h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi there!

Rather than further derail the music thread I figured I'd pop in over here.

I've never heard of anyone becoming depressed because of meditation before. Why do you think that happened with you? What kind of meditation do you do?

What I do is not like the mind-emptying meditation. It's more like planting something in there that I want to develop. I started it after I'd read a few articles about biofeedback and chanting that suggested people could learn to deliberately alter their brain waves and chemical balance, was introduced to a form of Buddhism where chanting is an integral part of the practice, so I decided to give it a whirl. It took a while, also involved a lot of making conscious changes in the way I was reacting to things, but it worked for me. I still think of it as a kind of self-hypnosis, though experience has led me to accept that there might well be some mystical interaction with the rest of Everything going on that I can't explain.

Yes. Nathaniel Mead did some research about it and suggested that meditation isn't the panacea that many expect. I dropped regular meditation and replaced it with jogging as I heard that regular exercise is good for mood enhancement (I am prone to falling in the 'black pit' on occasions). I still meditate sometimes quite simply because I love the state and how refreshed I feel after. I bought some tapes and a book by Patricia Carrington; I believe the technique is similar to Benson's method, in that most of the focus is on breathing.