Meditation is dangerous
Here’s a story I’ve heard a couple of times. A young(ish) person is looking for some solutions to their depression, chronic pain, ennui or some other cognitive flaw. They’re open to new experiences and see a meditator gushing about how amazing meditation is for joy, removing suffering, clearing one’s mind, improving focus etc. They invite the young person to a meditation retreat. The young person starts making decent progress. Then they have a psychotic break and their life is ruined for years, at least. The meditator is sad, but not shocked. Then they start gushing about meditation again.
If you ask an experienced meditator about these sorts of cases, they often say, “oh yeah, that’s a thing that sometimes happens when meditating.” If you ask why the hell they don’t warn people about this, they might say: “oh, I didn’t want to emphasize the dangers more because it might put people off meditation, when it leads to such great benefits.”
Does that mean enough people already know about the dangers, or that talking about this more risks exaggerating the dangers? I don’t think so. Just today, someone reacted with surprise to a tweet of mine noting that meditation is dangerous. So more people could do with hearing the message that meditation is dangerous.
In a way, it is obvious that meditation is dangerous if you buy the idea that meditation gives you read/write access to your mind. Of course, you can brick something when you’ve got root access to it. In this way, I believe meditation is like some rationality practices. And even if you don’t brick yourself, you can make changes that have real trade-offs. If you don’t buy that “meditation → root access”, then it is not nearly as obvious that meditation is dangerous. And indeed, many kinds of meditation don’t aim to do that. How much less dangerous does that make them? Who really knows.
We have some general stats on the dangers of meditation. Surveys report that 10-35% of people experienced at least some unwanted effects alongside their meditation practice. 10% reported some sort of functional impairment. 1.2% reported impairments lasting over a month. People with pre-existing mental illnesses reported greater effects.
Personally, I would guess the frequency of serious negative outcomes is about 1/10000 to <1/100, depending on the type of meditation that’s done, how long the daily sessions are, where you are in life, how genetically susceptible they are to mental illness etc. This is based off anecdotal evidence of some friends not doing too well after meditation and the fact that whenever I’ve pressed people on this topic, they admit that meditation can seriously damage you for prolonged periods of time, as well as reports I’ve heard from other people. Some of that range is just pure uncertainty, as I lack good stats on the topic.
As for what is safe, 10 minutes a day for indefinite periods of time is basically fine. Though even then, you can be hospitalized [1]. And you might think that just 20–30 minutes more wouldn’t substantially increase risks. But from anecdotes I’ve heard, that’s a shaky assumption. And apparently, there is a dose response effect. [1] However, I’m uncertain if you have to meditate at this intensity for years before you start seeing issues, or months or even weeks.
Risks start getting pretty high if you’re meditating in a multi-day retreat for many hours a day. The risks are closer to the 1⁄100 range I was talking about, but again, I don’t have hard stats backing this up. I’m talking about near-permanently screwing your life up here, by the way. Severe psychosis, horrible depression, losing your sense that things are real or feeling like the devil himself is breathing down your back. Not great for your productivity.
Again, all of this is modulated by things like genetic factors, history of mental illness, where you are in life right now, what tradition of meditation you’re following, whether your instructors are any good etc. In some ways, it is like weight-lifting: some people are at greater risk of (severely) injuring themselves than others for a wide variety of factors.
Some practices of meditation supposedly have predictable dark periods where the only way out is through. Others are more benign. And it can be unclear what things get dangerous when you’re practicing by yourself without the aid of a community that’s battle tested their practices and knows what to watch out for.
It is a problem that there is no common knowledge in what contexts meditation is dangerous. Or at least common knowledge that such knowledge exists, and how to find it. Since I don’t know when it’s safe to meditate, and in what ways, I’m wary of doing it too much of it myself.
