[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.