Buddhism, Religion

by tenpelMarch 11, 201412:19 am

The Dangers of Meditation. Advice for Meditators. An interview with Leigh Brasington by Willoughby Britton.

You might have heard that there are people who did retreat but came back rather insane than sane? Then there are people for whom meditation works very well, they become more grounded. Why is this? And if you do meditation or intensive retreat isn’t there a chance to also get deeply confused and disturbed? Yes, there is. In the following video Leigh Brasington – who studied under Ayya Khema specializing in concentration practices and Jhanas, and who led more than 91 residential Jhana retreats – speaks about the dangers of meditation and gives advice how to deal with upcoming problems. (IMO, there is no danger with meditation, the danger is rather the ignorance that doesn’t know that you might face problems which you are not prepared for or that you cannot resolve on your own.) Leigh Brasington says in the following interview that it is not uncommon that unresolved psychological issues (like trauma or bad parenting) will probably show up if you are getting more tranquil because they don’t come to the surface due to the daily distractions and because the energy was used so far to keep them down. Though for Asians, because they have another way to raise up their children, meditation might sort out also their psychological issues, for Westerners highly likely meditation cannot resolve all the psychological stuff and there is the risk of spiritual bypassing and other problems you can face. http://vimeo.com/61893225

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1

Carol McQuire on March 11, 2014 at 12:21 am
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This is an academic summary of the fine line that needs to be understood between psychopathology and correct meditation: http://vimeo.com/18819660
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  tenpel on March 11, 2014 at 12:38 am
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  Thank you Carol, I included it in the post.
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Carol McQuire on March 11, 2014 at 12:39 am
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Thank you for putting everything together! Interesting times!
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  tenpel on March 11, 2014 at 12:42 am
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  Thank you for collecting the material!
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jigje on March 11, 2014 at 7:51 pm
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I don’t know much about Leigh Brasington, I must confess, but I can speak to my own experience with meditation. Some time ago now, I did a year long shamatha retreat and there was a point (about three months in) when I was overwhelmed by extreme fear (terror) and what I later came to realize (after the retreat) were panic attacks. This was a very difficult period to navigate! My teacher suggested at the time that I meditate on the emptiness of terror, but as much as I tried, this was not something I could do. I suppose when you are in the grip of a sustained panic attack, this sort of antidote is difficult to employ. In the end I had to back off a little from my practice for awhile, spending a little less time on the cushion.

I didn’t really get to an exploration of the source of my terror or the panic attacks until after the retreat was over and I chose to enter into therapy. In retrospect, I think doing some therapy before such a long concentration retreat would help prepare one, to some degree, for what is bound to arise. In my case, the insights that came out of the work I did in therapy would have been extremely useful for me at the time.

As for “spiritual bypassing,” not much chance of that in an intensive shamatha retreat. Anything and everything comes up and forces you to take it all in. After all, there are absolutely no distractions in a retreat of this kind to take your mind off of what is.
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  john6747 on March 12, 2014 at 7:12 am
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  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03xcvt9
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    jigje on March 12, 2014 at 9:08 pm
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    The “Wilderness Years,” I like it. Though I spent only one year in that retreat, the years of therapy work that followed makes the plural ending on year apropos.
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  tenpel on March 16, 2014 at 9:23 pm
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  thank you very much for your kindness, jigje, to share your own experiences!
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Padma Kadag on March 21, 2014 at 3:59 pm
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If we are fortunate to have a Lama skilled in meditation through authentic realization who can guide us then we only benefit. This notion of “spiritual bypassing” as a down fall proposed by western psychology is in itself only conceptual. To attain complete realization in the Buddhist practice does not require nor is it deterred by “unresolved psychological personal issues”, at least unresolved in the sense that they can only be resolved using psychological methods. Buddha’s teaching is a complete path and requires no adding or subtracting.
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  tenpel on March 21, 2014 at 8:47 pm
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  Buddha’s path needs a healthy and strong ego, if that is not there it is better to work also with other methods. Also learning from others is nothing contrary to Buddhism.
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    Padma Kadag on March 21, 2014 at 10:37 pm
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    Tenpel…It is not the learning from others I disagree with…it is that before one decides to add to Buddhism a method, as western psychology is trying to do, practice Buddhism as it is to completion. Then if you feel Buddhism is lacking method then by all means do what you think you need but do not pretend it is Buddhism. I recently read the summary of a course for “Applied Buddhist Psychology” on sacred stream.org, “The course material is adapted from traditional Buddhist approaches in order to serve the psychological needs of modern westerners. Traditional Buddhist articulations have sometimes been difficult for westerners to understand. This is, in part, because Buddhist scholars working in the last two millennia did not fully foresee the depth of self-crippling behaviors specific to future industrialized nations.” Really?!! I am completely opposed to this notion and this does really represent every western method currently being sold/taught whether it is transpersonal psychology as Buddhism or sacred feminine as Buddhism. It will always be that human beings and other beings are seeking happiness…that will never change. Also, and more importantly, Buddhism is not meant for everyone. So why do we need to lose Buddhism (change it) in order to satisfy someone’s need to call themselves Buddhist?
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  dharmaanarchist on March 22, 2014 at 2:47 pm
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  Ha-Ha.
  
  If you suffer from psychological problems you can’t apply a lot of buddhist practices correctly. Therefor you can’t attain realization with those, no matter how hard you try.
  
  Plus, vajrayana is said to be the swift but dangerous path. Dzongsar Khyentse in a teaching said that this is the case because the vajrayana methods are pretty close to delusion, unlike the path of renounciation.
  
  So it is very easy to integrate the path into ones confusion rather than clarifying confusion through the path.
  
  The teachings of vajrayana were not given for people with severe mental/emotional problems, as they are the path for followers of higher capacity. Now there is some stuff in the buddhist teachings that can be applied in a psychotherapeutic way, for example loving kindness meditation.
  But buddhism is not in itself a full psychotherapy, nor can it replace one (nor are other religions).
  
