Meditation is bad for you, and you should stop doing it!
Did you know that there is actually quite a lot of empirical evidence supporting that very statement?
I’ll be the first one to say that I didn’t!
As a long-time meditator, I was not just unaware of it, but frankly, I felt strongly dismissive when I encountered this idea which I did in the form of a book about a year ago. At the time I scoffed at the book and continued browsing for other books in the shop that were actually worth my time.
I think it is important to point out that I am someone who has spent somewhere between one to a few thousand hours investing my time into meditation and deepening my own mindfulness. And likely another few hundred-plus hours reading and listening to content about meditation, Buddhism, and mindfulness. So with that under the belt, and with the self-awareness I’ve gained from all this meditation, I realized that it was quite obvious why I got this strong reaction to the statement that meditation might be bad — I got it because I had a lot of my ego invested in this.
And while you might expect me to all meta here and talk about how the very fact that I noticed my ego in it, was the reason why I wanted to understand more about the topic of how and why meditation was bad, that was not the case, not at all in fact. Rather, I gladly dismissed it and went on preaching about meditation, because, after all, I was, and still am to some degree, convinced that meditation has served me well, and not only me but also a few other people whom I know closely.
Not only was there this book, but I was also continuously challenged on this topic by my ex, both while she was my girlfriend as well as after we had broken up. She repeatedly told me that meditation was not for her and that she believed that other practices would serve her better. Once again, just as I did when seeing the book, I did the right thing. I gently forced her into doing a month-long app-based meditation course with me.
Basically, I did what any good five-year-old would do if you told them that they were wrong that is, I disregarded it and I dug my heels down further into the sand!
So all well and good right?
Sort of yes, because even if she was not converted after having spent all of that time meditating with me, I was convincing myself that this was because she was not receptive to it just yet. I told myself that it would work had she been a bit more open to it, but that she would eventually get around to seeing how great meditation was as well, I simply had to give her some time for it to sink in
After these two encounters with critizism, a few more months passed by, and no one challenged my now even more deeply held belief that meditation is the panacea that the world needs!
Not really surprising, because after all, why would they, this is the truth — Right?
So I went on, happily meditating and reading more about meditation and how good it is, and during this time I also happened to end up writing yet another self-aggrandizing and semi-narcissistic medium piece (Hey, I am writing on medium after all, what did you expect out of me?) about yet another idea I had managed to convince myself of. This was the belief that if you get recommended something by more than three people whom you respect and who preferably know you, you should likely look into it because they will likely be right about that recommendation.
But as you would expect, a bit more time passed, and I encountered the stupid idea once again…
This time around my inner now five-and-a-half-year-old comes alive and scoffs yet again digs his heels down even further, and looks away from this YouTube recommendation in search of something better. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the fact that it started playing after a video I had just watched, and that it was on a podcast I really like, I very likely would have glossed over it once again. So there I was, running from the world trying to tell me something, and luckily this time around I was not only bored enough to consider investing this time, but I had also witnessed a positive change in my now ex-girlfriend’s mood, emotional regulation, and dare I say even self-acceptance, without the use of meditation!
So I figured that I could give it a shot. Because as much as I like meditation, what I really like is ideas and activities that in whatever way, shape, or form make life a little bit less shitty — Because let’s be real, life has a tendency to be quite shitty at times. My thinking is therefore that anything I can learn about how to make it less shitty, be that for myself or those around me, I try to scoop this up. After all, this was how I myself got started with a meditation to begin with.
And even if this case with listening to this podcast did happen to be a bit unique, not only because it was sort of an anti-recommendation and not a recommendation so my ”rule of three” did not really apply, but the very fact that something that I was a dogmatic believer in was potentially not good and even bad was very hard to digest.
However, I still decided to spend these two hours listening to what this researcher had to say … And boy oh boy am I happy that I did!
Not only because I appreciate learning new things and understanding the world a bit better, but most importantly because I had not done more harm based on my faulty and unnuanced beliefs.
Because while I had quite obviously been wrong about pushing my ex to meditate with me even if she didn’t want to do it, it had not turned as bad as I’ve now realized that it could (Also I did it based on my deep conviction that it would be good for her and since I loved her that is what I cared about, so I still don’t beat myself up for it that much, even if I am well aware that it was kind of a dickish move to force her).
