Panic attack

So one day a week or so ago I had a nasty experience after meditation.

I had done a 40 minute metta bhavana (development of loving kindness) meditation during the evening, and all was well. But when I went to bed everything looked and felt weird. My head felt heavier than normal. My curtains and the pictures on my wall looked bigger and darker and different. The silhouette of my bedside lamp in the dark looked utterly strange against the white curtain with the moonlight coming through. I felt detached from myself, from my body. Panic started to well up inside me so I turned the light on. The square shape of my room, the corners of the ceiling, looked sharp and heavy, and the little specks of paint on the wall seemed to be moving the more I stared at them.

All sorts of stuff started running through my mind. My train of thought went something like this, as far as I can remember: "I'm a consciousness inside my head and I'm going to be with this consciousness for 50 or 60 years more, then I'm going to die. My mum is going to die, and my dad too, and suffering is ahead of me in life.... Ssshhhh, you don't need to deal with that now. You're freaking out because the curtains look weird. Don't think about dying right now. Shit, shit, I forgot to breathe. I'm going to suddenly stop breathing and die. I must keep control, cos I'm freaking out and when I'm freaking out I'm frightened that I'll do something totally crazy like smother myself or bang my head against the wall. Don't move. Don't move. Arrrggghhh this is what they say in Buddhism, that everything is impermanent and not accepting that makes us suffer, so I need to get over my fear of dying right now or I'm gonna be freaking out like this until I'm 80. OK so we're all going to die. I can accept that. ARRGGGHHHH the wall is moving...." and so on and so on.

It went on like that for about twenty minutes (though I'm not really sure) and eventually I put on some Mozart, focused on that, calmed down and went to sleep.

The generally accepted Buddhist interpretation of this would perhaps be that I was facing some kind of reality, i.e. that of death and non-self, and that I could have learnt something from that experience, looked fear right in the face and seen it for what it was: delusion. This, anyway, is what I suspect many Buddhists might say.

The generally accepted modern psychological interpretation of this would perhaps be that I had a panic attack and that it's perhaps not a good idea to do meditation just before going to bed.

I am concerned that the reason some Buddhists would assure me that the Buddhist interpretation of my experience is truer is that it fits nice and squarely with Buddhist teachings, rather than the person in question having had any real experience of panic attack or genuinely knowing what the best thing to do is.

I sometimes get the impression that some people might be tempted not to look at each situation and think about what genuinely would be the healthiest thing for the person who is asking for advice to do, but rather to give a nice, wise-sounding Buddhisty answer, something along the lines of "face your fear and you will see through it" or "you fear losing control because you are attached to control."

Maybe there is some truth in those statements, but I say in response to that advice: go and have a panic attack, see how it feels, then come back and tell me what to do.

Shambhala : first impressions

Some (fairly random) observations, in no particular order:

• There were lots of people there, who all seemed very nice and friendly.

• The guy teaching the meditation was around 50, French, and pleasant.

• They bang on the gong differently to the Zen centre.

• There was a lot of chanting, which went very quickly and I didn't understand what I was chanting.

• We meditated for 30 mins then did a walking meditation of 10 mins. I think that might be different on normal evenings, but that's what we did last week.
  

• The cushions are red and yellow and square shaped.

• There are lots of gold and coloured things around, lots of ornaments and pictures and flags and statues. However, the meditation seemed almost less formal than Zen. Maybe this was because there were so many people there so there was more noise and shifting around and coughing and things.

• The meditation was mindfulness of breathing, then there was a ceremony for someone who had died so we did tonglen (giving and receiving feelings of another person to put yourself in their place and take their pain). I assume the funeral service was atypical for their meditation evenings. Either way, it made me cry.

• After the meditation the people stood around chatting. This was pleasant and I found it more relaxing in some ways than the Zen centre.

• I got into a discussion with a guy who I think must be a regular there. I'm not sure what his role was in the evening, but he started going on about realms of existence - the hell realms, animal realms and so on and reincarnation. I was getting frustrated with him because I think he assumed I hadn't even thought about the idea before, so he was basically lecturing me on the topic of reincarnation, i.e. if you kill people you'll pay the price.
  

