Is there a medicine that cures all ills? So far it has not been invented but with the raise of the popularity of yoga, meditation has been turned into a panacea by people who earn big money on it. It is commonly believed that it has a miraculous power to open the gate to inner peace, happiness and enlightenment. But it can also turn people into killing machines (Japan II WW) or disturb their mental health to the point they become anxious, confused or even suicidal.
Don’t you just start to wonder about things which are marketed to you as purely good, very effective, with almost instant change for the positive and no negative side effects? I do, especially after years of dealing with yoga and meditation and having seen weird things happening around me on the yoga mat.
Negative effects are unfortunately too little discussed as they do not fit into the overly positive mainstream rhetoric about yoga and meditation. I do not want to say that meditation in general does not have a positive end purpose for the individuals who practice it regularly. My point is – meditation is it is not a miracle ailment that suits everyone at all times. And to make the matters worse, capitalistic brains around the globe have managed to commercialize, decontextualize and deliberately misinterpret this powerful tool for the mind.
More and more people meditate without taking the time to understand what they expose themselves to. I feel concerned. But not just me. Two psychologists, one a heavy meditator himself, wrote the book – The Buddha Pill published in 2015 / which somewhat disparately but objectively displays both the dark and light side of meditation.
To start with, the research on meditation is almost invariably positive wherever you go and read. But the authors of the book found out, when diligently digging into the reports, that a big lot of this material is biased. Many reports were based on somewhat flawed (no control group) or inaccurate research methods. They even found the evidence that the statistics used in some reports was tweaked in order to prove the positive hypothesis.
When I lately looked up the articles on meditation published in one of my favourite magazines -New Scientist I found that quite many of the positive ones had a disclaimer that more studies and further analyses had to be done before the assertions could be proved for sure.
Is meditation generally positive or negative?
Meditation in general does have positive effects but the results of a regular practice are comparable with other therapies which aim to heal people’s anxiety, depression or compulsive behaviour. Meditation is not necessarily better than those other techniques. In addition, all depends what type of meditation you are into. The vast yoga world hosts a multitude of different styles and techniques. Some are intended to work with the subconscious mind or put people into a hypnagogic state.
Regardless of how experienced yogi you are, strange things may happen during and after meditation. If you feel like you are not fully inside your body or are disconnected from your emotions or cannot deal with them anymore, it may be OK if it lasts for a brief while. But living like that for days is not OK. Both experienced and inexperienced meditators have needed medical and psychological intervention after yoga retreats where they were exposed to extensive meditation. They don’t yoke anymore – get panic attacks or strange sensations. And they don’t want to openly talk about it. This is not supposed to happen – meditation is supposed to be only positive phenomenon which only brings peace and enlightenment, right?
How can you protect yourself and others?
Big amounts of stress should not be countered with big amounts of meditation
If you are stressed, close to a burn-out or have recently been though one and believe that meditation is something to try, start with small doses. Start with breath awareness. Dosing meditation is similar with taking a medicine – avoid large portions at once. Several days spent meditating at a retreat as a newcomer to the yoga world can be like drinking a full bottle of tranquilizers. Whatever your teachers tell you – the fact is that we still know far too little about what happens with the brain and body during meditation. They are not always able to guarantee a safe experience.
Stop when you get scared or strange sensations confuse you
If you come to a point where you get scared, it is time to stop. If you start to panic during meditation, stop immediately. When the teacher(s) tell you to continue and promise that it will go over, do not continue. It may not go over.
Start regularly and with small doses
No one expects to start composing music like Mozart or play violin like Yehudi Menuhin after a week of training. But for some reason we expect to turn into meditation gurus within a couple of weeks. Wrong assumption – it takes years of regular practice. You cannot take one big meditation pill once and expect it to last your whole lifetime. You need to keep doing it regularly. Like you brush your teeth every day. Or go for a jogging every week.
Find a good teacher
Find a good yoga and meditation teacher who you can trust. Easier said than done. Certified by Yoga Alliance is good but not always sufficient, a guru or a Hollywood hyped yoga instructor is not always a safe bet. A good yoga teacher is not necessarily in fashion and does not need to recite you the list of famous people that are his/her clients. The quality of yoga teachers and different meditations that serve different purposes is varied. Choose carefully and do some homework. Try several teachers and meditation types before you stick to one.
Choose the mediation that suits your needs
There are different meditation techniques like there are countless yoga styles. Here are just a few examples:
- Mindfulness – focus on the present moment – awareness and acceptance (of thoughts and feelings during present moment)
- Compassion/love meditation – focus on breath, calmness and love (different versions out there, some religious so be careful when you choose)
- Kriya or mantra meditation – breathing and focus complemented with sounds (Om) or repeated words/sentences in Sanskrit, can sometimes be complemented with chakra meditation
- Chakra meditation – focus on calm breath and 7 energy centres in the body, (different versions out there so be careful when you choose)
- Zen meditation – self-study in stillness
All meditation techniques, as quite recently proven, seem to activate different parts of the brain and lead to different results. The heart meditation works more with feelings whereas mindfulness can improve attention control. Surprisingly, the heart meditation seems to decrease the activity in the part of the brain responsible for visual and special orientation so this could be the reason why over-practicing this technique may lead to feeling disoriented or “part of everything” in the end of the session.
Tania Singer is a social neuroscientist and the lead researcher of the study which looked at the effects of three different meditation techniques on the brains and bodies of more than 300 volunteers over 9 months (ReSource Project at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany). Due to different effects on the brain Tania concluded, that meditation courses should be better designed for specific outcomes, just as exercise programmes might target certain physical weaknesses.
The contemporary yoga/meditation “market” of is not sufficiently mature for an unbiased individual approach. But there is a huge demand out there for adaptive meditation classes which take into consideration different needs. I am confident that those who smell money are already working on a concept of a meditation wholesale store. Today you can get lost in the abundance of different body treatments in a spa which range between anything from classical massage to Chinese, Thai, hot stone or Ayurvedic massage. In the future you will have a similar situation when you want to learn to meditate.
I will continue writing on the topic of meditation in my next blog, stay tuned!