  And there are too many ways that buddhist practice can be misunderstood and go wrong that someone with that sort of problem should only attempt buddhist practice under the supervision of a teacher who knows the particular hangups of people who for example have a severe lack of self esteem or have a trauma background.
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    Padma Kadag on March 25, 2014 at 12:50 pm
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    You are partly correct…my issue is with the book writers here in the west who present “their buddhism” in western psychological terms introducing buddhism as such to a new audience. Psychologists who want to be buddhists but can’t help themselves from presenting psychology and buddhism together before they have traveled buddhism’s path to completion. They have attained a PhD and yet few have attained much in the way of realization.
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      jigje on March 25, 2014 at 5:07 pm
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      Mindfulness as a technique is being incorporated within psychoanalytic and cognitive-behavioral psychotherapies. Examples are MBTC (mindfulness-based cognitive therapy) and DBT (dialectical behavior therapy). I understand that DBT therapists are not expected to have or to maintain a personal practice of mindfulness, although many do. I personally have a bit of a problem with this; at the very least, given the centrality of this technique in DBT, I would expect that a DBT therapist would have some actual experience with it on a day-to-day basis (i.e., would have a daily practice).
      
      Ideally, I suppose, it would be wonderful if a psychotherapist were to attain Enlightenment prior to employing Buddhist techniques in their practice, but that seems like an unreasonable and unrealistic expectation. How many seriously-committed Western Buddhist practitioners have attained complete Enlightenment? Less unreasonable, but still largely unrealistic, is the notion that a psychology PhD have some actual and substantive realization as a result of their single-pointed practice. I would assume that there are few out there like Jack Kornfield who bring to their psychotherapy practice what he does.
      
      On the other hand, those like B. Alan Wallace have proposed that the contemplative methodologies of Buddhism and the methodologies of Western science are capable of being integrated into a single discipline that he calls “contemplative science.” To that end, he is very keen to get neuroscientists, for example, interested in looking at their own minds by putting them into a shamatha retreat.
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  jigje on March 24, 2014 at 4:00 pm
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  Padma Kadag, your comments (of 3/21/14 3:59 pm) reminded me a little of my younger self who strongly believed that the Buddha’s teaching is a “complete path and requires no adding or subtracting.” Prior to my one year retreat, I thought, and firmly believed, that any and all psychological/emotional issues could be “resolved” on the cushion, so to speak. I even eschewed therapy when my wife strongly felt that we could use the aid of a good therapist to help us work through some of the difficult issues in our marriage. Be that as it may, this notion was blown to smithereens during the course of the retreat. As mentioned in my previous comment, though my Tibetan teacher had literally decades of retreat experience under his belt, he was still not able to provide me with the sort of help I needed during a period of sustained terror and panic attacks. His suggestions, though theoretically good ones from a Buddhist perspective (e.g. meditate on the emptiness of terror), were ultimately ineffective. So, though it is theoretically true, perhaps, that the Buddhist path requires no adding or subtracting, this is certainly not the case for everyone. And I would suggest that this is especially problematic for those who enter into long, sustained retreats.
  
  I recall how excited I was, following the retreat, to come across an article by Jack Kornfield, an experienced Vipassana teacher who, in the wake of an intensive meditation practice in Southeast Asia, came back to the West to get his PhD in clinical psychology. It was enlightening, to say the least, to learn that for him personally, and for scores of other very experienced meditators, meditation did not “do it all.” It’s possible that he was the first one of any import to speak openly about his own experience and to call for an expanded notion of practice that might include the necessity and usefulness of therapy.
  
  I don’t know if this is the actual article I came across twenty five years ago, but if not, it essentially conveys the same message.
  
  Even the Best Meditators Have Old Wounds to Heal by Jack Kornfield
  http://www.buddhanet.net/psymed1.htm
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    tenpel on March 24, 2014 at 5:37 pm
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    Thank you jigje for sharing your experiences and thoughts.
    Also at the time of the Buddha some monks got crazy. Why shouldn’t they have used also other means to stabilize themselves? What is wrong in using other means?
    
    I agree that things shouldn’t be mingled in the way that you explain psychological means as Buddhist means or that you explain Buddhist practice would need in all ways psychological support. However, this doesn’t imply that people can be greatly benefited by psychological means and Buddhist means applied together. HE Dagyab Kyabgön Rinpoche (a hotuktu) who lives since 1966 in Germany says that as a Buddhist one shouldn’t be ashamed to do both therapy and Buddhist practices. Its very ok to do that. At the end it matters how much you are able to transform yourself. And if Western psychology is useful to that then there is no reason not to apply it. Also, there are COUNTLESS Dharmas, I cannot understand why I should avoid the wise means of other traditions or an ordinary beggar if they are useful. A wise person can learn from anybody. And Dharma can express through anybody. Buddhas can bless beings and trees etc to express the Dharma …
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      jigje on March 25, 2014 at 3:44 pm
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      Tenzin, thank you for your comments. I agree whole-heartedly. Is it helpful, is it useful in this journey to wake up? And yes, Buddhas and bodhisattvas, it is said, can manifest in whatever way helps sentient beings. Everything is ostensibly on the table. Who is to say that your therapist isn’t a bodhisattva, as wild as that may sound?
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    Padma Kadag on March 25, 2014 at 12:42 pm
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    Probably we won’t know till we die if in fact that buddhist practice does not require “resolving our own personal psycho issues”. But, realization is not deterred by our “issues” in a western psychological sense. As for Jack Kornfield…well… It is the combining by western psychology with vajrayana buddhism which is dangerous due to the fact that those who are combining have not brought buddhism to a completion. We have a tendency to want to change those things we do not understand still wanting to call it by it’s original name….buddhism, yoga, shamanism for example. Do all the therapy you think that you need…the issue is whether or not buddhism requires it or should be presented as accommodating it at an introductory level here in the west.
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      jigje on March 25, 2014 at 5:53 pm
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      There is little doubt in my mind that every Buddhist practitioner who claims to have attained Enlightenment had to struggle with negative emotions of one kind or another. Context is everything, however. Obstacles confronting Tibetan practitioners in their meditation practice included dealing with demons. We in the West have our own version of “demons.” I recall how astonished HHDL was to hear about those in the West who suffered from self-hatred and shame. One can see quite easily how these “beliefs” could hinder one’s practice; how do you reach out with compassion and love to others when there is self-loathing and shame at the core of who you think you are?
      
