[mjthrowaway1]

Question: have you sat for a retreat? The reason I’m asking is I’m curious if it’s a “dosage” issue.

I sat for a 10 day goenka retreat and was shocked at how psychedelic the experience was for how little warning I was given.

[kagakuninja]

Many schools, including Goenka downplay or ignore the risks from meditation.

Goenka is infamous in the serious meditation community, as they do not use qualified teachers in their retreats. The teaching is in the videos, the guides may not be able to help you if you start to freak out.

[mjthrowaway1]

This was 100% my experience. The assistant teachers had no experience with anything beyond goenka vipassana courses. Was not helpful when I was encountering partial dissolution of the Self and high bliss states.

[russelldjimmy]

I’ve been for a 10 day Goenka retreat and did not experience anything psychedelic. However I did experience much calmness and continue to practice the techniques to this day. They have changed my life and made me a much more patient, kind, and reflective person.

[cypherpunks01]

I had a light psychedelic experience on my first retreat, with very noticeable visual object patterns and cartoons appearing in the heathered shirt of the yogi sitting in front of me, during a couple different periods of holding a stable meditation state. I've never had anything like that happen except on cannabis edibles or classic psychedelics.

I would recommend people sit their first retreat at a more supportive and forgiving retreat center. The 10-day Goenka retreats seem to vary in quality and sometimes unnecessarily harsh from what I've read, I've not sat one personally. I don't like the idea of getting all instructions from video also, instead of all the great living teachers out there today.

I'd recommend IMS on the East Coast, and Spirit Rock on the West Coast. They have really great teachers and very supportive schedule and environment for beginners. Downside is it's more costly than a free retreat, but I found it to be very much worth it.

[mjthrowaway1]

Thank you for the recommendations! I've been looking at my next retreat and this is the second time Spirit Rock has come up. The goenka retreat was very harsh, very insightful, but ultimately lacking in teacher quality. From what I could gather the teachers available to me had only ever meditated in the vipassana style and were not particularly helpful.

[mettamage]

Yep, same here. Definitely had some psychedelic moments. I think in part it's because all you can do is meditate. The sensory restrictions and the fact it's a silent retreat as well all help. Your brain goes in overdrive and comes up with stuff that you won't come up with when you have conversations or consume some content on tv or youtube.