[Student] Is it possible to get the reverse effect from TM?
[TM Teacher] What do you mean? What kind of reverse effect?
[S] Like, instead of becoming more relaxed, become more agitated, and irritated by little things, or ... The reason I'm asking this is that one of my former lecturers started TM and he quit after a short time, because of this he found himself...
[T] he started feeling...
[S] ill at, you know, ill at ease.
[T] It's real important that when you start TM, there's a certain set of instructions that you follow, and it's really important to have followup, to start the course and then go back for regular checking. Its possible that there might have been some incorrect practice, that he might have been doing something incorrectly. Or he might have been meditating correctly but ... we meditate for twenty minutes but then immeidately afterwards we don't want to just jump up and go into activity when we notice the twenty minutes is up. Part of the instruction, and something that's very important is that we take two or three minutes of just sitting easily with our eyes closed, not meditating, before we get up so that we have some transition period. Cause otherwise, it's like, it's like you're in reverse and you're just plunging into forward gear, in a car you know that's a jolt, it's a jolt to the nervous system too when you're in a very deep state of rest and go from that to a period of activity. You need some transition period, two to three minutes is enough time for that transition period to take place. But if you don't take that transition period, then the experience is that you feel some irritability during the day, some headache, some grogginess, or something like that. The effect would be unpleasant. Because it was too much of a jolt to the system and it caused that roughness.
Another thing is that you're releasing stress during meditation. You don't want to just get up out of meditation while you're releasing a lot of stress because that can carry over into activity and that could be the result, feeling irritable. You want to have this whole thing have a chance to smooth out first, then you get up, then you gain the benefit from having already released the stress, you don't want to be carrying that over into activity.
So I don't know exactly what his situation was, I would have to talk to him and maybe check his meditation first. But that could be one possibility. Because TM would not make a person feel more irritable, because they're gaining such a deep rest. It's a very beneficial thing if practiced correctly, so if that person doesn't go back to be checked afterwards and they have some negative experience like that and they don't go back to a teacher and say "well what's happening and what am I doing wrong" and they can talk it out and find out if there is something that can be done to smooth it out, then they'll just quit like your friend did. So that's why we strongly encourage followup and we provide followup program on campus for people. That's probably one of the reasons.
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