[ca98am79]

I agree with you 100% - I think it should be an essential component of any person’s psychological maturation/development, and I felt the same way in regards to the "woo-woo."

One way I describe it to my friends is a "meditation boot camp." They break you down so that you can build yourself up. It's not that they break you down, but the environment (no speaking, reading, writing, etc...) is one where you are stuck in your own head for 10 days without distraction - so a lot of your "issues" come out. And you then learn to deal with them through mindfulness.

I had panic disorder before going and nothing really helped. During my 10-day course I had really bad panic attacks often. But meditation has pretty much "cured" me of them, because I now know how to observe them without reaction.

[uberuberuber]

It's obviously very hard to convey how much one advances in their practice in an objective manner without having an fMRI. The only real 'data point' I have in support of my experience was how radically my ability to watch my breath and maintain my posture changed after the course.

Before the course I was more or less haphazardly trying a breathing meditation where you count your breaths (say 5 or 10), and with a bead necklace I would count how many cycles of 10 I would manage in an hour. If my mind wandered during the 10 seconds then I would start again from 1. I averaged perhaps 20 successful cycles in an hour. I know this sounds, and probably is, atrocious. It was a sobering insight into how distracted I was by the rush of thoughts despite my own deliberate efforts at modulating those thoughts. Additionally, I would feel compelled to re-position my body every few minutes. The slightest pain or itch was enough to break my will and force me to readjust the pile of pillows I relied upon, again despite my own conscious desire to not move or scratch.

After the course, I can now sit comfortably on a simple Zafu cushion for an entire hour without losing awareness of my breath more than a handful of times, and certainly without having to move a muscle.

I don't expect my own anecdotes to convince anyone of the efficacy of these courses. I can only strongly encourage anyone interested to 'walk the path' by attending a formal course to give it a try. I have already signed up for another course to further my own practice.