I came across two recent articles (one, on BBC’s website and two, Harper’s Magazine) that described the ill-effects of meditation, including profiles of people who’ve had terrible experiences after meditation – both mindfulness and transcendental. I suggest you at least flip though both of them.
I credit meditation – along with a couple of other things – with helping me get through years of depression. Having had a regular meditation practice in the past, here are some observations:
- For months into my mindfulness practice, I attempted to pay attention to everything around me. The act of trying to notice everything at once caused immediate anxiety, and the rush of sensory input was overwhelming, and made for dozens of hours of unhappy sessions that left me more frazzled than when I began. It was months later that I learnt to notice only what my brain was already filtering in, without trying to manipulate those filters. That was a step-change in the quality of my practice, and therefore the effect it had on my well-being.
- I also attempted to breathe evenly and deeply. Oxygen over-saturation is a real thing, and it causes me to become light-headed, with a tingling sensation on my nose, fingers and toes. I worsened the feedback loop by attempting to notice the tingling even as my brain dealt with the light-headedness, and that led to some light hallucinations and a spike in stress levels.
- Finally, while mindfulness eventually does help you form a more sustainable relationship with yourself and the world around you, the path doesn’t appear to be simple. Some of the realisations I had felt like gigantic crises, the storm before the calm of acceptance and understanding. I can see why people who are hit with the sudden clarity of just how insignificant they, their lives, their stories are feel broken. To me it’s quite possible that their brains create automatic defence mechanisms that could manifest as paranoia or mania. I’m not sure how to tackle this: whether meditation is to be performed in the same sorts of careful setting that psilocybin is administered in some parts of the world today, or whether there are forms of Meditation Lite that ease practitioners into understanding.
(Part 2)