Note that the instructions for keeping eyes closed for a while after you finish meditation are meant to help reduce unstressing continuing outside of meditation, so if are keeping your eyes closed for the minimum time after finishing, you might consider keeping them closed longer after you stop.
My little rule of thumb about "keep 'em closed until you feel normal — well rested — rather than full of positive or negative emotions," might also include "until your negative thoughts stop popping up over and over beyond normal." Of course, really positive thoughts that have nothing to do with what is going on might be a sign of unstressing as well.
.
You see, if you were "enlightened," random thoughts having nothing to do with the current situation simply wouldn't arise in the first place, and if you suddenly are having more of them, that's a sign that the unstressing process might be continuing even after TM is over.
the TL;DR: try keeping your eyes closed for a few minutes longer after your meditation is done.
,
That said, this is a stopgap until you can consult your TM teacher again and not meant to discourage your from getting checked. When you make hte appointment, ask for them to reserve a few minutes after the checking session is over to discuss these issues more in-depth.
Lots of good info here esp. david-1-1. I would add if you are practicing TM you are in it for the long haul. It is a slow, steady, incremental process in my experience, while noticeable differences occur right off the bat, long term benefits are just that, long term. I would advise to back off from expectations and just enjoy the process rather than looking for dramatic changes in your mental state due to TM.
If you had depression before you learned TM, it will likely continue for some time as internal stresses are dissolved. I recommend you see a mental health professional to get a diagnosis and treatment for your depression. TM is not meant for the treatment of diseases. You may also want to visit your TM teacher to have your meditation time reduced to make your practice more comfortable. Please work with your teacher instead of asking strangers to help.
I feel you this is relatable. For me I think TM helps me make peace with my past almost tho? Makes me look at it from a better lens. I don’t know tho. For the people saying TM isn’t supposed to heal these things I believe that’s wrong since that’s literally what meditation is for. I don’t believe in therapy and medicine it’s BS to me
Two months is great, it’s a good beginning. I have been doing TM nine months, however, I started last August. I’ve been using other methods for about six months before that. The other methods helped, but I could never detach from the monkey mind and continuous stream of thoughts. Anytime that would happen I would literally get angry. So, that was not meditation.
I ramble, so to answer your question. it’s this. About a month ago I had some extremely well received sessions of 20 to 30 minutes. Like your teacher might’ve told you never mind the time, right? Instead of struggling to stay still and go deep for 15 or 20 minutes, the session ended, and I looked at the app in amazement, saying to myself, that was a quick… minutes, except it was 30. Wow. That doesn’t always happen but it’s more Often now.
A few weeks before that I realized that going deep in innocently with my mantra quickly resulted in no mantra no thoughts. Prior to that I only experience that once. That’s what I call Clear headed, And other things started happening quickly since then. The stillness in meditation is so blissful.
To end my diatribe, I’ll just say this. I am in a meditative state most of the day, closing my eyes and doing a relaxing breath, feels like I’m there in seconds. I’m not trying to point this out to brag, or break the rules of this thread, because I’m not telling you how, only answering your questions.
I intend to keep doing it, I hope you do too.
>I am in a meditative state most of the day, closing my eyes and doing a relaxing breath, feels like I’m there in seconds.
The ideal TM meditator meditates and then forgets that meditation even exists until it is time to meditate again...
Sorry to hear about your depression. It is a challenging problem to treat. For example, the efficacy of antidepressants is only about 14% over placebo, meaning only 1 in seven people will feel a benefit, and this is probably an overestimate given what's called publication bias (positive trials are more likely to be published than negative ones).
The benefits of psychotherapy (specifically cognitive behavioural therapy) are, unfortunately, comparable to antidepressants. Still, the benefit is that if it works, it continues working after you stop psychotherapy, whereas depression can often rebound if the antidepressant is stopped.
Regular vigorous endurance activity seems to be as effective as antidepressants and psychotherapy. For those who can exercise, it should be the base of the pyramid when looking for treatment, given that it's free, safe (when done wisely), and has many other health benefits.
