The dark side of meditation
 

I have come across a few news paper articles this week regarding the negative side effects of meditation, namely the Guardian and the Mail!

it says 60% of people who have been on a meditation retreat had suffered at least one negative side effect, and one in 14 have suffered ''profound adverse effects'' according to Miguel Farias head of the Brain, Belief and behaviour research group at Coventry University, and Catherine Wikholme, a researcher in clinical psychology at the University of Surrey. Miguel Farias goes on to say that it's a scandal that no rigorous statistical studies have been done in to the negative side effects of meditation.

does that mean that you have to have a really healthy strong ego before you start to do meditation? or if there are already flaws in your ego before you start, will it only amplify these negative traits? or maybe they don't have access to a good teacher? or is it none of these and that anyone who practice it are open to these dangers also?

there was a British study on inmates at 7 prisons measuring the effect of yoga and meditation on prisoners, it's findings were published in a book called ''The Buddha Pill'' can meditation change you?

maybe not a good all round area to pick your test subjects but this is what they found out, it did improve there psychological distress and improved there overall mood, but they found that they were just as aggressive as when they started the programme. so it did improve there own personal mood then!
They did something similar with psychopaths, and found out it only made them more efficient at manipulating people and did not cure or curb there behaviour, so maybe a healthy ego has a better chance of having no negative side effects....what do you all think? :confused:

I'd say, a healthy heart and love of life, others, yourself and your
Creator would give you positive effects of meditation!!

That's what I think or know...:smile:

Seems to me that these "retreats" are the problem, not meditation. (There's too little information to form any kind of reasonable opinion.)

What kind of meditation retreat were they refering to?
What negative side effects did people experience?

I have been involved in retreats and have observed adverse consequences on occasion, too. I always thought that the organisers were neglectful about peoples psychological responses to sudden prolonged isolation and intense introspection.

I thought the glowing research into meditation was perhaps heavily biased and have looked for findings of adverse affects.

What I think is, meditation is quite a particular thing, and has been widely misrepresented, marketed aggressively and taught recklessly.

as always the good outweighs the bad.

kk

They never identified what sort of retreats they were for some unknown reason.

The negative side effects they were talking about were depression, panic, confusion, hallucinations, mania and believe it or not psychosis?

maybe it's taught recklessly as you say gem and I would go along with that, I did know of a case of a guy going on vipassana retreat and he had schizophrenia, he said the week long programme helped him, it's only when he opened up to some members of the group that they then stopped him from doing another retreat and the rejection of it he says made his illness come on full on.

Miguel Farias is pointing out that no real research has been done in to the negative effects of meditation, maybe it should be done! the thing that I'm getting from this is that if you have any psychological instability at all then meditation is definitely going to uncover it..the sudden overload of opening up to this psychic force can be quite scary.

There is no way of knowing though when people go on retreat how it's going to affect them until it does, most people I know it has been a positive experience.

Meditation as in basic breath or mindful meditation is perfectly safe especially if taught in person by an instructor. It will help with any instabilities rather than hinder...

When you start talking about 'energy work' like focusing on chakras, raising kundalini or opening the third eye then I would strongly agree that these type of practices could cause some issues and I don't personally like to see them taught willy nilly or practised willy nilly..

So, we have to be clear about what type of meditation we are talking about, what kind of person we are talking about, and the situation in itself which would vary according to circumstance.

i wouldn't listen to right wing newspapers...they don't exactly want people thinking for themselves.

That was the first thing that came to mind for me, to many people gathered together like that could cause trouble. :smile:

If you mean the Daily Mal, say no more!

The Daily Fail is a very "negative" paper (in the sense of negative understood here). Sensationalising when something offends the establishment by more than a 1/10 of a degree off its upright, stiff-upper-lip idea of normal. It harps on about the degeneracy of British society, never comes up with nice positive stories except royal babies. It HATES personal freedom and thinks we should all be under social controls imposed by the likes of DM!

Whenever I happen upon it, there's always at least one story - "a study suggests...." not "concludes", loving to push the medical climate of fear.

You need preparation. If it's a first meditation retreat they won't learn much about meditation. Few people in just a couple of days, a week, can sustain the thing for more than a few minutes.

The preparation is that if you have a lot of unknowns, denials, delusions and other dark stuff within yourself, they'll emerge sooner or later. But of course, they're controllable. You have two choices: deal with them - or snap out of it.

You don't always have the same choice when dreams get uncomfortable.

The only time I had real trouble was during a "guided meditation." It got me so angry. I mean, how can anyone meditate with someone yattering on the whole time!

Psychopaths in corporate life don't need meditation. Near "the top" they're good at what they do or they wouldn't be there.

Amazing that they haven't raised the same "horror story" about dreaming. I mean, do they even know how that affects people? Could it be that some people's scares come from the latency that their dreams throw up?

Interesting observations though. Great.

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