21AR26-20

( - previous issue - / - next issue - )

pdf = www.bit.ly/3hAttQ

AR 26:20 - The many and varied dangers of eastern meditation

In this issue:

MEDITATION - mounting concerns over "adverse events in meditation practices and meditation-based therapies"

+ exploiting the COVID pandemic as an opportunity to re-introduce religiously based meditation in public schools (this time it's "mindfulness")

Apologia Report 26:20 (1,525)

May 18, 2021

MEDITATION
"Lost in Thought: The psychological risks of meditation" by David Kortava (Harper's, Apr '21) -- notes that "The market for meditation products and services in the United States is valued at $1.2 billion. In 2017, by one conservative estimate, some 15 percent of American adults engaged in 'mental exercise to reach a heightened level of spiritual awareness or mindfulness.' ...

"Although there is data supporting the positive effects of meditation, the scientific literature is murkier than some champions of the practice would like to believe, and the possibility of negative outcomes cannot be so easily dismissed. As early as 1976, Arnold Lazarus, one of the forefathers of cognitive behavioral therapy.... came to believe that the practice, while beneficial for many, was likely harmful to some.

"One case study <www.bit.ly/3huH9MY> posited that 'meditation can act as a stressor in vulnerable patients.' ...

"Most studies don't monitor for negative reactions, relying instead on participants to report them spontaneously. But the research that does exist is not reassuring. More than fifty published studies have documented meditation-induced mental health problems, including mania, dissociation, and psychosis. In 2012, leading meditation researchers in the United Kingdom published a set of guidelines for meditation instructors, noting 'risks for participants,' including depression, traumatic flashbacks, and increased suicidal ideation. Four years later, the U.S. National Institutes of Health cautioned <www.bit.ly/3eVcS8l> that 'meditation could cause or worsen symptoms in people with certain psychiatric problems.' Jeffrey Lieberman, the former head of the American Psychiatric Association, told me he'd seen this in his own practice. 'The clinical phenomenon is real,' he said. 'There's no question about it.'"

In the middle of his article, Kortava reports that "The Buddhist ascetics who took up meditation in the fifth century BC did not view it as a form of stress relief. ...

"In other words, mindfulness was not invoked to savor the beauty of nature or to be a more present, thoughtful spouse. According to the Pali suttas, the point of meditation was to cultivate disgust and disenchantment with the everyday world and one's attachments to people and things." Aspiring Buddhas were "asked to contemplate the body from head to toe, inside and out," David L. McMahan writes, in Meditation, Buddhism and Science [1], "not for relaxation and even less for body acceptance, but to bring to full realization its utter repulsiveness, coursing as it is with blood, phlegm, and pus.' If meditation conferred any practical benefit, it was in helping ascetics 'accept the discomfort of a hard bed and a growling stomach or in preventing them from being beguiled by physical beauty.' ...

"The adoption of meditation by the Buddhist laity in Southeast Asia began during the 1880s. [A] young monk named Nanadhaja - determined to save meditation, and Buddhism more broadly, from erosion - took to teaching vipassana meditation outside the monasteries. ... S. N. Goenka was among the first to teach meditation to non-Buddhists, stripping the practice of its religious lineaments and rituals. [This included] the open acknowledgment of the sundry mental and physical tribulations that might surface in the course of a serious meditation practice. ...

"Today, the luminaries of mainstream Buddhism widely promote meditation to laypeople, and refuse to acknowledge that it carries any risks. In 2012, at a conference on mindfulness <www.mayocl.in/3btPD39> at the Mayo Clinic, [Willoughby] Britton presented her early findings on the potential adverse effects of meditation to the Dalai Lama. ...

"In a recording <www.bit.ly/3yiTt92> of the proceedings, the Dalai Lama can be seen nodding gravely.... He said that these meditators needed to read more books, analyze what they'd read, develop firm convictions, and only then try to meditate. If they followed this course, he didn't think there was any danger. The Dalai Lama cheerfully concluded that 'these negative sides are their own mistake - the positive things, that's the real truth.' He encouraged Britton to do more research."

Jumping further into the article, Kortava notes that "Some clinicians believe that meditation can cause psychological problems in people without underlying conditions, and that even forty minutes of meditation per day can pose risks." The main example of this is a case that Kortava develops throughout the article as a dramatized account.

In 2017, 25-year-old Megan Vogt attended "a silent retreat at Dhamma Pubbananda, a meditation center specializing in a practice called vipassana, which its website describes as a 'universal remedy for universal ills' that provides 'total liberation from all defilements, all impurities, all suffering.'"