      Of course, Jack Kornfield trained in the Theravada tradition; as far as I know he does bring Vajrayana Buddhism into his private practice. But maybe I missed your point?
      
      Personally, I think that though many Westerners have been exposed to Vajrayana Buddhist teachings, have taken initiations, and even done retreats (some of them of three year’s duration), most are simply not prepared to seriously enter this vehicle. How much more true for those who are psychologically unstable? Vipassana, Zen, etc. are all “dangerous paths” for those who are psychologically unstable.
      
      Does Buddhism “require” therapy? Of course not. Whether or not one uses it as an adjunct, so to speak, to one’s practice is left up to each of us as we traverse the Buddhist path as practitioners.
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        jigje on March 25, 2014 at 10:09 pm
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        correction: … as far as I know he does NOT bring Vajrayana Buddhism into his private practice.
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vip088 on March 21, 2014 at 11:44 pm
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I was listening to Khenpo Pema Choephel Rinpoche on youtube… came across other mantras… saw Rigpa Child in comments… googled to find out more… found myself on this blog. What an eye-opener!

As for meditation, it reminds me an off-the-cuff comment by an acquaintance psychologist. In a private conversation she warned her friends to be careful with meditation as ‘the mental asylums are full of devout meditation fans’.

My take on it is that each of us have a different brain chemistry – and not everyone is capable to handle the energy/information that meditation releases/opens.

I don’t think Buddhism is exclusive. Weak personalities/minds can be seriously affected by flirting with esoterism, shamanic practices, mysticism. A young and devout (albeit quite fanatic) Catholic nun who was preparing my sister and me for the for the first communion few years later ended in mental hospital…
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gracegawlermedia on June 1, 2014 at 8:48 pm
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Reblogged this on Grace Gawler Media Blog Website and commented:
Meditation can open a can of worms in our psychology. This is a surprise to many people. I have often asked my self the same question that is explored in the first paragraph of this blog. For people who are dealing with illness, such as cancer; care must be taken whilst developing a practice that will assist and not detract from their recovery. Many people around the Globe are turning toward Buddhist practices of meditation. This excellent blog brings to light something that is little discussed in meditation circles – the dangers and issues that can be associated with meditation.
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  jigje on June 4, 2014 at 3:04 pm
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  Meditation is potentially a very powerful tool, especially if done intensively. Mindfulness meditation is popping up all over the place and for the most part, I believe this is a good thing. Most people who are encountering mindfulness meditation for the first time are really only dipping their toe in it and will likely not pursue it intensively. That being said, I think it would be a good thing if people were more generally educated about the potential dangers some might face while pursuing a deeper practice.
  
