...Megan felt an exquisite serenity unlike any she had ever known. Tears came to her eyes. "I was so happy. I finally knew my place in the world. I was a child of the earth and I needed to share my joy."
But hours later, Megan's bliss dissipated. She became tired, then drained...She felt heavy, responsible for everything that was wrong in the world...A surge of "immense fear" coursed through her body and she found herself panicking, unable to move. "I can't remember where I am. Who I am. What I'm doing here." Then a torrent of dark thoughts came rushing in: is it the end of the world? Am I dying? Why can't I function or move?...
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Buddhist meditation, which began as a practice among renunciants living in monasteries, hermitages and caves in the 5th century BC is now a part of mainstream American culture. Countless books, magazine articles, You Tube videos, apps, and corporate wellness programs celebrate its benefits to our cognitive, emotional, and physical well-being. The market for meditation products and services in the United States is valued at $1.2 billion.
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Although there is date supporting the positive effects of meditation, the scientific literature is murkier than some champions of the practice would like to believe, and the possibility of negative outcomes cannot be so easily dismissed.
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One case study, from 2007, documented a 24 year old male who had slipped into a "short-lasting acute psychotic state" during an unguided and intense meditation session. He was referred to clinicians following the onset of "an acute sensation of being mentally split". He saw vivid colors, hallucinated, and was overcome with severe anxiety. At the height of the episode he was tormented by "delusional convictions that he had caused the end of the world" and talked of suicide.
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Most studies don't monitor for negative reactions, relying on participants to report them spontaneously. But the research that does exist is not reassuring. More than 50 published studies have documentend meditation-induced mental health problems, including mania, dissociation and psychosis. In 2012, leading meditation researchers in the UK published a set of guidelines for meditation instructors noting "risks for participants" including depression, traumatic flashbacks, and increased suicide ideation.
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Some clinicians believe that meditation can cause psychological problems in people without underlying conditions, and that even 40 minutes of meditation per day can pose risks.
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In the emergency room, Megan repeated over and over, "I did something terrible, I did something terrible. I killed the universe." According to hospital records, Megan appeared "disheveled and unkempt" and seemed to be "responding to internal stimuli." Beyond her psychological distress, whatever was ailing her was also causing a physical reaction: her stomach churned, and she was both cold and perspiring. She was tested for drugs and infections that could cauze psychosis; everything came back negative.
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Jordan scoured the internet for some clue as to what was happening to her sister. "My sister entered into a meditation-induced psychotic state this week and I am searching for help," she wrote. Jordan asked for her message to be relayed to the group's facilitator, a clinical psychologist amd neuroscientist at Brown named Willoughby Britton, who has become one of the foremost advocates of the view that meditation can be harmful even for people wihout underlying psychiatric disorders.
Britton has started out as an avid meditator, but as a graduate student she made an unexpected discovery.She conducted a study to determine the effects of regular meditation on sleep quality...Compared with an 8 person control group, the subjects who meditated for more than 30 minutes per day experienced shallower sleep and woke up more often during the night. The more participants reported meditating, the worse their sleep became.
Britton's sample size was small, but other researchers have also documented this apparent paradox - positive self-reports with negative outcomes...Participants who had meditated reported feeling less stressed immediately after the interview, but their levels of cortisol - the fight-or-flight hormone - were significantly higher than the control group. They had become more sensitive, not less, to stressful stimuli, but believing and expecting that meditattion reduced stress, they gave self-reports that contradicted the data.
Until the sleep study, Britton had been, in her own words, an evangelist for meditation...On a meditation retreat she told one of her instructors about her research. "The teacher kind of chastised me 'why are you therapists always trying to make meditation a relaxation technique? That's not what it's there for. Everyone knows if you meditate enough you stop sleeping.' "
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"Every meditation center we went to had at least a dozen horror stories," she said. Psychotic breaks and cognitive impairments were common; they were often temporary but sometimes lasted years.
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In 2017, Britton and her team published their findings in PLOS One, a prominent scientific journal. The report presented a taxonomy of "meditation related difficulties", including anxiety and panic, traumatic flashbacks, visual and auditory hallucinations loss of conceptual meaning structures, non-referential fear, affective flattening, involuntary movements, and distressing chnages im feelings of self. ... For Britton, the takeaway was that adverse effects routinely occur even under optimal conditions, with healthy people.
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The Buddhist ascetics who took up meditation in the 5th century BC did nlt view it as a form of stress relief. "These contemplative practices were invented for monastics who had renounced possessions, social position, wealth, family, comfort, amd work," writes David McMahan, a professor of religious studies... In the Pali suttas, the earliest Buddhist texts, the Buddha discusses meditation almost exclusively eith audiences of followers reasy to reject their earthly belongings. "Generally meditation is presented as something monastics aspiring to full awakening do, an activity that is part of a way of being in the world that is ultimately aimed at exiting the world, rather than a means to a happier, more fulfilling life within it."
In other words, mindfulness was not invoked to savor the beauty of nature or to be a more present, thoughtful spouse. The point of meditation was to cultivate disgust and disenchantment with the everyday world and one's attachments to people and things. .. If meditation conferred any physical benefit, it was in helping ascetics "accept the discomfort of a hard bed and a growling stomach or in preventing them from being beguiked by physical beauty."
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Reports of disturbing experiences during meditation appear in a number of early Buddhist writings. In the Theravada tradition, meditators are said to experience "corruptions of insight" that, from the vantage of modern clinical psychology, resemble psychosomatic ailments, imcluding manic bliss states, gastroinstestinal issues, and visual hallucinations. Monks in the Zen tradition may encounter "diabolical phenomena" which are characterized by involuntary movemens and frightening mental imagery.
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Back at home, Megan continued to meditate, often for hours at a stretch, oscillating between lethargy and panic...Megan had always kept a tidy journal, but now her writing became compulsive. She scribbled her most personal thoughts on whatever happened to be around.
"The world will go on without you. It's been around for 6 billion years. Stop being so selfish"
"I'm afraid my energy is going to hurt everyone else."
"I can't stay inside of the lines. I can't stay inside of the lines."
On the morning of June 6, 2017, Megan told her parents she was going for a walk in the park...That morning, as soon as Megan drove away, he got a bad feeling...In her truck, Megan had left a note for her family: "I couldn't keep running from what was supposed to have happened. If you get a chance to die - take it."
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Today, the luminaries of mainstream Buddhism widely promote meditation to laypeople, and refuse to acknowledge it carries any risks...Britton's more radical conclusions are also met with skepticism in some corners of mainstream psychiatry.
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Britton's research was bolstered last August when the journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica published s systematic review of adverse events in meditation practices and meditation-based therapies. 65% of the studies included in the review found adverse effects. "We found that the occurence of adverse effects is not uncommon, and may occur in individuals with no previous history of mental health problems."
