Cheesus wrote:That is interesting. The reason I asked is because I recently came across these studies:
Adverse effects of meditation were assessed in twenty-seven long term meditators (average 4.27 years) both retrospectively (time one) and prospectively at one month (time two) and six months (time three) following a meditation retreat. At both time one and time three subjects reported significantly more positive effects than negative from meditation. However, of the twenty-seven subjects, seventeen (62.9%) reported at least one adverse effect, and two (7.4%) suffered profound adverse effects. When subjects at time one were divided into three groups based on length of practice (16.7 months; 47.1 months; 105 months) there were no significant differences in adverse effects. How the data should be interpreted, and their implications both for the clinical and psychotherapeutic use of meditation as a relaxation/self-control strategy, and as a technique for facilitating personal and spiritual growth, are discussed. Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are also offered.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1428622Not all effects of the practice of meditation are beneficial. Shapiro (1992) found that 62.9% of the subjects reported adverse effects during and after meditation and 7.4% experienced profoundly adverse effects. The length of practice (from 16 to 105 months) did not make any difference to the quality and frequency of adverse effects. These adverse effects were relaxation-induced anxiety and panic; paradoxical increases in tension; less motivation in life; boredom; pain; impaired reality testing; confusion and disorientation; feeling 'spaced out'; depression; increased negativity; being more judgmental; and, ironically, feeling addicted to meditation.
Other adverse effects described (Craven, 1989) are uncomfortable kinaesthetic sensations, mild dissociation, feelings of guilt and, via anxiety-provoking phenomena, psychosis-like symptoms, grandiosity, elation, destructive behaviour and suicidal feelings. Kutz et al. (1985a,b) described feelings of defencelessness, which in turn produce unpleasant affective experiences, such as fear, anger, apprehension and despair. Sobbing and hidden memories and themes from the past, such as incest, rejection, and abandonment appeared in intense, vivid forms and challenged the subject's previously constructed image of their past and themselves. On the other hand, it is not uncommon to encounter a meditator who claims that has found 'the answers' when in fact he has been actively engaged in a subtle manoeuvre of avoiding his basic questions.
http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/rese ... eniz.shtmlDo you guys have an opinion about that?
Something sounded fishy about this study - specifically the increase in anxiety aspect, since
secular mindfulness meditation seems to be particularly efficient at dealing with such problems, so I decided to have a look at the paper which can be seen fully here:
Adverse effects of meditation: a preliminary investigation of long-term meditators, The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 1992. Vol. 24, No.1Overall Subject Demographics. Subjects were twenty-seven individuals, mean age of 35.6 (sd 13.2) years, who had signed up for either a three-month or two-week intensive Vipassana meditation retreat at the Insight Meditation Center, in Barre, Massachusetts. The average length of meditation experience was 4.27 (sd 3.32) years. Twenty-two (&1.5%) meditated regularly, from forty-five minutes to an hour a day. Two-thirds had previously practiced Vipassana, and the remaining 33.3% practiced a variety of different techniques: mantra, silence, mindfulness, Soto Zen, breathing concentration, yoga, and visualization.
Seventeen (62.9%) of the group were men; a little less than one-fourth of the group were married; over 50% were in professional careers, and over 70% had completed college.
Religious Orientation. Twenty-six of the twenty-seven people described their religious orientation as follows: ten (38.4%) said none, atheistic or agnostic; nine (34.6%) said they were Buddhists or wrote in BUddhist-plus (Le., Buddhist/Christian; Buddhist/Protestant; Buddhist/Hindu); five (19.2%) listed a specific monotheistic religion; and two (7.7%) wrote in "all,"
Nature of the Meditation Retreat. The meditative technique and tradition used on both retreats was Vipassana, part of the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Vipassana meditation is a quieting technique designed to observe the mind and develop concentration. It is a combined concentrative and opening up practice, with the breath as the anchor (Goldstein, 1976). Meditation at the retreats occurred up to sixteen hours a day, including both sitting and walking meditation. Silence by meditators was observed throughout retreats except for sessions with teachers.