  One example of how mindfulness practice is being employed these days is DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy). It’s a critical piece of the treatment, but from what I know, there is no effort by therapists to encourage a deep practice. What they seem to be going for is a basic awareness of what is going on internally on an emotional and cognitive level, i.e., more self-awareness generally. A deeper practice for many of those who present for DBT would likely be destabilizing, unhelpful, and possibly even dangerous. So, care must and should be taken.
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Lucy on May 13, 2015 at 6:59 am
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I am so glad some people are beginning to talk about the problems and side-effects of meditation.
I learned to meditate when I was in the New Age (NA) community in early 1990. I didn’t do intensives, just 20 minutes to at most 30 min. off and on. After I met and married my husband who taught meditation (nationwide and around the world), I started doing meditation a little more often, and I did use one or two practices on occasion in the New Age community.
In 1992 I began experiencing and suffering from various physical and mental health problems and difficulties, some that seemed strange (and bizarre) such as twitching and pricking sensations, stiff and painful neck, crawling bug sensation under and on the skin, wondering pain anywhere in the body (light to excruciating), intense heat on the base of my spine, dark-nigh-of-the-soul, severe headaches, fingers and toes would gracefully move apart in slow motion (learned later these were mudras and krias known in India), electrical like shocks and pin pricks, panic attacks, extreme fear and even terror at times, insomnia, body movements or jerks, rapid heart beat, pains in chest, extreme episodes of hyperactivity, intense and strong vibration, tingling, muscle contractions, saw auras, heightened awareness, and I was so weak and suffered from exhaustion I couldn’t work for one whole summer, and the year before sporadically, and had many more symptoms. One night while I was laying in bed asleep, my husband said he reached over and touched my body and he could feel the electrical shocks and twitching in my body. Needless to say it scared him. We told the doctor only to be laughed at.
Up until this point, I had never experienced any health problems like this in my life. I had two wonderful grown daughters and two grandchildren and I owned my own business (a book store). I thought I was going crazy at times! These symptoms would come and go, and occur off and on, stop, and come back at another time and date – a seemingly vicious cycle (with periods in between when nothing happened). Symptoms often seemed far worse at night, but now always, and symptoms can be experienced in intensity and strength on a scale of 1 to 100. Some would eventually stop, some overlap one another, new ones would start, but a few still occur to this day (2015) off and on.
I made the rounds of doctors, hospitals, therapists, did herbs and other things, then finally New Age healers looking for answers and no help, finding none! It took me two years to figure out that well-meaning healers I went to for help, who said they knew all about Kundalini (see below) and how to help, would re-trigger some of my current symptoms and made them far worse and more intense. I learn later that this all has happened to many others. One of the reasons we don’t associate side-effects and sensations to meditation, healing work or practices is because the side-effects are often delayed to another time and date (min. hours, days, months and even years later and can occur off and on).
Recently I read a US and Canada university and German meditation study that reported that people do have delayed side-effects (no matter whether they have them during meditation or not), that the length of time or frequency of meditation didn’t make any difference whether one experienced side-effect, prior health problems were made worse, they reported that approx. 42% to 76% of test subjects had some side-effects and symptoms, and positive effects may be short lived due to preconceived thoughts. Also wrote that some subjects didn’t report side-effects (and irritations or sensations) because they had read or was told it was just some ‘un-stressing” to be ignored and to continue to meditate, and they didn’t want to complain, because they thought they had to endure them.
I was still in a “Spiritual “Crisis” or “Spiritual Emergency” (what New Agers and the DSM-IV Psychology Manuel call it) and didn’t know what to do. My co-worker thought I was dying and my husband was worried and didn’t know what to make of all my health problems and strange symptoms, some psychic intuitive gifts.
Then I read a tiny article in1993 in the Edgar Cayce magazine “Venture Inward” by El Collie who included a small list of about 10 “Symptoms” (one was crawling sensations of bugs, twitching and others I had). I later learned these symptoms were related doing various practices and meditation that can trigger a little known phenomenon called Kundalini (known in India), that New Agers call “Kundalini Awakening” or “Kundalini Rising” and “Ascension”. Although I had seen popular colorful charts of Kundalini (K) rising up the 7 chakras (body organs) I didn’t know much about it (nor did my NA friends) other than it was a biological energy force, and the New Age books seem to glorify and think Kundalini was something wonderful to attain.
I jumped for joy thinking this must be the cause of my symptoms and awful problems. I was grateful to find out that many other New Agers (and even non-NA who may have done meditation or practices) were experiencing similar problems and difficulties – some far far worse than I (such as El) and some not as bad. El Collie suffered one of the worst Kundalini experiences and had many of the same symptoms as mine, and her arms or legs would jerk out and had extreme painful body movements – until she died in 2002. El began doing research to understand her own experience and started a network newsletter called “Shared Transformation” to understand what she was going thru, and to help others. She told me that hundreds, perhaps thousands of people all over the world was experiencing similar experiences and didn’t know what was happening to them. She later wrote the first “Symptoms List” (larger list). As more and more symptoms became known in the New Age community, others added to her original list. I learned that it was known (by Eastern Masters, Eastern literature and by others) that meditation and various other practices could activate or trigger Kundalini and in turn could trigger and start a myriad of physical, mental and neurological like symptoms, problems, and difficulties, including paranormal phenomenon, and mystical and God Consciousness experiences (though usually rare).
I also had several frightening dreams. I had one paranormal experience in the middle of the night (that woke me up in a dead sleep) that terrified me, in which K energy force was trying to brake thru my 5th throat chakra (I could see it inside my body like a lucid dream) like “G forces” astronauts experience. It was so terrifying and I felt like I was in a paralyzed silent state of hysteria, and all I could think, stop, please stop, I didn’t want this thing that was happening to go beyond that point and I thought I would die. Luckily, it just stopped as quickly as it came. I was completely awake, it was not a dream. I wondered if it might be K, but I didn’t want to believe it, and I knew without a doubt that what ever it was, I absolutely did not want it to happen ever again.
I was lucky to attend a rare Kundalini conference held in Penn. in the US. in which Eastern doctors, gurus, P.h.D’s, nurses, psychologists and others presented their research papers on K (both positive and negative), and included those who shared their personal experience with K. It was at this conference when one man described his experience of Kundalini’s rising upwards thru the 7 Chakras (7 body organs) and out thru the top of his head, and his resultant God consciousness experience. I was stunned when he describe K as “G” forces moving its way up the spine, thru the 5th. chakra membrane in the throat, exactly like what I felt and saw. I also met a doctor from India who told me it was a good thing K did not rise in me, because I could have died (similar to what I have read since then).
I know all this is hard to believe. I like many New Agers didn’t want to believe all this. I was in denial until the mid 2000’s after I began reading more on the risk, dangers and pitfalls on the spiritual path some of the Eastern masters and others talked about.
A number of my close friends and acquaintances (now former New Agers after there experience) didn’t believe me when I began to share my experiences related to practices and Kundalini. They thought I was lying (which is typical), until they later began to experience some terrible problems – one who experienced possession, and two who heard voices and had problems with entities (in India they call them devils or Rackashas). They later apologized, and finally understood. We cried together.
Unknown to many New Agers some Eastern Masters wrote that the spiritual path is not without its risk and dangers even for those who have prepared themselves for many many years (in India) and who are physically and mentally ready and able to handle Kundalini’s energy and current that can be erratic and volatile at times. One Eastern source wrote, Kundalini’s goal was to take one off the path and keep one from progressing and reaching genuine God consciousness or enlightenment. And the best way to reach genuine enlightenment etc. was to give to others and be of service.
Kundalini is said to be like “A Blessing and A Curse” and is like “Opening Pandora’s Box”. All my friends and I would agree. We would not wish these experiences on our worst enemy. None of us was forewarned about the problems practices could cause in many of us. We were also not forewarned because most people just did know about the problems (and even today). According to some ex-TM teachers and ex-Dean of Students and others (who risk jobs and careers coming out with this info.), TM studies were falsified and symptoms were kept hidden from the public because they didn’t want to lose people (or the money), and Maharishi said he would tell the people they were doing Hinduism (religion) when the time was right.
If we had been forewarned, we would have never used any practices or even continued in New Age as long as we did. We were not given a choice. My friends (and some acquaintances) were also in denial for many years like I was. Looking back at the wonderful experiences, psychic intuitions and insights we receive, was wonderful, yet some Eastern masters talked about these as being illusions and distractions along the path and kept people off the path and from progressing. We would agree. Although I and my friends have had a few wonderful psychic experiences and mystical dreams and even developed more intuition, we would not want to go thru this again.
The science of Kundalini is still a little known subject (and the picture of the disease is not know to most main stream doctors and scientists and often dismissed), and is often misinterpreted and little understood even for gurus and others. One well known Eastern master (I think it was Gopi Krisna ?) speaking about the problems related to Kundalini’s biological energy force wrote, that most New Age slick popular books and charts on Kundalini only gave partials and half truths at best.
What is even worse is that Eastern and New Age books and other materials promote and glorify Kundalini as something wonderful to aspire to or receive. It is not!. Some in the New Age community “JUSTIFY” these symptoms as being a normal “spiritual purification process”. They are not normal when these thing incapacitates one. Kundalini is said to reek havoc and cause divorces, separations, lost friends, jobs and careers and more. Life has enough problems without having to deal with these things, on top of everything else.

