Whenever I see people discussing the benefits of meditation without talking about the serious risks, I get suspicious[1] and wary. This may be an over-reaction, but I’ve heard many a story of people ruining their lives (e.g. deep depression, psychosis etc.) due to meditation, even amounts that you wouldn’t think would be that bad e.g. ~ 45 minutes a day. And they weren’t aware of these risks going in. So I’m posting this comment here as a public service: meditation can mess you up.[2]
That said, meditation=/=spirituality, as you noted. More spirituality on the margin need not be dangerous, and I imagine parts work or going to secular solstices or so on isn’t dangerous and doesn’t really need a warning label. And if you were only focusing a bit on meditation, I wouldn’t have bothered to write this warning, but afaict the dialogue disproportionately focuses on it. So here we are.
If you buy that meditation gives you better read/write access to your brain, then the idea that you can easily shoot yourself in the foot seems quite obvious. If you don’t, then the idea is not nearly as obvious and may require more evidence than I’ve given here.
without talking about the serious risks [...] even amounts that you wouldn’t think would be that bad e.g. ~ 45 minutes a day.
Well, what are the stats here? How frequent are such negative outcomes, and how frequent would they have to be to be (not) worth mentioning? E.g. at >1 in 100 this might warrant an automatic disclaimer, whereas at <1 in 100k, it would hardly be worth mentioning, right?
Also, which fraction of meditators does that for 45 minutes per day? For people who “meditate daily” or who “have a meditation hobby”, I would be astonished if the fraction were >5%. Or is the idea that there are severe risks even for doing something like that for just a week?
I’ve seen surveys report 10-35% experienced at least some unwanted effects. More severe effects harder to classify. Here 1.2% for adverse effects affecting functioning for more than 1 month:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8636531/
I don’t know what the stats are. 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 & factors relating to susceptibility 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. So some of that range is just pure uncertainty.
As for 45 minutes a day, I was trying to give a sense of roughly when things start getting dangerous. From what I understand, 10 minutes a day for indefinite periods of time is basically safe. Substantially higher than that, say 30 minutes a day, can cause harm but I’m uncertain if it requires years, months or maybe even weeks. And if you’re encouraing people to meditate marginally more, well, 20 or 30 minutes it won’t change things that much, right? Maybe, maybe not.
Meditating in a multi-day retreat for many hours a day is where risks start getting pretty high as far as I can tell. 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.
Also, all of this is modualted by things like genetic factors, history of mental illness, where you are in life right now etc. And it is also dependant on what practice you use. 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 and when if you’re practicing by yourself without the aid of a community that’s battle tested their practices and knows what to watch out for.
I say all these things because I’m interested in meditation for reasons related to a history of pain, pain-induced trauma, all sorts of damaged reasoning and sheer curiousty. Meditation, amongst other cognitive techs, looks like it may help me with that. I believe that because I’ve personally experience 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 which I believe is more common on LW, meditation can pose serious dangers and its risks may outweigh its benifits. So I stick to a safe <10 minutes a day, and am on the lookout for feelings that I would normally want to stop but might convince myself to push past because maybe I’m just supposed to feel weird. Afterall, isn’t meditation meant to result in strange, inexplicable insights? Well, maybe. But I don’t have the expertise to know what’s safe and what’s not, so I’d rather take things slowly and cautiously. As advised by the protocol in this book which appears to be treating meditation with at least the paranoia I think it deserves.
For people contemplating entering a period of serious practice what I typically ask about is whether they would be okay losing/destabilizing their job and primary relationships (romantic, friends, family). Not okay in the sense of it wouldn’t suck emotionally, but they would be basically secure (financial runway, other friends/teachers to turn to for advice, mental health history and medications, etc.) and be able to make it through to the other side if it took up to 18 months.
Oh, definitely. I’m… actually not sure how come we didn’t mention this, given that I’ve included links to the risks of meditation in my posts before. Here’s a caveat and some references from an earlier post of mine:
Getting deep in meditation requires a huge investment of time and effort—though smaller investments are also likely to produce benefits—and is associated with its own risks [1234].
