It's anecdotal of course but during a first body scan for a mindfulness course I got a panic attack. I stopped and on subsequent days did shorter meditation exercises before attempting another body scan (guided by audio, think it took like 35 mins), which was ok. It's not hard to imagine that if I would've tried to "push through" and hadn't stopped the body scan the first time as well as continued doing it on following days that this would have negatively affected my mental health.
I'm an autodidact so this chaffed at me too. But I have met people who've gone in a very strange direction by assembling a syncretic set of ideas plucked from different schools of thought, and ended up with something that was kinda nuts. And operating from this nutty set of principles sometimes lead them to make bad decisions, and made it very difficult to communicate with them.
I don't know think having guidance from a teacher is the only way to avoid that, but I think without feedback from others in some way it's really easy to start believing your own bullshit.
I apologize for the tone. I'm learning how to not offend while getting my point across.
I must re-emphasize that in many people's experiences, meditative practices could have powerful effects on one's mind (potentially positive and negative), and they are not matters to be trifled about. It's one thing to not practice it because one does not believe in them, but it's can be very dangerous to encourage others to dismiss such concerns as fancy, because it could endanger those who experiment with meditation without precautions.
> I'm learning how to not offend while getting my point across
Yup and you'll find that your point gets across much better once you develop the habit of sanding off the sharp edges. The latter scratch the reader and then draw all the attention and energy, meaning your actual point gets lost. Not all readers react that way, but the ones who do will be more likely to get activated into commenting, and discussion quality suffers greatly.
There's an interesting phenomenon I've noticed: sometimes when people are replying to a moderator comment, they explain what they were trying to say in the first place. Often this 'second take' is a clearer and more neutral explanation. That's how I read your second paragraph there.
HN comments don't have to be completely neutral in every way—that would be a bit too bland, or even robotic—but it's a good idea to err on that side if you're unsure of how you're coming across. Over time you can develop the habit of not coming across as aggressive, and then you can gradually make your comments more colorful if you want to.
They did ask the question in snarky way, and it isn't cool to disrespect people's spiritual/contemplative practice, but in fairness to them it does sound a little silly. Especially if you haven't had any powerful experiences with meditation, I would have had a hard time taking the suggestion seriously a year ago. And I think they were genuinely curious about the answer.
We don't know if they're gunnuh use the app or not, either. They're here and asking questions, right? So they're at least curious about it. I have no idea if this is the case for them, but sometimes snark is even a defense mechanism for people who are a little embarrassed to be curious about something.
I think telling a story about them like that makes things personal and confrontational in a way that's unhelpful. In order to understand your point, they'd first have to discard any feelings of insult that might arise. Which I at least find taxing.
But all that said, I understand why it upset you, and in truth the snark did bother me as well.
I think it was the minimization of meditation, not the part about Twitter. There's a subtext that meditation is too trivial for anything bad to happen.
It wasn't any disrespect, at least I don't have any spiritual practice to disrespect, but rather the cavalier attitude against a reasonable warning.
Imagine somebody warns you about "don't open random email attachments" and a random guy shows up and says "well, explain to me how my grandma's christmas card email is going to make my computer explode".
The cavalier attitude can cost lives. I honestly have nothing against that person who made the comment, I just felt I had to make it clear one must be aware what they are getting into before dismissing something as trivial, and also don't negligently make comments that might put others at risk.
I wish I could have phrased my original comment better, but once it's out there on the internet... :-/
I mean, maybe I should have filtered it through ChatGPT to make it less abrasive since I couldn't force myself into the "speak nicely" mode when I was writing it...