So basically, this study, conducted more than 20 years ago, reporting results at odds with many papers released recently from modern respected institutions studying
secular mindfulness meditation, involved around at most 13 dedicated daily-practicing Buddhists - less than 50% (who very likely believe in, and are significantly affected by, ideas about past lives, subtle karmic energies, remote viewing, ghosts, etc., but who one would guess would be most likely to practice mindfulness proficiently), and the others used things like mantras and visualization. Very quickly one sees that this study has very little to do with people who have a long-term daily mindfulness meditation practice.
If you have spent time around such Buddhists like I have - living with them on retreats and hearing their motivations, as far as I am concerned, the average Western Buddhist is not too 'open' in the Zen sense - too often caught up religious mysticism (and of course, for non-Buddhist religious people, also, with the addition of a belief in a soul, there will be deep mystical faith). If I lived and practiced in a world where people had telepathic powers and I was constantly reminded that I was going to be reborn as a 'stupid rock' or something (I actually think rocks are cool and I wouldn't mind being one), I would probably suffer those anxiety-related symptoms reported too - such ideas as mindstreams being inherited, and any supernatural psychic ability, apparently work completely against the idea people like JKZ put forward that mind and body require integration to be healthy,
not further separation - this lies at the heart of MBSR as I know it.
Even though many Zen people I have met still hold mind-body separative notions, notice the Soto Zen representation in that study was not very present at all, let alone Zen from any other Buddhist school. Zen is a Mahayana, not Theravada practice, and Mahayana is famous for it's more inclusive approach; especially it's encouragement to laypeople. Look at the main influences Kabat-Zinn mentions in his books - Shunryu Suzuki Roshi of Soto Zen, Seung Sahn of Korean Zen, Thich Nhat Hanh of Vietnamese Zen, Charlotte Joko Beck of 'American' Zen. Notice a trend? - Not much, if any, Theravada. There are the occasional spottings of Dalai Lama (Tibetan Mayahana (Vajrayana) Buddhism), or Ven. Henepola Gunaratana (Theravada) in JKZ's work, but MBSR is Zen heavy. Zen is Mahayana Buddhism
incorporated with Daoism - the Daoism anchors the often 'flighty' Buddhist mind in nature - in biology, so to speak, and that is significant. Even then MBSR is secular, so more stripping of methodology and overarching mind-body-separating cosmology has been done.
Bottom line: This study is not particularly representative of the potential MBSR mindfulness meditation holds. If I see the word meditation without mindfulness presceding it, I don't tend to pay much attention these days.
The methodology and contextual cosmology is
incredibly important in my experience. Since MBSR could quite easily be described as 'bathing oneself in compassion', it doesn't follow that there can be negative effects. It's just rebalancing oneself in a very wholesome and necessary way. If one sees the practice as recognising one's true mindstream or past lives, or if one is "off with the fairies" thinking about some mystical dimension to one's practice ("Is this sleepiness I'm feeling my body beginning to levitate?"), then of course one will not reap benefits -
one will be thinking. It's got to be kept simple - it's the complexity that gets people into stressful situations in the first place. There's no point turning up at a meditation class in order to reduce stress and anxiety brought on by a complex world, only to be told there are additional levels of existence and subtle energies at play in very detailed and elegant patterns within one that one must tune into. Living is difficult and complex enough - things need to be cut away and let go of; not added(!).
Anyway, I could rant further, but it's really great that you are asking these questions and exploring this here though - you obviously love yourself very much and you don't want to damage or injure yourself - I think honoring that approach will get you far. I had to wade through various schools of Buddhism in the absence of mainstream MBSR to finally arrive in a similar place and orientation as to what apparently inspired JKZ to do what he did. This stuff needs to be questioned and tested thoroughly - there has been too much wifty wafty nonsense peddled to people suffering from adverse health conditions, only for it to be just another placebo in a different wrapper.
I would trust the guys at Oxford Mindfulness Center and in Exeter for the science, and keep on keeping on. The progress and mini-relapses can be frustrating at times, but the up-side is that by walking so slowly through the landscape, one knows the territory that much better, and one becomes more familiar with oneself, and a resource to one's community. Such knowledge is worth, as the Diamond Sutra says "more than as many precious jewels as the number of grains of sand in all the Ganges Rivers in multiple universes". It's the glue that holds a civilisation together - in the conext of the whole world and their behaviours and attitudes, you are already a hero of great proportions.