I don’t like writing about all this stuff. But I have seen many people on internet health blogs desperate and looking for answers and help for their various health symptoms (some that appear strange), many that seems like some of the many kundalini symptoms (about 200). I have responded to some of these blogs. Many who are not New Agers and who have done meditation or one or more practices at some point, didn’t know what to think and never heard of this strange word Kundalini. On the other hand, some New Agers responded and said, “Maybe this is the reason for my health problem”. And dialogue often started some talk, but other New Ager didn’t want to believe it.
The literature I have read suggests that if one is experiencing any symptoms or sensations as a result of practices either during meditation or later (delayed side-effects) to stop meditation/practices for a short while and see what happens. For others it is suggested they may have to stop indefinitely.
Off and on thru the years meditation seem to re-start or re-trigger (mentioned in literature) some of my old symptoms and side-effects or exacerbate ones I was experiencing.
Being a former meditation teacher and speaker (in the public eye nationwide and around the world) my husband now (age 77) who did not know about the side-effects and symptoms of meditation, said that if he had known, and even given that many people are not affected and that he still believes meditation can be beneficial for some people, he would have felt a responsibility to share this information and warn people about the possible risks and dangers (especially after seeing me and our friends go thru this). Although I loved doing meditation, I finally had to stop all meditation practice, but it took a number of years of denial, suffering and pain, to finally stop. However, like others, I am still experiencing a few symptoms off and on, but not as bad as they were in the mid 1990s.
I know this this article and videos here only addresses a few possible side-effects of meditation, however, there are many more side-effects that are not being reported. I also feel it is important for people to know that any (spiritual) practice such as yoga, Qi gong (known as deviation syndrome or Qi gone disease in China), some forms of martial arts, Deeksha and Shakti pat, Reiki and other healing methods, breath-work, energy-work, re-birthing, raising Kundalini, shamanic work and others, can also cause similar side-effects and symptoms as meditation.
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jigje on May 15, 2015 at 1:49 am
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Not sure I can add much to the topic of kundalini; as far as I know, this is not part of Buddhist practice. Which is not to say that strange stuff can’t happen in Buddhist meditation. At the very least, I think one should have easy access to an experienced teacher that ideally aligns with an established tradition and lineage. But, in my case, even this wasn’t sufficient at the time. And there are physiological things that can occur that Western medicine might not be able to help you resolve. So, in a word, caution! Exercise caution when doing these practices. If you are under an experienced
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  tenpel on May 15, 2015 at 10:22 am
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  Thank you Jigje. I didn’t find time to read the comment.
  
  With respect to Kundalini, I met about 2-3 people who reported problems with Kundalini. They couldn’t deal with the energy it set free and had long lasting problems and couldn’t find appropriate help. The same happened also with two people who attended a 10-day-Vipassana retreat – with the same result: they couldn’t deal with the energy it set free and had long lasting problems … The Yoga teachers couldn’t help nor could the Vipassana teachers help. Two of those people connected with a Tibetan Nagpa healer we invited to Berlin who had healing powers, clairvoyance and other qualities … He was able to help them to a certain degree and stated that the healing will not happen instantaneously. From this I understand that these problems can arise, that it might be difficult to find help in the same tradition where the problems appeared, and that to find help can be extremely hard and the problems long lasting, and even if you find help, the problems might not be removed easily or quickly.
  
  I agree with you “Exercise caution when doing these practices.” The Tibetan healer said to one of the persons who had a great damage from the 10-day-Vipassana retreat: “You should not have done this in the first place.”
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    dharmaanarchist on May 20, 2015 at 11:12 am
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    Hey, why are people getting those problems in the first place!!!
    
    I consider an intensive Vipasshana retreat to be at least as straining as running a marathon. But usually people who run marathon train for a long time to be able to do it, they know how “fit” they are and what distance/time they can reasonably archieve without harming themselves.
    
    I think meditation instructors who take “untrained” meditators on such intensive retreats AND don’t regularly check how they are doing to look out for early signs of trouble should be made personally responsible for the harm they cause.
    
    I got a massiv energy/wind problem by a work/school breakdown through prolonged over exertion, that completely messed me up (was at the height of it so bad I sat in the subway and didn’t know where I was, was completely unable to bear the sensory input at supermarkets etc) . And I can say, no, there is no cure. It’s like a broken leg. It can’t be healed from the outside, it will heal by itself over time, under the right conditions, but if it’s a bad case it’s never gonna be as good as before. I have to this day problems concentrating for a longer period of time, I have occasionally weird mood swings and with enough strain I get relapses into a milder form of this awful state I described. I got retired because of it some years ago.
    - 28
      
      tenpel on May 20, 2015 at 11:37 pm
      Reply
      
      Thank you very much for sharing this. This is very sad.
      I remember that at ILTK in Italy there was a monk who was extremely talented but then he got lung/wind problems and he totally changed and was not able to live as before. What I understood is that the damage is either long lasting or almost irreversible. What you write “it will heal by itself over time, under the right conditions, but if it’s a bad case it’s never gonna be as good as before” seems to be the plight of those who are damaged by a massiv energy/wind problem.
      
      The problem with the Goenka Vipassana retreat is that they are somewhat fundamentalist in their approach. They do all to “encourage” you to finish the retreat and to go through the difficulties no matter what side effects you have. They seem not be able to understand individual problems and how to address them. They seem to be very inflexible (unlike Tibetans who know about the energy/wind problem and would encourage you to take a break/to relax). During my stay in India I met another, the 3rd person, who was damaged by a Goenka Vipassana retreat. His foot didn’t work anymore properly due to excessive sitting sessions (when I remember correctly, they didn’t do walking meditations).
      - 29
        
        dharmaanarchist on May 22, 2015 at 8:02 am
        Reply
        
        That sounds really terrible and un-buddhist. After all, do no harm is the basis of all buddhist practice and ethics. So I HAVE to make sure that a buddhist practice (no matter what buddhist tradition) doesn’t harm people.
        