Which is a shame, because it really interests me. I mean, you can turn your brain off! You can ignore the agony of being immolated! Surely there’s some real cognitive surgery going on here. And besides, I’ve personally experienced how much cognitive damage a person can inflict on themselves. I’ve seen people close to me do so as well. And I’ve practiced techniques that sure look like they’re improving, or rather restoring, my ability to reason by a great deal. Maybe meditation practices can offer things just as impactful as my current techs.
But for people like me, i.e. at a high-risk for mental illness, meditation can pose serious dangers and its risks may outweigh its benefits. So I stick to a safe <10 minutes a day and halt when I feel something I would normally want to stop, just as when lifting weights I stop if I start feeling strange sensations and do not push past the pain. Meditation may result in strange, inexplicable insights, but I sure don’t have the expertise to know what’s safe and what’s not. So I’d rather take things slowly and cautiously.
Some advice [1] [5] from people who know more than I do: if meditation is producing some negative effect, stopping the meditating usually stops the problem. Generally take things slow, and with caution. And if you want to meditate seriously [6], make sure you’re OK with the risk of destabilizing your job and relationships and are financially/socially/medically secure enough to stabilize, even if the process takes 18 months.
If you’ve read all this, internalized the risks and can now accurately weigh the pros and cons of meditating for yourself, I’ll consider this post as a success.
Further reading:
[1] Meditation risks, safety, goals, methods (the post I wish I could’ve written).
[2] The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists
[3] Mastering the core teachings of the Buddha, 61, Crazy
[4] Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness, David Treleaven
[5] Meditation book, the meta protocol this protocol appears to treat meditation with the caution it deserves
[6] @romeostevensit’s comment on Should rationalists be spiritual / Spirituality as overcoming delusion
Things I’d like to know:
What is the baseline things-going-tits-up-mentally rate for people similarly situated to those who take on meditation, and how does that compare to the rate for people who begin to meditate? There’s a smell of “the plural of anecdote is data” about this post. People at high risk for mental illness can go around the bend while meditating? Well, they can go around the bend watching TV or chatting with Claude too. How much more dangerous is meditation than the typical range of alternative activities?
There’s bad, and then there’s Bad. Ask a reformed alcoholic whether there were any negative side effects of giving up alcohol, and they’ll tell you it was a bit like an anal probe of the soul with the devil’s pitchfork for a month or two at least. Is that a cautionary tale that should steer you away from sobriety, or just par for that otherwise worthy course? Some of the practitioners of meditation (esp. in the Buddhist tradition) think we’re most of us addicts to the chimerical delights of the senses, and that of course it’ll be a struggle to overcome that. FWIW.
Is this like psychedelics, where if you take them in the context of a long-standing ritual practice with lots of baked-in wisdom, things will probably go okay or at least they’ll know how to give you a soft pillow to land on if you get too far out there; but if you take them in some arbitrary context there’s no telling how it’ll turn out? How do outcomes look for people who meditate in an institutional context with feedback from a seasoned veteran vs. those who meditate based on e.g. enthusiastic blog posts?
Not saying you’re wrong, but answers to things like this would help me know what to do with your observations.
I seem to recall hearing one meditation teacher mention that an ironclad rule for his retreats is that every participant must talk to a teacher every two days, so that the teachers can check in on whether anything concerning might be happening before it gets out of control. That would suggest that regular feedback helps keep things safe, but of course it doesn’t tell us what the relative outcomes are like.
Another issue is that anyone can claim to be competent at teaching meditation, and beginners can’t really evaluate how true those claims are. And I’ve heard claims that, e.g., the staff at Goenka vipassana retreats isn’t very well trained at dealing with emergencies, despite what you’d hope. (I’ve never been to a Goenka retreat so can’t evaluate this personally.)
Something I don’t always see mentioned: one of the effects of meditation, like psychedelics, can be getting crystal clear feedback about your life situation. If you’re in a bad situation that you have a limited ability to do anything about, kicking out the supports for some of your coping strategies can go very badly. I’ve witnessed this first hand. An intensive practice is best undertaken when life conditions are good, with plenty of slack.
