to her suicide decision, but it definitely contributed in my view.
Aside from the causal question of suicide (which, to be strict, has to be someone's decision, so their decision is the ultimate cause, but of course there can be all sorts of reasons and factors that they choose to contribute to their decision), I'm sure that practicing these techniques in the sort of careless and unaware way that I describe above, that I'm pretty sure is common in the West (and actually probably pretty common everywhere in the world in this age), is extremely fucking dangerous, as I've said, and also a direct cause of a lot of pathologies and illnesses (at least mental illnesses) that people report after meditation retreats. I really think it's that simple: that careless application of these techniques can lead to bad outcomes, really bad outcomes, sadly, for people. And I think that's a direct result of how the west has productized it, rather than keeping it in touch with its roots and all the knowledge and wisdom and safety that surrounded it.
To be totally clear I'm not saying that "caused" her suicide, and I'm not even sure it contributed in her case to her suicide decision, but I'm totally sure that it contributed to the cluster of symptoms she presented (mania, psychosis) around the same time.
Thanks for your time to read this and I'm sorry for you that you got me wrong the first time. Hope you have a good day. I do have a lot more to say about these topics but it's probably not appropriate for this board, and I definitely don't feel like chatting more about it now. If you want to know more about this or are interested in this stuff, I reckon you join a yoga class, and then maybe you could search for kundalini sickness, just as an example of the sorts of things that can go wrong, but I wouldn't recommend trying this stuff, without yoga! :) :P xx
another perspective is maybe they discovered or were taught techniques even more advanced than what's commonly know as yoga. Maybe that helped them somehow attain their heights as you said.
From another point of view I think there's an idea that yoga is probably for the common people, you know, everyone. Maybe there's some exceptional people whose bodies are already highly tuned somehow and they sort of don't need to do that...could be possible. But that would probably be rare like Olympic level athlete rare. And maybe some of those great saints weren't even human. So maybe techniques for the everyperson human form don't apply to them.
Harder to speculate about those things than it is to know that yoga is good for me from experience, and have a theory for why correct yoga would be good for most others as well, especially meditators.
Aside from what i already said, biomedically the long holding, and the precise poses, sooth and calm the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps correctly regulate many other systems, and help massage and promoting flow in the lymphatic system, i think. Even leaving aside the energy perspectives, relaxedly holding poses for a handful of breaths, is a great tune up for your body.
ya, I too have read about that..
If you read Patanjali (the foundational text) there is very little or no mention at all of posture.
So much stress is held in the body. Western productization of more eastern traditional practices unfortunately often seems to divide them up into small consumable pieces and deliver them stripped of an awareness of both their larger context, their interactions and the importance of how you need to do some together. It also seems to teach people advanced techniques as if they were nothing, which can be extremely dangerous.
I meant to make this comment on that story about a woman who had committed suicide after a mediation retreat. Yoga is required if you're going to do mediation. Unfortunately, much of the yoga practiced in the west is nothing more than sort of an aerobic mindset, like pilates or calisthenics. Even when teachers stick to traditional sequences and focus on breath, they seem to miss the point of how important relaxation and only going to your limit is.
I was lucky that i had a fantastic teacher from India when i started yoga in Sydney 20 years ago. The difference an excellent teacher makes is amazing.
I watch videos on Gaia and see teachers doing advanced locks and hand positions, combined with meditative practices... These things can be extremely dangerous because you're unlocking and accessing all sorts of energies you're not used to. Doing advanced stuff before you're ready, or doing any stuff without a solid grounding in hatha yoga to allow your body to handle it, is toxic and unhealthy. In the productization of the yoga and meditation industry in the west people have forgot to focus on the basics, and have forgotten the advanced knowledge that allows you to do advanced techniques safely. Practices have been divided up, stripped of awareness of how to do them safely, and delivered in little consumable pieces. It's fucking dangerous, but everyone's out there practicing yoga and meditation like it's calisthenics or pilates or a warm up for rugby, and even the teachers who aren't mostly don't have the awareness or knowledge of the energies they're accessing to do it safely, or to do it with the most benefit.
This probably came across as saying yoga will cure your anxiety. I'm not saying that, just that if you do mediation, you also need yoga. But doing yoga well will probably make your anxiety better... Maybe an actual psych therapist can help unravel any beliefs and stories you have that you're reacting to but aren't actually true, or maybe if your fear has a rational basis (ie, you are actually in danger or at risk in some way, and the things you fear keep happening and you keep getting hurt) then you can adopt some practical strategies to create better boundaries for yourself so you feel safer and are safer.