Enlightening: Meditation May Trigger Unpleasant Experiences
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ricky l
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For some people, meditation may trigger experiences that are unpleasant or even distressing, according to a new study.
For example, some people may become hypersensitive to light or sound during or after they meditate, the researchers found. Others may experience fear, anxiety or panic related to meditation, they found.
"Many effects of meditation are well-known, like increased awareness of thoughts and emotions, or improved calm and well-being," lead study author Jared Lindahl, visiting assistant professor of the humanities at Brown University in Rhode Island, said in a statement. "But there is a much broader range of possible experiences." [Mind Games: 7 Reasons You Should Meditate]
Many factors affect "exactly what those experiences are, how they affect individuals and which ones show up as difficult," Lindahl said.
In the study, the researchers wanted to identify meditation experiences that could be seen as challenging to cope with, as such experiences had been underrepresented in the scientific literature. The scientists interviewed nearly 100 people — a group that included regular people who meditate as well as some people who teach meditation — about their experiences during and after meditation. Based on the results, the researchers identified 59 different experiences associated with meditation.
While some of these experiences, such as feelings of unity with others, were seen as desirable by some study participants, others interpreted them as disorienting, the researchers found.
Some of the potentially challenging experiences reported by the participants involved sensory changes. For example, some of the people said that meditation made them hypersensitive to light or sound. Others reported experiencing involuntary movements, insomnia, dizziness or headaches associated with meditation. Some participants reported emotional experiences such as feeling fearful, anxious, panicky or emotionless because of meditation.
"I think for us the really surprising thing was just the sheer number and diversity of things that we found," Lindahl told Live Science.
There were also people who had experiences that they interpreted as positive when they happened during meditation retreats, but that persisted once the people had left the retreat and that therefore interfered with their functioning or work. This shows that "an experience that is positive and desirable in one situation may become a burden in another," Lindahl said. [10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain]
The new results show that meditation does not trigger only positive experiences, and that people experiencemeditation-related phenomena that can be distressing, the researchers said.
"The purpose of our study is to help and to reach and support those people who currently feel somewhat marginalized by the dominant positive discussions about meditation and dominant narratives around what meditation is thought to do," Lindahl said.
More research is needed to examine the neurobiological mechanisms behind such experiences, study co-author Willoughby Britton, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University, said in a statement.
The study was published May 24 in the journal PLOS ONE.
Originally published on Live Science.
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- Published: May 24, 2017
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176239
Abstract
Buddhist-derived meditation practices are currently being employed as a popular form of health promotion. While meditation programs draw inspiration from Buddhist textual sources for the benefits of meditation, these sources also acknowledge a wide range of other effects beyond health-related outcomes. The Varieties of Contemplative Experience study investigates meditation-related experiences that are typically underreported, particularly experiences that are described as challenging, difficult, distressing, functionally impairing, and/or requiring additional support. A mixed-methods approach featured qualitative interviews with Western Buddhist meditation practitioners and experts in Theravāda, Zen, and Tibetan traditions. Interview questions probed meditation experiences and influencing factors, including interpretations and management strategies. A follow-up survey provided quantitative assessments of causality, impairment and other demographic and practice-related variables. The content-driven thematic analysis of interviews yielded a taxonomy of 59 meditation-related experiences across 7 domains: cognitive, perceptual, affective, somatic, conative, sense of self, and social. Even in cases where the phenomenology was similar across participants, interpretations of and responses to the experiences differed considerably. The associated valence ranged from very positive to very negative, and the associated level of distress and functional impairment ranged from minimal and transient to severe and enduring. In order to determine what factors may influence the valence, impact, and response to any given experience, the study also identified 26 categories of influencing factors across 4 domains: practitioner-level factors, practice-level factors, relationships, and health behaviors. By identifying a broader range of experiences associated with meditation, along with the factors that contribute to the presence and management of experiences reported as challenging, difficult, distressing or functionally impairing, this study aims to increase our understanding of the effects of contemplative practices and to provide resources for mediators, clinicians, meditation researchers, and meditation teachers.Figures
Citation: Lindahl JR, Fisher NE, Cooper DJ, Rosen RK, Britton WB (2017) The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists. PLoS ONE 12(5): e0176239. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176239Editor: Kirk Warren Brown, Virginia Commonwealth University, UNITED STATESReceived: August 2, 2016; Accepted: April 2, 2017; Published: May 24, 2017Copyright: © 2017 Lindahl et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Sensitive and potentially identifying information, including original interviews, cannot be provided due to ethical restrictions. Requests may be sent to the Brown University Institutional Review Board (IRB@Brown.edu).Funding: This study was supported by grant number K23-AT006328-01A1 from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (https://nccih.nih.gov/) at the National Institutes of Health, grant number 256/12 from the Bial Foundation (www.bial.com) (WB), the Varela Research Award from the Mind and Life Institute (www.mindandlife.org) (NF) and the 1440 Foundation (www.1440.org) (WB, JL). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.Competing interests: The Bial Foundation is a commercial source that provided funding for this research. The funder had no role in the study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the paper; and/or decision to submit for publication. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