Sometimes the bad habits are load-bearing.
I strongly recommend Zvi’s post on Slack.
First and foremost, yes changing your brain in major ways is dangerous and you should be careful with what you’re doing. I do think that there are safe ways of doing it and that it is dependent on the teachings that you follow and I go into more depth below. The main takeaway is basically that doing loving kindness and cultivating positive mindstates is a prerequisite to doing concentration practice if you’re in a bad state of mind.
I’m basically repeating the takes of my teacher who’s a thai forest tradition monk for like 30 years with some degrees in the background. He’s been a bit of a rogue and tried out a bunch of different meditation practices and the thing that he recommends to people who might be at risk for negative experiences is awareness practice and loving kindness practice and I think this makes a lot of mechanistic sense. (Do take this with a grain of salt but this is my current best theory and I’ve not seen anyone go astray with this advice.)
The basic problem of general meditation is that it is focused on concentration. This is so that your mind can stabilise yet higher concentration states can generally lead to an amplification of existing emotions which can be a large problem if you have lots of negative emotions. This isn’t necessarily the case for awareness practices and loving kindness practice as they induce different mental states for you. They’re not about intensifying experience and only letting a small amount through, they’re about expanding and seeing more. (see more on this model here)
So the advice is, if you’re worried about the downside you can most likely safely do things like: Yoga Nidra, Loving Kindness practice or awareness practice as it is unlikely that you will be absorbed into negative states of mind even though you’re coming from a worse state (since it’s not absorption based!). It is generally the most direct path to healing and acceptance (imo) and it is what has helped my mother for example the most as she’s a lot more calm and accepting of her current illnesses. My guess is that you could probably do up towards an hour or two a day of this practice without any problems at all. (especially yoga nidra and loving kindness practices)
A bit more detailed on sub points:
1. On the feasibility of there being different types of practice:
I did some research on this before and there’s a bunch of interesting contemplative neuroscience out on the differences in activation in brain areas for meditation. Different brain areas are activated and this is something that is also mentioned in altered traits which is a pop science book on the science of meditation. (I did a quick report for a course a while back on this here which might have some interesting references in the end, the writing is kinda bad though (report) (here are the links that are most relevant in the underlying papers: paper 1, paper 2)
2. One of the main concerns later on in the practice is “The Dark Night of the Soul”. According to my teacher this is more of a concept within practices that are based on the burmese tradition and through retreats that are focused on “dry” (meaning non-joyful) concentration like goenka vipassyana retreats and daniel ingram’s books. One of the underlying things he has said is that there’s a philosophical divide between the non-dual and theravadan styles of practicing about whether you “die” or whether your experience transforms into something that it already was (returning to the unborn) which can be quite important for changing your frame of self.
Also final recommendation is to do it alongside therapy for example something like ACT as it will then also tie you to reality more and it will allow both western and eastern healing to work on you in tandem!
Hopefully this might help somewhat? The basic idea is just to cultivate joy and acceptance before training your amplification abilities as positive emotions would be what is amplified instead.
Data is scarce here, but I think yoga nidra is one of the practises under suspicion, so I would not be hasty to assure people it’s safe.
I have done yoga nidra myself, and it seemed fine.
On the other hand: it feels adjacent to lucid dreaming, which, probably, has a risk of precipitating psychosis in people who are vulnerable to it.
To explicate the connection between yoga nidra and lucid dreaming …
Yoga nidra feels like doing a wake induced lucid dream, except you don’t quite cross the threshold into the sleep state.
I think it’s a fair suggestion that is adjacent, I do think the mechanisms are different enough that it’s wrong though. Some of what we know of the mechanisms of dreaming and emotional regulation through sleep are gone through here (Dreams, Emotional regulation) and one of the questions there is to what extent yogic sleep is similar to REM sleep.