The participants watch old video recordings featuring "Satya Narayan Goenka, a Burmese businessman turned guru, [who] had taken up meditation in the Fifties, hoping to alleviate his chronic migraines, and was so happy with the results that he went on to establish a global network <www.bit.ly/3tT122D> of more than one hundred vipassana centers."

On the seventh day of the ten-day retreat Megan lost touch with reality. Her crisis escalated so much that her family was contacted and asked to rush to the retreat center. As their care began so did the family's search for professional help.

In particular, Kortavan identifies "an online support group <www.bit.ly/3v20PvK> called Cheetah House, based at Brown University, that provided guidance to people experiencing mental health problems precipitated by meditation." The group's facilitator, Brown University clinical psychologist and neuroscientist Willoughby Britton, "has become one of the foremost advocates <www.bit.ly/3eUey23> of the view that meditation can be harmful even for people without underlying psychiatric disorders."

"A 2014 study from Carnegie Mellon University <www.bit.ly/3tQoxJH> subjected two groups of participants to an interview with openly hostile evaluators. ... Participants who had meditated reported feeling less stress immediately after the interview, but their levels of cortisol - the fight-or-flight hormone - were significantly higher than those of the control group. They had become more sensitive, not less, to stressful stimuli, but believing and expecting that meditation reduced stress, they gave self-reports that contradicted the data. ...

"Britton and her team began visiting retreats, talking to the people who ran them, and asking about the difficulties they'd seen. 'Every meditation center we went to had at least a dozen horror stories,' she said. ...

"In 2017, Britton and her team published their findings in PLOS One, a prominent scientific journal. The report <www.bit.ly/3yfuKCu> presented a taxonomy of 'meditation-related difficulties,' including anxiety and panic, traumatic flashbacks, visual and auditory hallucinations, loss of conceptual meaning structures, non-referential fear, affective flattening, involuntary movements, and distressing changes in feelings of self. ...

"Some of the individuals in the study had preexisting psychiatric conditions, but most did not. ..."

"Britton's research was bolstered last August when the journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica published a systematic review <www.bit.ly/3tVCPJl> of adverse events in meditation practices and meditation-based therapies."

Unfortunately, as Megan's younger sister, Jordan, says, before Megan took her own life, she "never blamed the meditation and she never saw it as a medical problem. ... For her, it was a spiritual crisis." Lengthy. <www.bit.ly/3uAybRR>

----

"Mindfulness meditation is now a staple in public schools, and thanks to Zoom, widely accessible" by Yonat Shimron (Religion News Service, Apr 30 '21) -- opens: "In many schools, meditation advocates have reframed religious practices such as meditation and yoga as secular to avoid legal challenges. ...

"The National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates <www.bit.ly/3uVSn0F> 3.1 million U.S. children, aged 4 to 17, learned mindfulness meditation in school in 2017, the last year for which data is available. Five million practiced yoga. ...

"[T]he Atlanta Public Schools have partnered with The Namaste Project <www.bit.ly/3fiTQaM> to bring yoga and meditation to students each week.

"Many Christians, especially evangelicals, worry that public school use of mindfulness practices that originate in Buddhism (or, in the case of yoga, Hinduism) remains inherently religious and may lead children to abandon their Christian faith. They say it's hypocritical for public schools to offer such practices while maintaining a ban on school prayer and Bible readings. ...

"But in many places, meditation advocates have reframed practices as secular to avoid any legal challenges. At the Rio Grande Mindfulness Institute, many Buddhist symbols <www.bit.ly/2RZTAWv> have been dropped. There's no bowing, no candles, no meeting of hands in a prayer position, no zafu (meditation cushions) required. ...

"Extolling the scientifically proven benefits of mindfulness has become commonplace among the secular versions of meditation. It goes back to Jon Kabat-Zinn, who in 1979 founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School <www.bit.ly/3eRnl4K> and is credited with stripping mindfulness of its Buddhist roots and giving it a scientific sheen.

"More recently, some studies show the science on meditation is not always that strong. Meta analysis of studies suggests mindfulness-based practices may be no more effective than other therapies (such as aerobic exercise or even napping) and in some cases could cause harm." <www.bit.ly/3w49JZL>

For more on meditation in public schools from past issues of Apologia Report, see <www.bit.ly/3eUwXeZ> (Please note: These search results represent the first time we're showing you the 2021 "update" of the Apologia ARchive. For more on this, see <www.bit.ly/3lr6WUW>.)

-------

SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Meditation, Buddhism and Science, by David McMahan and Erik Braun, eds. (Oxford University Press; Unabridged edition (October 24, 2017, paperback, 272 pages) <www.amzn.to/2Rq5Gbo>

------

( - previous issue - / - next issue - )