        The reason those tantric healing methods don’t help with energy problems is that and meddling with it automatically means stirring then up. It’s not possible to pacify it by meddling. Doesn’t matter if you do it yourself or some gifted tantric practitioner does.
        
        When never meddled with people don’t “feel” these energies all that much. Now we have the problem that mental attention generally directs and stirs those energies. So once you can feel them to such an extent and in an unpleasant way, automatically your attention to those sensations will keep them going. So what you have to do is stopping to give them more fuel. And that is really HARD, because these things feel WEIRD and do WEIRD and unsettling things in an almost unescapable way because it affects the body and the mind equally.
        
        30
        
        dharmaanarchist on May 22, 2015 at 10:16 am
        Reply
        
        And by the way, it would be good if a network of sufferers could be founded, like an online community or something.
        
        Doesn’t really matter how someone acquired an energy disease by the way, over exertion of any kind can do that, for example working night shifts. I think what is called “burnout syndrome” is also connected with a failing energy system. You also find it with psychotic people (though those should really stay away from anything even remotely religion-related)
        
        The problem with this is, once you have used the crowbar to force entry into this level of your being, you can not ever fully close this door again. The conscious access to it will remain. And that’s like running the nuclear power plant of your being, that should normally be on auto pilot and hidden away from you with your erratic thoughts with your conscious throught process, and that stupid thing on top of it has a leaking cooling basin. It will blow up in your face three times a day, at any minor disturbance, and of course the wrecked thing will not give you the energy output to run a normal life on.
        
        Interestingly, I asked a long time retreatant and physician if the inner practices of tantra might be helpful to get this under control, like tummo and he said, no, those practices in themselves tend to create an imbalance at first that you have to go through and therefor only very stabil people can do them successfully. That’s the reason why they must not be taught publicly, to random people, because they are potentially hazardous when they go wrong.
        
        31
        
        dharmaanarchist on May 22, 2015 at 10:41 am
        
        Oh, and by the way, the guy who did meditaton retreat instead of law school and had those “incredible” experiences, then based his life on running after spiritual experiences instead of going to university and then messing up big time.
        
        That guy (or rather the teacher of that guy) should have been alarmed after the first round of “incredible” meditation experiences. Because a tendency for an unstable energy system can give you such experiences very easily, because an unstable energy system like that will easily slip into altered states. It does not have to mean that you are an incredibly gifted meditator, it just means, meddling with your energy system is easy with your natural configuration.
        
        The more someone is able to easily produce experiences, the more careful I would be with that person and the less I would let that person meditate..
        
        32
        
        tenpel on May 24, 2015 at 10:23 pm
        
        Very true. When I translated interviews for people who consulted the healing lama with clairvoyance and also Mingyur Rinpoche to get advice, I heard so many stories of people who had extra ordinary experiences. I was amazed and thought to myself: I had not the slightest similar experience! At the same time I wondered why those people who saw Padmasambhava and had visions of this and that were not really happy. They really looked unhappy and had so many problems besides their visions and experiences. They were tight and overly serious – not relaxed and joyful. Both lamas replied in all those cases to the meditators: don’t cling to that experience. It is just an experience. If you cling to it – they quoted a Tibetan saying and gave a name in Tibetan to this phenomenon – you will go crazy. Both lamas stressed to just let go the experience and not to grasp to it …
        
        —
        
        BTW, in that context, a translator from Sakya school told me how Shugden messes people up. He said: Shugden brings the good karma of people to maturation at the very beginning when they start to rely on him. Therefore those people make extremely good experiences. But they start to cling to these experiences. Later the karma of the people is exhausted and they cannot make the same good experiences but long for them still. In that way Shugden practice messes practitioners up and makes them addicted. According to my own experiences and also my observation I can agree with this explanation. Some people also complained to me after they stopped Shugden practice that the intensity of their experiences ceased. I agree with this, I made the same experience. But because I have not too much attachment to intense experiences and because I don’t have a problem if things seem to go slower, this was no argument to continue Shugden worship for me. So I dropped it but some other people couldn’t let go. Now, looking back, I think it is the same problem in the context of Shugden worship: people make some good experiences but start to cling to them, getting attached to it, exhausting their merits by consuming good experiences they then gradually go a bit or even totally mad.
        
        33
        
        Adamo on May 25, 2015 at 8:16 am
        
        I agree, and think as well that it is a very old trick to provide good feelings to people, in order to catch them for ones purposes.
        
        With regard to Buddhism, and especially tibetan Buddhism do I consider those Lamas, who advertise their activities with a lot of visible or more subtle promised “goods” (good experience aka: wellness, happiness, bliss, joy and so on), or signalize that within their groups one will experience enormous social benefits ( aka warm and friendly people helping, fantastic groups and so on) more or less as ” salesmen of Dharma”, just making their profit of that needy people.
        
        Its just a monkey business, in the name of “Buddha”.
        
        34
        
        tenpel on May 25, 2015 at 11:51 am
        
        Thank you interesting. Yes, this is a hook many fall pray. Just saw the same promises by EX-New Kadampa Tradition head teacher Björn Clausen from Switzerland. He makes now a monkey business out of his spiritual path / past / experiences and he doesn’t hesitate to hook people in with cheap and untrue promises:
        
        This video is about enlightenment. Enlightenment in the Modern World. This seems to be a contradiction … BUT In reality enlightenment is very easy. It has never been easier than now!
        
        His whole New Age Channel:
        https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYkwtcX99AmXEq0YTYjBtIA
        
        His official bio (note, the term NKT is not even mentioned, he only says that from 1991 – 2008 he was a head teacher of a Buddhist tradition in Switzerland …):
        
        http://www.theinnerlightvision.com/Bjoern-Clausen.htm
        
        35
        
        dharmaanarchist on May 25, 2015 at 1:08 pm
        
        You know, the problem is, Tibtan buddhism doesn’t come with a package leaflet. For example the Voltaren in my drawer came with a detailed description under what condition not to take this medication, what possible unwanted side effects can happen (and under what circumstances you have to go and see the doctor if they occur), how they cross react with other medications, what dose to take etc.
        