For your lucid dreaming angle, I would say the main dangerous thing is the inhibition of bodily action that leads to this spiral of anxiety when you can’t move? (Sleep paralysis)
I’m like ~70% (50-90%) certain that this does not occur during yoga nidra and that yoga nidra is a technique that actually helps you if you’ve had these problems before.
I also read this book to get the vibe of it, it doesn’t have the best epistemic rigour but the person writing it has a psychiatry practice specifically focused on yoga nidra and one of the main things that this person claims it helps with is PTSD and sleep related problems. I think it has a specific activation pattern that can be very healing if done correctly, if you’re worried you can probably find a ACT psychologist or similar to do the practice with but I do think it is one of the safer practices you can do.
I am not personally worried about it; I don’t think I’m in the at risk group.
From the people I know in the lucid dreaming community, I have just a couple of reports of people with diagnosed schizophrenia who tried lucid dreaming and it made their symptoms worse. To which the general view seems to be: if it makes your symptoms worse, don’t do it. I don’t have adequate evidence on whether yoga nidra is safe or not; I think a reasonable approach would be to use caution and stop if you start getting bad symptoms.
Also personally, I don’t find sleep paralysis to be a big deal. I know some people are really freaked out by it. But sleep paralysis isn’t the actually risky thing that’s the concern here (the actually risky thing is psychotic symptoms that persist)
This is helpful. Details about specific traditions and their relative dangers is what I hoped to see. Hard for me to verify, of course, but that’s just what it’s like when you’re out of your depth.
For every person who goes crazy from meditation, there must be 100 people like me, who tried it for a while, had a somewhat unsettling experience, and decided to stop. Took me a week or two to feel normal again. I suspect the effect size of what I experienced was “very small” with regard to the kinds of unusual experiences you can have meditating. There are definitely risks to meditation. I have decided it’s not for me for now, but may return to it in the future (with guidance from a teacher/temple).
Have you done any research on the prevalence of meditation-related mental problems in countries where it is a tradition? Like Thailand or Myanmar.
That seems like it should be instructive in disentangling
Meditation is not dangerous at all and its just crazy people going crazy for normal reasons while meditating at around the % baserates would suggest
Meditation is dangerous if done incorrectly, or without the right context and cultural support
Meditation is just always dangerous, at least if you are at high risk for mental problems.
I’ve done a fair bit of sutta-reading, and I can’t remember reading that much about mental problems coming with meditation (or phenomena described in a way where it seems like they’d be describing something we’d refer to as mental problems). But they are obviously a biased source.
Anecdotally, I’ve done a fair bit of serious meditation, and know many others, and haven’t had any experiences with people going crazy. I’ve had crazy experiences and know many people who’ve had crazy experiences, but no-one who permanently lowered their functioning, or even lowered their functioning for more than a day. I’ve had one experience with a guy who meditated a lot and kind of lost motivation to do anything career wise. This seems like it could be quite bad. But he seems super happy. It’s hard to say whether this is actually bad or not. I feel the cases I see/hear of where this happens, often the person in question was pursuing eg their career for dumb reasons. Eg they weren’t doing it for authentic reasons and they didn’t really enjoy it, but they were trying to appease their parents, or they had some complex where they think their life is worthless if they can’t become a multimillionaire, and like they’re currently not a multimillionaire and they feel extreme anguish about it.
Yes. This is something I frequently try to emphasize when someone is meditation curious but not already committed to doing it. I say that for most people it’s great, but some people have trouble, and if you’re in the category of people who might have trouble (especially people with high risk of schizophrenia), then you should avoid doing it.
related ssc post:
scott citing gupta:
scott’s response:
We can create a list of simple obvious advises which are actually sometimes bad:
Be vegeterian – damage to B12 level etc
Run – damage to knees and risk of falls
Lose weight – possible lose of muscle
Be altruistic—damaging addiction of doing good and neglect of personal interests.