Whenever I see people discussing the benefits of meditation without talking about the serious risks, I get suspicious[1] and wary. This may be an over-reaction, but I’ve heard many a story of people ruining their lives (e.g. deep depression, psychosis etc.) due to meditation, even amounts that you wouldn’t think would be that bad e.g. ~ 45 minutes a day. And they weren’t aware of these risks going in. So I’m posting this comment here as a public service: meditation can mess you up.[2]
That said, meditation=/=spirituality, as you noted. More spirituality on the margin need not be dangerous, and I imagine parts work or going to secular solstices or so on isn’t dangerous and doesn’t really need a warning label. And if you were only focusing a bit on meditation, I wouldn’t have bothered to write this warning, but afaict the dialogue disproportionately focuses on it. So here we are.
Suspicious because it sounds like the beginnings of some of the tragic stories I’ve heard.
If you buy that meditation gives you better read/write access to your brain, then the idea that you can easily shoot yourself in the foot seems quite obvious. If you don’t, then the idea is not nearly as obvious and may require more evidence than I’ve given here.
Well, what are the stats here? How frequent are such negative outcomes, and how frequent would they have to be to be (not) worth mentioning? E.g. at >1 in 100 this might warrant an automatic disclaimer, whereas at <1 in 100k, it would hardly be worth mentioning, right?
Also, which fraction of meditators does that for 45 minutes per day? For people who “meditate daily” or who “have a meditation hobby”, I would be astonished if the fraction were >5%. Or is the idea that there are severe risks even for doing something like that for just a week?
I’ve seen surveys report 10-35% experienced at least some unwanted effects. More severe effects harder to classify. Here 1.2% for adverse effects affecting functioning for more than 1 month: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8636531/
see also: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8693904/
I don’t know what the stats are. 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 & factors relating to susceptibility 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. So some of that range is just pure uncertainty.
As for 45 minutes a day, I was trying to give a sense of roughly when things start getting dangerous. From what I understand, 10 minutes a day for indefinite periods of time is basically safe. Substantially higher than that, say 30 minutes a day, can cause harm but I’m uncertain if it requires years, months or maybe even weeks. And if you’re encouraing people to meditate marginally more, well, 20 or 30 minutes it won’t change things that much, right? Maybe, maybe not.
Meditating in a multi-day retreat for many hours a day is where risks start getting pretty high as far as I can tell. 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.
Also, all of this is modualted by things like genetic factors, history of mental illness, where you are in life right now etc. And it is also dependant on what practice you use. 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 and when if you’re practicing by yourself without the aid of a community that’s battle tested their practices and knows what to watch out for.
I say all these things because I’m interested in meditation for reasons related to a history of pain, pain-induced trauma, all sorts of damaged reasoning and sheer curiousty. Meditation, amongst other cognitive techs, looks like it may help me with that. I believe that because I’ve personally experience 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 which I believe is more common on LW, meditation can pose serious dangers and its risks may outweigh its benifits. So I stick to a safe <10 minutes a day, and am on the lookout for feelings that I would normally want to stop but might convince myself to push past because maybe I’m just supposed to feel weird. Afterall, isn’t meditation meant to result in strange, inexplicable insights? Well, maybe. But I don’t have the expertise to know what’s safe and what’s not, so I’d rather take things slowly and cautiously. As advised by the protocol in this book which appears to be treating meditation with at least the paranoia I think it deserves.
For people contemplating entering a period of serious practice what I typically ask about is whether they would be okay losing/destabilizing their job and primary relationships (romantic, friends, family). Not okay in the sense of it wouldn’t suck emotionally, but they would be basically secure (financial runway, other friends/teachers to turn to for advice, mental health history and medications, etc.) and be able to make it through to the other side if it took up to 18 months.
I do think serious meditation practice is more akin to drugs than something more psychologically innocuous like exercise or cold showers.
Oh, definitely. I’m… actually not sure how come we didn’t mention this, given that I’ve included links to the risks of meditation in my posts before. Here’s a caveat and some references from an earlier post of mine: