Originally published: . Volume 8, No. 6. Source pages: 5.
Stress Solutions
Dr. Willoughby Britton and her colleagues at Brown University and the University of California, Santa Barbara have just published a research article on the some of the other than health benefits or more negative effects of Buddhist-derived meditation practices that are underreported (PLoS ONE 12(5) 2017). The meditation traditions selected for study were Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan. Since Mindfulness is a related Buddhist-derived meditation practice that many people are touting, myself included, I wanted to share the results of this study. Mindfulness was not specifically investigated. The study was supported by a grant to Brown U. from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NIH).
There are a few things about the study that need clarification. First, this study is not saying that meditation is harmful and bad. It is saying that of the almost 100 practitioners interviewed some of them reported experiences that were occasionally distressing, even very negative. Such experiences are not unknown among Buddhist traditions; the Tibetans refer to them as “nyams.” Exactly what kind of negative experiences might show up, how they affect each person, and which ones are going to be experienced as distressing is based on a range of personal, interpersonal and contextual factors. Secondly, the study does not offer any percentages or numbers of negative experiences that might show up with the regular practice of meditation. And, it certainly does not say that you must have such an experience if you practice a form of meditation, such as Mindfulness. The purpose of the study was to provide detailed descriptions of the many different experiences that are not positive, health-related outcomes and to start to understand why they might happen and how to deal with them.
The interviews generated 59 types of experience, which the authors further analyzed into seven domains: cognitive, perceptual, affective, somatic, conative, sense of self and social. They also identified 26 categories of factors that might influence how much distress or impairment the experience might cause. Examples of the types of negative experiences the study was investigating include things like: hypersensitivity to light or sound, insomnia, feelings of fear or panic, feelings of oneness with others (but described as lasting too long or making the person feel violated or exposed), or not feeling up to returning to working once they leave the retreat. In other words, an experience that some meditators would describe as “positive or desirable” could be described as “negative” by another.
Some meditation teachers who were interviewed talked about the meditator’s health and diet, how long they meditated, any psychiatric history, or trauma history as being important in understanding why the person might have a negative experience. However, those factors were not always able to explain the findings. Overall, they researchers stated in their PLoS ONE article: “The results also challenge other common causal attributions, such as the assumption that meditation-related difficulties only happen to individuals with a pre-existing condition (psychiatric or trauma history), who are on long or intensive retreats, who are poorly supervised, who are practicing incorrectly, or who have inadequate preparation.”
In the summary of the article, Britton and her team identify “testable hypotheses” and acknowledge that there is a lot yet to discover and understand about what makes meditation a positive, health-improving, and rewarding practice to relieve stress versus a negative source of distress. For example, we still do not know much about the neurobiological mechanisms that are affected by the practice of meditation. One remedy that was mentioned and seems to be particularly important for any clinicians who might use Mindfulness training or other forms of meditation with clients for a variety of different problems ranging from anxiety and stress to health issues, is that it really helps to have a person, the teacher, other meditators in a support group or individually, with whom they can talk and share the diversity of their experiences. It helps to know they are not alone in having that particular consequence and that someone is there to discuss their experiences.
In the many years of my own meditation practice and using Mindfulness and other similar meditation tools with clients, I have never experienced something that I felt was distressing or difficult. I can only remember one client that reported that they could not use the technique because it caused them to become more anxious. This person was very controlling and highly anxious to start with and they agreed with me in the end that in order to become relaxed, calm and still, they had to lower their hypervigilance. And, it was becoming less vigilant that caused them increased anxiety. Their distress did not continue as a result of having tried meditation; they just agreed to use other techniques to reduce their stress.
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