        I am one of those people you describe in your first part of your reply. Do you have any idea how non-funny it is to come from a very unstable and unpleasant life situation, then to incidentally get your whole materialistic view of the world shattered by getting whacked over your head right and proper with this stuff a few time, ending up having no clue what to do with this whole mess because nobody is f….ing telling you how to deal with the aftermath????? And no, the dry “don’t cling to experiences blah does NOT help when you just found out that this unverse has a whole extra dimension tacked to it, that is much larger and more true than this world is,and, frankly speaking, much more attractive, too. Because, you know, the realisation of emptiness nature would indeed fix all your problems -permanently-, if you could just turn it into a permanent state. This is not just talk, it’s the truth.
        
        Do you know how it is to not having ANYONE to at least talk about this, because the vast majority of people simply wouldn’t understand and you simply CAN`T talk about it with the wrong people because it feels and is wrong to talk about with unsuitable people (aka, all people who haven’t seen it themselves)? You can’t even talk to a therapist about all this (yeah, you can mention the fact of these spiritual experiences, but I would be careful who I tell the details). And you are sitting in teachings about emptiness nature or vajrayana or something, and while all the others struggle to grasp those ideas, you just think, yeah, it’s true, been there. But do have any clue how alone and isolated that can make you feel at times, when you watch how the others struggle to grasp what they mean, while you just basked a little while in the feel how glorious and aesthetically pleasing they are from a universal pov?
        
        And over all this your already crappy life is falling apart?
        
        Erm, hello???? Those supposed bodhisattva gurus are generously distributing this stuff for quite some time on this world. Would be great if they occasionally took the time to ask those they involved into it, hey, how are you coping? Having any problems? Need assistance?
        
        Preferrably before the whole thing derails completely? (possibly my life would have derailed completely without this stuff, too btw)
        
        Oh, and talking to lamas about it? I guess the cultural/mentality difference is too big. I made some attempts, but I don’t think they actually understood what my problem is, because in general psychological problems is not something they are familiar with on a personal level or in the society they grew up in. They seem not to understand what my actual problem is in the first place.
        
        But what they are doing is rather like handing out hardcore chemotherapy to people off the street. Without a package leaflet. And without assistance to deal with the aftermath in case it happens to -gasp- actually work as it’s supposed to do . Because, yeah, this stuff is actually MEANT to do that, if you are crazy enough vajrayana methodology will work as a wrecking ball when applied to the weakest point of your deluded self and it will crumble, just not permanently, because, you know, habit of conceptual thinking and karma. The wall will be back. But you will permanently know what is behind it, along with how all this works.
        
        Now would I make it not happened if I could? No. I am too curious a person. But the price tag this knowledge came with was definitely too high for my taste.
        
        Getting upset that way is not good for me. Just thinking about it too much causes my little problem to act up. So I guess I better stop my rant at this point.
        
        36
        
        tenpel on May 24, 2015 at 10:14 pm
        
        Thank you! Yes, an online community might be a really good idea!
        
        Wha the persons said about tummo and tantra is also very interesting and worth to pay heed!
    - 37
      
      jigje on May 25, 2015 at 6:46 pm
      Reply
      
      Sadly, I have a very good Buddhist friend who took robes for awhile under Master Hua (Chan Buddhism). Sounds like his meditation training was very intense and that he slept in a meditation box. Later, he got what tsok lung and that was many years ago. He’s pretty much had it ever since. He blames himself, to some extend, thinking that he really wasn’t cut out for such a rigorous practice and should have taken a more gradual path. But many of us start out this way: overly zealous and pushing too hard. I myself got a milder form of lung when I took a job as cook for a monastery in Switzerland. Besides being responsible for all the cooking, I was also attending classes, meditating, teaching yoga, etc. Way too much and before long I realized I had lung.
      
      I’m always sad to hear see stories.
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jigje on May 15, 2015 at 2:41 pm
Reply

Excellent comment, Tenzin. Good advice and good, concrete examples!

My introduction into Buddhism was initially through Zen, but I also did several Vipassana retreats during this period, too. This was in the mid-70’s. The Zen retreats (sesshins) were 7-8 days long and very arduous with lots of sitting (some close to an hour long) and little sleep. The pain I experienced on my first sesshin was unimaginable, but the discipline of the zendo was uncompromisingly strict and required you to “sit through it” without moving.

I recall one sesshin in which a woman just jumped up in the middle of a sit one night and started wildly dancing and screaming up and down the length of the zendo. I think everyone there was quite traumatized by it. When you are sitting deeply, your sensitivity increases dramatically, so something like this can have a hugely unfavorable impact on the mind. Afterwards, the sangha had a communal meeting in which we discussed ways prospective sesshin participants could be interviewed/screened beforehand to assess their overall mental health. Surprisingly, our teacher at the time came out against such screening, feeling it was unduly restrictive and undemocratic to ban certain people from participating. Who was he to tell them they couldn’t participate based on one interview? Maybe the sesshin would actually help settle their minds and ground them? So, this was just something the sangha had to accept and deal with. Needless to say, many of us were not happy with this view.

My wife spent five years in a Japanese Zen monastery comprised mostly of Westerners. Also a very arduous and strict environment with many hardships (no heat in the winter, little sleep, one long 7-8 day sesshin a month, with smaller ones interspersed, etc.). There, too, the teacher allowed crazy people to stay despite the disruption to the sangha and the potential danger. One of her friends, in fact, was deliberately and forcibly hit over the head with a keisaku (flat wooden stick) by a crazy Frenchman, but the teacher, even after this episode, refused to expel him!

The Vipassana retreats back then were all 10-14 days long and also quite arduous: no speaking, no eye contact, absolute silence, etc. I heard quite a few stories from those who did the three month Vipassana retreat in Barre, Mass of retreatants who had psychotic episodes and ended up being taken to the ER.

There seems to be more sensitivity these days in the Buddhist community around the potential dangers of meditation and as a consequence, some effort in some instances is now made to moderate (shorten) both the length of retreats given and the discipline (movement during a sit is ok if the pain is excessive, etc.).