The “usually” is really imortant. If the problem you’re dealing with is altered states of consciousness, then yeah, stopping the meditation ought to solve the problem. But if you’re dealing with the fruits of significant insight then too bad; there is no going back.
I have had the experience of having what felt to me like very good conceptual ideas and then just forgetting them and mourning the loss. Assuming they were actually good, why are insights into the self so impossible to forget? Could one not gain access to the part of the brain that associates and do some violence to those parts of yourself that bring particular pathological truths to mind?
Insight doesn’t act on the conceptual level, it acts on the perceptual level. It’s like noticing that you’ve got a rock in your shoe. Doing violence to the part of your brain that notices the rock in your shoe is just going to draw more attention to that area of neural activity.
Maybe another analogy would be something like learning to identify sounds and words in your native language. Once you learn that, everything you hear in your language will be automatically parsed into its components. Sure, there are conditions in which that might get disrupted or in which it doesn’t work perfectly (like mishearing an unfamiliar word), but overall, it’s not going to go away.
Of course it’s dangerous. If it wasn’t, then it couldn’t be helpful. Meditation allows you to break things, and the effects will be felt as positive if you break something unwanted, and harmful if you break something wanted. It’s not that there’s good and bad consequences which are opposites, there’s merely consequences which are perceived as positive or negative.
I might end up depressed if I break a core belief which is currently protecting me. I might also feel like a weight has been taken off my shoulders if I break a self-imposed limitation which has overstayed its welcome, or if I manage to accept something which is bothering me (collapsing an internal conflict to either side).
If I meditate too hard, I might break an aspect of my perception. My sense of self, my desires, some perceived duality, or the ability to differentiate living and dead objects. Meditation is a blunt tool, you can’t get specific outcomes unless you know what you’re doing.
I’d like to say more, but I can’t. Everything I read about meditation is ambiguous or contradictory. Even reading many different sources, I cannot synthesize it into anything useful or specific. I’d love to know if somebody else knew anything certain (does meditation make one more sensitive, more numb, more grounded, more distant?)
Edit: Wait, some kinds of meditation (which?) can quiet the mind. But even this effect could manifest in different ways which I can’t tell apart.
Strong agree.
Would add: This can be prevented with skilled supervision.
The phrase “root access” would suggest that you can in principle fix all the problem that you cause the same way you can just install new software on a computer to which you have root access.
I think a better analogy is you as a local LLM having root access to the computer it’s running on. If you brick it, you’ve also broken the substrate that facilitates the process by which you’d naively unbrick—the terminal commands you’d use no longer work!
A person with “depression, chronic pain, ennui or some other cognitive flaw” taking up some new religious ritual seems to me like a symptom of psychotic break, not the cause.
Re. Some of the comments… I don’t think I would be distressed if my internal dialog stopped. It’s intermittent anyway, and can switch between auditory and visual. If it just went quiet for an extended while, that would not seem bad. [as a test, just after I wrote that I did 30 seconds with no internal monologue]
I kind of need the internal monolog to write code, for example, so it would be a problem if I could no longer write code in my head.
I don’t agree with “root access” btw. I do agree you can’t have it both ways: if you think it’s more powerful than a replacement-level healthy habit, then you should also consider that it could be dangerous.
I can try the “access” metaphor. I think of meditation as lowering thoughts from write access to append-only access. Mid-meditation, thoughts can say their thing but then they have to drift off instead of pick up debates with other thoughts.
Vulnerable people may be prone to picking up meditation. Like those with intense mental suffering—think bipolar-level conditions that require psychiatry.
church (christian) is probably a better option for most.
I think that’s a solution for a different problem. Churches are great at community-building; especially when they stick to Gospel fundamentals such as potluck dinners. But they don’t especially target structural problems of consciousness like dukkha.
(Christian spirituality can have psychological downsides too; the expression “dark night of the soul” is originally Christian, after all.)