Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Caffeine and Meditation
tmottes
Veteran
How about another one of these threads? haha. 
I have noticed that caffeine, and in particular coffee, has a very detrimental effect on my mind and body. I find my mind racing through thoughts much faster than in a 'sober' state. I sweat profusely. I get really shaky. I can deal with the physical effects, but the mind racing is out of control. I notice the effects when I drink anything with caffeine (soda, energy drinks, coffee, tea, etc), but they don't become a distraction until about regular coffee caffeine levels (decaf to a much lesser degree).
With that in mind I have stopped drinking coffee, soda, and energy drinks. I still consume teas, but only after eating something first. This seems to work the best for me. I was curious if other people found caffeine, coffee in particular, to be a 'intoxicant' for mindfulness or meditation? If you don't think that it does, is there the possibility that you are just not aware of its 'intoxicating' effects? Obviously we are all different and this might just be me, but I was curious on your opinions/experiences.
I have noticed that caffeine, and in particular coffee, has a very detrimental effect on my mind and body. I find my mind racing through thoughts much faster than in a 'sober' state. I sweat profusely. I get really shaky. I can deal with the physical effects, but the mind racing is out of control. I notice the effects when I drink anything with caffeine (soda, energy drinks, coffee, tea, etc), but they don't become a distraction until about regular coffee caffeine levels (decaf to a much lesser degree).
With that in mind I have stopped drinking coffee, soda, and energy drinks. I still consume teas, but only after eating something first. This seems to work the best for me. I was curious if other people found caffeine, coffee in particular, to be a 'intoxicant' for mindfulness or meditation? If you don't think that it does, is there the possibility that you are just not aware of its 'intoxicating' effects? Obviously we are all different and this might just be me, but I was curious on your opinions/experiences.
0
Comments
So for some people, caffeine would fall into this category - for others, maybe not.
That said, if it affects you like that, then don't consume it. If it affects your practice, definitely don't consume it.
Having a good idea where this thread might be headed (if the other thread is any indication), let me just say right now that caffeine is, as far as I'm aware, not a regulated drug in any society or any country anywhere on earth. Marijuana is. There's a good reason for that.
Is it possible that the precepts are closely tied to karma? Maybe, the 5 precepts take on a different meaning based on the karma we have/do generate? Sort of like Plato's perfect forms?
@kayward2011 I don't smoke tobacco and when I have in the past, I feel "drunk" for a short period of time.
I can't comment on its effects in meditation. I'm receiving my cushion in the mail today. So my practice will have no excuse to be inconsistent
The thing about toxins, all toxins, is that the body tries to protect itself from them by isolating them in fat cells away from the rest of the body. The body can store toxins in fat cells fairly safely and pretty much indefinitely.
Toxin load and storage is pretty much cumulative over time unless significant measures are undertaken to clear it.
The thing about being female is that women have more fat cells in their bodies than men, (to provide for the possibility of pregnancy and lactation). It is also one of the reasons why women are far more easily and intensely chemically affected, and addicted, then are men.
Depending on how much and how fast one metabolizes that fat and releases those toxins and fails to clear them through the liver and from the body, it is possible to overload the body with significant toxicity and to experience significant toxic symptoms. Hallucinogenic "flashbacks" long after last ingestion of a hallucinogen such as LSD are possible via this method. Sudden lead poisoning from the sudden release of a significant amount of toxic lead storage gradually accumulated over years of working around chemicals or alloys containing lead is possible via this method. Sudden toxic complications of pregnancy whenever pregnancy metabolizes fat storage and releases a flood of toxins contained therein is possible via this method.
The thing about caffeine is that it increases fat metabolism.
NO please dont tell me this, l need to reduce caffine....
It looks as if my post was finished, but it's not. There was more that was supposed be added, only, my phone is really acting screwy and hasn't been allowing me to edit my comments successfully. My apologies, tomottes.
My comment was supposed to begin in reference to caffeine beverages and continue with some reading that the affects of caffeine is a natural diuretic, which increases the urge to urinate with the hypertension that caffeine can give. That tends to get in the way also. There was more, but it's been a while since my last comment.
:P
One can have all manner of toxins stored in the fat cells in one's body, from the lead in the paint one chewed as an infant to residual toxic chemicals from one's food, water, pharmaceuticals (prescribed or not), career, and environment.
The combination of not having eaten and drinking coffee was what had apparently brought on the post LSD flashback of that guy in the middle of work, years after he had quit taking LSD. Apparently the same thing (fasting combined with caffeine) has been known to cause a sudden release of lead absorbed and stored by the body in the course of some occupations that can supposedly give a man a bout of high-circulating-lead-level-induced impotence, and in women toxins released in like manner can cause complications in pregnancy.
My body can't deal with caffeine either. I don't know if it's entirely the caffeine itself or if it has also to do with the fact that as children we used to play in lead paint contaminated sand left over from sandblasting. It was more lead paint flecks than it was sand and it would have qualified as an extremely hazardous toxic waste dump.
It could just be the caffeine, or it could be that also something toxic may have been released from fat storage into the bloodstream...
I never had a "racing mind" in college with no food and black tea before the calculus exam.... it was a heavy and dull feeling about the liver, like something had bloated or otherwise poisoned it.. ugh....
Lol! Thanks for your understanding. This phone has been lagging lately.
Yeah, that is so true! Who's to say otherwise? When you gotta go you gotta go! =-))
It's usual for me to meditate each time before eating or drinking anything, and with the certainty that the body is clean and emptied from anything that may thwart the purpose. This isn't all of the time, however, the effort of cessation anything influential really helps before meditation. That way it is more likely that the body is prepared.
Namaste