One more thing that I might add: the phenomena of “lung,” or “wind disorder” in the Tibetan tradition.
This is a condition in which the subtle wind energies within the body become unbalanced, producing symptoms such as dizziness, heat, cold, sensations of pressure, and so on. This is something even I experienced at one point in my practice. But a severe case of lung, “tsok lung,” where there is a problem with the Life Wind, is far more serious and is also far more difficult to heal. One good friend of mine, who did intensive practice for some years in a Chán monastery, has this condition and has been unsuccessful, even after many years of treatment, to heal from it. As a result, he has been unable to engage in any prolonged or lengthy meditation retreats.

Here are a two excellent links on lung:

http://landofcalmabiding.org/content/lung-meditator’s-retreat-dis-ease-lung
http://meditatorswindimbalance.org/about-meditators-wind-imbalance-lung/
39

David Pinney on May 15, 2015 at 8:58 pm
Reply

Just stumbled across this thread whilst browsing. By sheer coincidence just a few hours ago I bought a copy of the “New Scientist” magazine, dated 16th May. It contains an article, “Ommm…aargh!: Meditation and mindfulness have a dark side that should not be ignored, say psychologists Miguel Farais and Catherine Wikholm.” These psychologists have also authored a new book, “The Buddha Pill: Can meditation change you? I didn’t think much of the quality of the article myself but I thought I would share the reference for those of you who might wish to read it.
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  tenpel on May 15, 2015 at 10:30 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you for this hint!
  - 41
    
    The Nameless on May 21, 2015 at 12:10 pm
    Reply
    
    And http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-knight-of-the-souls/372766/
    - 42
      
      tenpel on May 21, 2015 at 10:06 pm
      Reply
      
      Thank you! I add it now.
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  jigje on May 25, 2015 at 6:52 pm
  Reply
  
  Funny, a friend sent me an article that was in the Guardian authored by one of the authors mentioned:
  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/22/seven-myths-about-meditation
  
  I found the article poorly written and fully of distortions. This was what I wrote back to my friend.
  
  This article you sent me is very skewed, almost as if the intention is to argue one out of even taking up meditation! I don’t want to go through it point by point, but right at the outset you get this:
  
  “For the secularised mind, meditation fills a spiritual vacuum; it brings the hope of becoming a better, happier individual in a more peaceful world. However, the fact that meditation was primarily designed not to make us happier, but to destroy our sense of individual self – who we feel and think we are most of the time – is often overlooked in the science and media stories about it, which focus almost exclusively on the benefits practitioners can expect.”
  
  From a Buddhist perspective, at any rate, the root cause of suffering is ignorance surrounding the true way in which phenomena and the self exist. What is being being “destroyed” here (such an extreme, deliberately provocative way to describe this) is a deeply rooted misconception of a self that we believe is permanent and that exists from it’s own side. What is being destroyed, then, is essentially a fiction, something that doesn’t even exist! From the perspective of Conventional Truth a self does exist, but far differently than the way we conceive of it: a conceptual label imputed upon a collection of parts. When you realize emptiness that reified sense of self (and phenomena) is destroyed…which leads to the end of all our suffering. So, Buddhist meditation is a critical component in a process that ultimately does result in a permanent state of happiness. If you follow the path and persevere with it, you can definitely expect benefits to ensue.
  
  It’s frustrating when you come across articles like this one that are full of misconceptions and distortions. It’s a sloppy, superficial treatment of a topic that requires a deeper analysis. So, instead of greater clarity on this topic, you end up with far less. And sadly, on that basis, many will actually be dissuaded from trying meditation thinking that the end result of a difficult process is a loss of self which sounds kind of crazy and even nihilistic.
  - 44
    
    dharmaanarchist on May 26, 2015 at 8:41 pm
    Reply
    
    “but to destroy our sense of individual self ”
    
    No, it doesn’t. It’s meant to annihilate the clinging to an illusory concept of a self. Just the fabricated concepts, nothing more.
    - 45
      
      jigje on May 27, 2015 at 2:07 pm
      Reply
      
      Exactly, but this is not explained or even alluded to in the article. I can imagine that someone without the requisite background could be genuinely alarmed by such a statement.
46

tenpel on May 21, 2015 at 3:44 pm
Reply

I updated the post with a link to a Guardian article:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2015/may/21/mindfulness-drug-free-side-effects

Someone shared also this link but I don’t know what quality the writing and arguments has:
http://mindfulconstruct.com/2011/02/04/17-ways-mindfulness-meditation-can-cause-you-emotional-harm/
47

The Nameless on May 22, 2015 at 6:15 am
Reply

Funny isn’t it?
A few years back it was ” mindfulness is the best thing since sliced bread ” everywhere
Now it’s “mindfulness makes you crazy ”
How they turn precious dharma in to yet another disposable commodity
48

roxazosin on November 17, 2016 at 3:14 pm
Reply

Reblogged this on medizinundmehrblog and commented:
A great collection of material on the side effects of meditation.

	Vincent Fletcher on The Clear Light of Kelsang Gya…
	Molly on Karmapa Agrees to Multimillion…
	Lena on Karmapa Agrees to Multimillion…
	Lena on Karmapa Agrees to Multimillion…
	tenpel on Karmapa Agrees to Multimillion…
	Lena on Karmapa Agrees to Multimillion…
	Mark Dunlop on The Clear Light of Kelsang Gya…
	Vincent Fletcher on The Clear Light of Kelsang Gya…

The Dangers of Meditation. Advice for Meditators. An interview with Leigh Brasington by Willoughby Britton.

See also

Leigh Brasington – What are Jhanas?

David Treleaven – Meditation and Trauma

Dr. Willoughby Britton – Progress or Pathology

Articles

Too much wind energy (lung problems)

Jhanas

Update May 2015

See also

Leigh Brasington – What are Jhanas?

David Treleaven – Meditation and Trauma

Dr. Willoughby Britton – Progress or Pathology

Articles

Too much wind energy (lung problems)

Jhanas

Update May 2015

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