Why meditation is bad

Other meditators might have the opposite problem. Studies have shown that meditation can increase activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, for instance, which in turn regulates the limbic system, and the amygdala, another region where emotional salience is processed. In the right amount, prefrontal control over the limbic system can result in better focus and less emotional reactivity, says Britton. Through Cheetah House, Britton has heard from many people experiencing this sense of numbness.

What do I do? Besides these more extreme reactions, Britton has shown that overzealous meditation can even damage sleep. Among people undergoing an eight-week mindfulness course, those who meditated for more than 30 minutes a day, five days a week, tended to have worse sleep quality than those who spent less time in mindful contemplation.

A big downside of too much meditation includes interrupted, poor quality sleep Credit: Alamy. You can only crank up your attention dial so far before you start feeling anxious or stop sleeping. Overall, she found that there was a positive effect, though there was large variation between studies. Like Britton, she thinks that we need more nuance in our understanding of the specific situations in which mindfulness may or may not be useful, alongside a greater investigation of the potential adverse effects.

She notes that most of the studies have only looked at the effects over relatively short time periods, whereas some of the adverse effects may not emerge until much later — which is important to understand, since she points out that the standard advice is to continue meditating every day for the rest of your life.

What can we do if our own mindfulness practice is no longer working as anticipated? In which case, the simplest option may be to switch to another activity that is also known to boost your overall wellbeing. Meanwhile, my practice kept me so morbidly fixated on my flaws that I kept finding more. And this was true for me too: After the retreat, I had more energy and often felt that I was better able to cope with stressful situations.

Instead, I just ended up flipping through the same reels of intel about the end of my marriage. For instance, Annie Gurton , HG. If they were paranoid, it would have fed into those thoughts. In other words, transformation can be messy. As the juggernaut of wellness rolls forward, the emphasis on the feel-good benefits of meditation has reached ludicrous proportions. In my experience, not only do different people need different styles of contemplative practice, individual needs vary and can change over time.

It was sheer luck that I stumbled onto alternative practices that softened my experience. I began incorporating these techniques and more. The most important thing to realize is that meditation-related anxiety is real and can have devastating consequences. Lisa L. She is currently at work on The Joyseeker: Chasing Salvation in India, the story of the decade she spent looking for answers to the wrong question. More at lisalkirchner. Qigong meditation is an ancient Chinese healing practice that promotes physical, mental, and spiritual health.

Here's how practicing active and…. Willoughby Britton, the director of the clinical and affective neuroscience laboratory at Brown University, runs a support group for people like David—people for whom meditation has caused a psychological and physical crisis. Each week, she gets more emails from people who are struggling, asking for her help. The group connects online, where people of all ages and backgrounds across nine time zones come together and find solace in the company of others who are also suffering from the negative side effects of meditation.

Last year, she published the largest study on meditation-related problems, interviewing meditation teachers and other meditators who had personal knowledge of such issues. There can also be sensory hypersensitivity, or sensitivity to light and sound.

At first, it might be pleasant. Colors get brighter. A person starts noticing more things. The pendulum can swing the other way, and a person can experience hypo-arousal.

This can look like dissociation or disembodiment. Around ten years ago, she started Cheetah House , which specializes in taking care of meditators in distress.

Needless to say, Britton feels wary about our growing tendency to dole out meditation like a generic multivitamin. What makes it problematic is that the person interprets it as a bad trip. Instead of being empowering and fulfilling, the way Buddhist literature claims it will be, it turns into the opposite.

In a sense, it's Enlightenment's Evil Twin. He listened to the CDs, which guided him through breathing and body-scan meditations. Sometimes while he was meditating, he would feel a vertigo-type feeling, or like he was looking at one of those Magic Eye posters.

He says he was feeling overall less stressed —about everything. Around March , things started to change. He began feeling highly emotional, crying a lot, and dealing with intrusive thoughts. He developed an obsession with the idea of trauma, and the idea that he had a repressed memory. Why did I feel so upset, or guilty, or negative? He has given up meditation completely.

He downloaded the app Calm and began doing guided meditations at home. In the fall of , he went on a ten-day meditation retreat. Last summer, he began to volunteer at the retreat, meditating three to four hours a day. Earlier this year, in March, he decided to go on another ten-day retreat. But something did start to go wrong. He says that he was in a traumatic accident when he was 13, and the meditation started to bring up memories of the accident.

He suddenly felt like he was 13 again. He was unable to sleep. After waiting for around a month, hoping it would go away, he started to become suicidal. He went to the ER and was admitted as a young adult inpatient for about a week. This year is the most suicidal I ever felt in my life, so it was really hard dealing with that. When I ask him about what he thinks about meditation now, his answer is surprisingly generous.

Many of the mechanisms that are responsible for the benefits of meditation may also in fact be responsible for these adverse effects.