That being said, on top of these things, I myself recognized a number of the problems that might arise from too much meditation that were being discussed in the podcast as things I had experienced.
While I did consider going into all of these, not only would it by far make this my lengthiest post ever, which would make it unreadable, I also realized that some of these are a bit too personal to share with the whole world, so I’ll keep those secrets for now.
What I will do is briefly write about one of the obvious ones that still matter a whole lot, which was high “doses” of meditation potentially causing insomnia!
This is at first glance one of the more surprising things that gets mentioned in the podcast itself, but it is also one of the clearest ones that I have experienced where I feel like meditation is very likely the culprit in my case.
I guess that it is surprising to some since meditation is usually portrayed as a ”stress relief” technique, but as anyone who has done it for any extended period would know, it is far far more than this, and when hearing about it on the podcast, and when thinking about it on my own, it makes sense that it could very well be causing insomnia.
An important caveat here is that causes to problems with sleeping are usually quite tricky to pinpoint because there are so many different reasons that could give a person problems with it. Just to name the usual suspects: Diet, Drugs(I very much include caffeine, nicotine, alcohol and any type of prescription in the word ”drug”), Stress, Trauma, Screens, Mental associations with your bed (Basically how you spend your time in your bed, if you do other things than sleeping and sexing in it, it likely affects your sleep in a negative way), Bad sleep hygiene (Temperature, light, noise, type of bed, blanket etc), Caloric intake, Exercise or lack thereof, Supplements, and Micronutrient deficiencies — These things are all potentially impacting your sleep to a small or big extent.
So how can I be so sure that meditation was affecting my sleep you might ask?
First of all, because I happen to be a person who is well aware of all of these things, and who has also spent the last ten years caring about all of these. Secondly, because I had not changed any of them, apart from continuously trying to improve one or more of them over this period, and in so doing I slept very well for the longest time.
Up until I started taking my meditation practice more seriously that is, this was leading up to my first longer retreat. While I had already meditated for a few years at this point, and I had done a few 1–2 days retreats, that time I was doing a 10-day Vipassana retreat (Without getting into too many details, that basically involved a whole lot of meditation) so I figured I wanted to show up prepared. In so doing I started practicing about an hour ago day for the months leading up to it.
During the retreat, and following the retreat, I started to have trouble sleeping for the first time in my life, and these issues have in some ways stayed with me since. They are more manageable nowadays, which also happens to coincide with the fact that I don’t meditate as much as I used to any longer for various reasons.
As mentioned, in the podcast, they talk about a few other things I could relate to having experienced, some minor and some even worse than this (And for anyone who has had any trouble sleeping for any longer period of time, you’d know that it can be pretty bad), and without this podcast I would likely never have associated any of them with meditation.
Mind you, I still feel as if I’m a person who got away somewhat easily in contrast to some of the things being discussed in the conversation, and I’m mainly happy that my evangelism didn’t end up hurting my ex or anyone else I care about.
In the episode, they briefly also touch on the topics of Psychotherapy and Psychedelics, and having had a fair bit of experience with both of these I also wholeheartedly agree with the fact that many of the same cautions raised about meditation, as well as a few others, very much extend to these areas as well!
Apart from writing all of this to process the somewhat eye-opening and humbling experience of listening to the podcast, this topic is something I’ll likely dig even further into in the future. I mainly wrote this to call out the fact that Meditation, just like anything else is not a panacea and should not be seen as one, and that it might, if approached without respect, guidance, knowledge, or just in the wrong circumstances or with a particular past, might even be bad!
All this being said I myself don’t think that I’ll stop meditating, because I’ve seen, and continue to see benefits from it, but I will very likely turn back the dial a bit.
Apart from this, what I will for sure stop is proselytizing about it to the extent that I have, and I solemnly swear that I will never try to shove it down anyone’s throat in the future. And most of all I will respect that as with most, if not all things in life, too much of a good thing might turn out to be a not-so-good thing, and not only that, but a ”good thing” might even turn out to be a bad thing in some circumstances!
P.S. This is the episode I talked about, it is WELL worth a listen! — Link to Spotify, Link to YouTube.
P.P.S. The expression “Killing the Buddha” as alluded to in the beginning means killing our ideas about Buddhism. This holds for the belief that we know all about it which also goes for what we believe we know about meditation as well!