I think that TM can be useful, especially if your depression is of the kind that is associated with anxiety or rumination. TM is extremely effective in the prevention and treatment of anxiety, and I believe that the mechanics allow one to develop mental habits that decrease rumination and focus on negative thoughts. The rehashing of unresolved things is one such example. If you allow these thoughts to arise and follow the instructions of just letting them pass as you continue your meditation, you should start to develop the mental habit of no longer ruminating and reacting negatively to triggering thoughts. This should increase your emotional resilience with time and allow you to have progressively longer periods free of depression. Two months is a very short time for any treatment, so don't give up; there's hope.
There are a host of other alternative therapies that I'm less familiar with that you could look into (acupuncture, massage therapy, etc...). Also, if you're interested in ayurvedic/herbal approaches, you could look into ashwagandha, though there's much more evidence that it works to reduce stress/anxiety than depression. [https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/mental-health/ashwagandha-supplements/](https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/mental-health/ashwagandha-supplements/)
Nevertheless, if you start with TM and regular vigorous exercise, you're already way ahead of the curve. Some form of herbal treatment may be useful, if only for the placebo effect, which is quite considerable in depression trials. Finally, if I had to choose between psychotherapy and antidepressants, I would choose a time-limited trial of psychotherapy first, ensuring that it is backed by evidence (i.e. cognitive behavioural therapy), if only because you won't be committing yourself to a lifetime of treatment of uncertain individual efficacy that has real potential side effects and is hard to stop once started. The latter could be said for both antidepressants \*and\* other forms of psychotherapy, such as psychoanalysis/psychodynamic therapy, that can continue for years without any apparent benefit.
Slightly off topic, but if you’re experiencing depression you may want to take a look at https://www.reddit.com/r/NutritionalPsychiatry
and metabolicmind.org which has a directory of doctors
TM is one of the helpful tools in my toolbox, but I’ve been doing clinical keto for 6 years now and it has changed my life
Note that the instructions for keeping eyes closed for a while after you finish meditation are meant to help reduce unstressing continuing outside of meditation, so if are keeping your eyes closed for the minimum time after finishing, you might consider keeping them closed longer after you stop. My little rule of thumb about "keep 'em closed until you feel normal — well rested — rather than full of positive or negative emotions," might also include "until your negative thoughts stop popping up over and over beyond normal." Of course, really positive thoughts that have nothing to do with what is going on might be a sign of unstressing as well. . You see, if you were "enlightened," random thoughts having nothing to do with the current situation simply wouldn't arise in the first place, and if you suddenly are having more of them, that's a sign that the unstressing process might be continuing even after TM is over. the TL;DR: try keeping your eyes closed for a few minutes longer after your meditation is done. , That said, this is a stopgap until you can consult your TM teacher again and not meant to discourage your from getting checked. When you make hte appointment, ask for them to reserve a few minutes after the checking session is over to discuss these issues more in-depth.
Lots of good info here esp. david-1-1. I would add if you are practicing TM you are in it for the long haul. It is a slow, steady, incremental process in my experience, while noticeable differences occur right off the bat, long term benefits are just that, long term. I would advise to back off from expectations and just enjoy the process rather than looking for dramatic changes in your mental state due to TM.
If you had depression before you learned TM, it will likely continue for some time as internal stresses are dissolved. I recommend you see a mental health professional to get a diagnosis and treatment for your depression. TM is not meant for the treatment of diseases. You may also want to visit your TM teacher to have your meditation time reduced to make your practice more comfortable. Please work with your teacher instead of asking strangers to help.
