Hello:

I am a R/Catholic who has practiced centering prayer meditation for ten years.  Recently I went on a silent retreat which included about 4.5 hours of meditation per day -- which is much more that I have ever done in all my years of practice.  The long meditation sits left me feeling sick to my stomach and very tired.  It took me about ten days after the retreat to feel better again.  Some other folks went to the same retreat and had similar symptoms but have not recovered yet.  I found a book that said there was a condition known as Zen Sickness which came from too much meditation.  Has anyone here heard of this?  Is there a remedy for this situation.  I would like to help my friends that are feeling really beat up from the experience.  What I experienced was like a "pop" and the tiredness just lifted.  That's the best way I could describe it.

Any help would really be appreciated.

[QUOTE=RenGalskap;90474]Ibuprofen helps, but my experience is that you just have to wait for it to go away. It's caused by the stress of forcing yourself to focus on something for a long period of time. When you stop forcing yourself to focus, the stress gradually dissappates. Probably the best course for your friends is to try to engage in enjoyable, relaxing activities. That should help break the cycle of stress. But everone is different and I can't offer any guarantees.

In Buddhist meditation, we strongly suggest that new meditators not force themselves to focus, but pay attention to the way the mind drifts while gently bringing the focus back to the object you are focusing on. That means that there's a lot of drifting off, coming back, drifting off, coming back, and so on, but that's part of the experience of meditation.[/QUOTE]

Thank you for your advice.  For me, it did go away and I just stopped meditating for about ten days and just started back today.....that felt like the sensible thing to do.  I will pass your note onto my friends.  I appreciate your time.

You are very welcome. I'm always glad when something I've said turns out to be helpful. And a little surprised. :)