• I'm not sure what I think about the meditation teacher. Some people were discussing the pros and cons of having your eyes open during meditation, and he seemed completely unwilling to entertain the idea of having one's eyes closed. He ended up by saying "well, in this tradition I insist that you keep your eyes open." - that didn't impress me too much, in spite of the fact that I can see the obvious benefits to meditating with your eyes open (i.e. it is the link between your meditation and the world). I'm keeping an open mind, and, next time I go there, open eyes it seems!
  

• There was a buffet, which had chocolate biscuits and red wine (in the keeping of the lineage of Trungpa Rinpoche, I thought, but decided not to say it out loud). The wine was very good.

So it was a mixed experience. I'm going to go again tonight and see what happens on a more normal evening, without funerals but hopefully still with wine and chocolate biscuits.

For more information about Shambhala:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambhala_Buddhism - the Wikipedia page (!)
http://paris.shambhala.fr/ - the centre in Paris I went to

Getting around...

...the Buddhist centres, that is.

In January this year, in Poland, I met two meditators who run an FWBO (Friends of the Western Buddhist Order) centre in Krakow. I went there regularly until June, when I left Krakow. During the 6 months I went on a weekend retreat. The types of meditation taught at the Krakow centre are mindfulness of breathing and metta bhavana (development of loving kindness).

This summer I meditated a little bit on my own at home, and went on a weekend retreat with the NKT (New Kadampa Trust) in September. The meditations we practised there were mindfulness of breathing, metta bhavana and some visualisations to encourage positive states of mind and eliminate negative ones.

In Paris I've tried out a few different groups. I started off going to an FWBO group then changed to a Zen centre, which I've found very interesting. The meditation is unguided but I spoke to the teacher there who suggested I do mindfulness of breathing and some loving kindness meditation. This was after I went to him when I was upset.

Last week I tried out a new centre: Shambhala. It was a slightly mixed experience. I'll write about it in my next post. I'm going to go there again tonight to see if last week was a typical experience or not.

I want to try out lots of different groups and different methods of meditation and see what works best for me, and where I most click with the people who go there. I think that's almost more important than the school of Buddhism or the lineage or the particular traditions they conform to.

Happiness in a French baguette

Today I got up at a reasonable time (9.30am is revolutionary for me, honestly), went for a slow walk to get a baguette (I am living in France, after all) and some breakfast stuff, came back and ate it, meditated for five short minutes, and now I feel great.

Could it be like this every day?

OK, I've got to remember that this sudden feeling of well-being is not permanent, but I'm gonna enjoy it while it lasts, I tell you.

Recurring inner dialogue

Little voice in head 1: I should meditate when I get up in the morning.

Little voice in head 2: I can’t be bothered.

Little voice in head 1: *guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt*

Little voice in head 2: Ahhh, you’re feeling guilty. That’s interesting.

Little voice in head 1: Bugger off.

Little voice in head 2: Perhaps you should learn to be more compassionate towards yourself.

Little voice in head 1: How should I do that?

Little voice in head 2: Perhaps a loving-kindness meditation.

Little voice in head 1: But I can’t be bothered to meditate.

Little voice in head 2: Oh, shut up.

Today's meditation

...was very pleasant.

I started off doing a body-scan / relaxation thing, then spent a while (read: probably about five minutes, though I wasn't timing it) asking myself how I felt, being aware of my mood and the physical sensations in my body. I've got a stinking cold, PMT and I'm coming off anti-depressants at the moment, but despite all that, my mood wasn't too grim at all...! Then I did a longer mindfulness of breathing meditation.

It's strange - when I meditate, all the ruminations of my thinking mind seem to disappear, immediately. It's like I fully give myself the chance to chill out a bit, and my mind goes "yes please! phew!" It's only afterwards, when I get up and stretch my legs, and go about my daily life, that thoughts and anxieties and ruminations come back with a vengeance.

It is also curious how on some days, I'm in a terrible mood but my meditation turns out to be great, and on other days, I'm feeling cheerful but meditation seems to bring out the crap that was lying dormant.

Today, though, I think the meditation had a positive effect on the rest of the day. Anxiety was at a reasonably low level, I felt more "present" and also more relaxed and confident in my interactions with people.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.