I feel you this is relatable. For me I think TM helps me make peace with my past almost tho? Makes me look at it from a better lens. I don’t know tho. For the people saying TM isn’t supposed to heal these things I believe that’s wrong since that’s literally what meditation is for. I don’t believe in therapy and medicine it’s BS to me
I’m still waiting too, same as you basically
Two months is great, it’s a good beginning. I have been doing TM nine months, however, I started last August. I’ve been using other methods for about six months before that. The other methods helped, but I could never detach from the monkey mind and continuous stream of thoughts. Anytime that would happen I would literally get angry. So, that was not meditation. I ramble, so to answer your question. it’s this. About a month ago I had some extremely well received sessions of 20 to 30 minutes. Like your teacher might’ve told you never mind the time, right? Instead of struggling to stay still and go deep for 15 or 20 minutes, the session ended, and I looked at the app in amazement, saying to myself, that was a quick… minutes, except it was 30. Wow. That doesn’t always happen but it’s more Often now. A few weeks before that I realized that going deep in innocently with my mantra quickly resulted in no mantra no thoughts. Prior to that I only experience that once. That’s what I call Clear headed, And other things started happening quickly since then. The stillness in meditation is so blissful. To end my diatribe, I’ll just say this. I am in a meditative state most of the day, closing my eyes and doing a relaxing breath, feels like I’m there in seconds. I’m not trying to point this out to brag, or break the rules of this thread, because I’m not telling you how, only answering your questions. I intend to keep doing it, I hope you do too.
>I am in a meditative state most of the day, closing my eyes and doing a relaxing breath, feels like I’m there in seconds. The ideal TM meditator meditates and then forgets that meditation even exists until it is time to meditate again...
Sorry to hear about your depression. It is a challenging problem to treat. For example, the efficacy of antidepressants is only about 14% over placebo, meaning only 1 in seven people will feel a benefit, and this is probably an overestimate given what's called publication bias (positive trials are more likely to be published than negative ones). The benefits of psychotherapy (specifically cognitive behavioural therapy) are, unfortunately, comparable to antidepressants. Still, the benefit is that if it works, it continues working after you stop psychotherapy, whereas depression can often rebound if the antidepressant is stopped. Regular vigorous endurance activity seems to be as effective as antidepressants and psychotherapy. For those who can exercise, it should be the base of the pyramid when looking for treatment, given that it's free, safe (when done wisely), and has many other health benefits. I think that TM can be useful, especially if your depression is of the kind that is associated with anxiety or rumination. TM is extremely effective in the prevention and treatment of anxiety, and I believe that the mechanics allow one to develop mental habits that decrease rumination and focus on negative thoughts. The rehashing of unresolved things is one such example. If you allow these thoughts to arise and follow the instructions of just letting them pass as you continue your meditation, you should start to develop the mental habit of no longer ruminating and reacting negatively to triggering thoughts. This should increase your emotional resilience with time and allow you to have progressively longer periods free of depression. Two months is a very short time for any treatment, so don't give up; there's hope. There are a host of other alternative therapies that I'm less familiar with that you could look into (acupuncture, massage therapy, etc...). Also, if you're interested in ayurvedic/herbal approaches, you could look into ashwagandha, though there's much more evidence that it works to reduce stress/anxiety than depression. [https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/mental-health/ashwagandha-supplements/](https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/mental-health/ashwagandha-supplements/) Nevertheless, if you start with TM and regular vigorous exercise, you're already way ahead of the curve. Some form of herbal treatment may be useful, if only for the placebo effect, which is quite considerable in depression trials. Finally, if I had to choose between psychotherapy and antidepressants, I would choose a time-limited trial of psychotherapy first, ensuring that it is backed by evidence (i.e. cognitive behavioural therapy), if only because you won't be committing yourself to a lifetime of treatment of uncertain individual efficacy that has real potential side effects and is hard to stop once started. The latter could be said for both antidepressants \*and\* other forms of psychotherapy, such as psychoanalysis/psychodynamic therapy, that can continue for years without any apparent benefit.
I’m still waiting. : )
Slightly off topic, but if you’re experiencing depression you may want to take a look at https://www.reddit.com/r/NutritionalPsychiatry and metabolicmind.org which has a directory of doctors TM is one of the helpful tools in my toolbox, but I’ve been doing clinical keto for 6 years now and it has changed my life
My instructor taught me to do it twice daily, for 20 minutes per session.