Meditation is a Questionable Practice

Current medical advice recommends meditation as a treatment for stress. Personally, I would advise against it unless you have a full understanding of how it works and what problems could (theoretically) be associated with it.

Background

Now, to my understanding, meditation is a genuine skill for accomplishing real things. People have used it to control their heart, regulate body temperature, and reduce stress.

But, it should be noted, that it has often been used to let people fly. Given the shortage of footage of people actually floating in air, nor practicing any other magic, I think it’s safe to say that this is nonsense.

Other claims - for example in my previous link - are along the lines that meditation improves the world, making it more peaceful, gives you great new ideas, improves your thinking, etc. But if we look at the history of Europe as compared to the history of India - the leading source of meditation - we should note that Europe became a better place for people of different color and gender as time went on, through reflection, debate, and critical thinking. In India, the caste system continued through thousands of years of yogic practice (including meditation) by the leading classes, the practice was forbidden to women until the late 20th century, and India was a mess of warring tribes and kingdoms. The founders of yogic practice, in the US, seem to have also had issues with sexual assault on their students. Today, even the native people will tell you that India is a crazy country, where you can always expect a large segment of the populace to behave in crazy ways that beggar belief.

Underlying Premise

Of course, a potential practitioner could take up meditation with the specific intent of reducing stress and simply run away from any teacher who tries to teach you how to fly or who tries to fondle you, surreptitiously. But we should ask if there’s something about how meditation works, that explains why it has these good effects but also explains why we have these negative (or false positive) effects.

The area in which meditation has shown to be the most provably effective is in self-control. So, let us say that meditation is largely a practice of learning self-control. That is to say, it might be comparable to a strong form of self-hypnosis.

If we take that understanding of the practice, then we might note that if you put a person under hypnosis and, for example, tell them that aliens are coming to attack them - they’ll become scared and try to get away. And if you told them that they can fly, they will experience flight.

Part of self-control is brain control. Just as much as you can control your heart and your body temperature, you can control your brain. And within the brain we have, for example, endorphins, endocannabinoids, serotonin, and other hormones which could - in theory - be released through conscious manipulation just as we might slow our heart or increase our body temperature. You might note, for example, the common association between meditation and transcendental experiences.

Instinct and The Reward System

Underneath it all, humans are an animal, with an evolved set of instincts that guide our behavior.

On average, we desire social contact, a certain amount of mental and physical activity, procreation, delicious food, a comfortable shelter, regular sleep, etc. These desires are mediated by the natural release of certain hormones in response to various signals - making us feel good about what we are doing or depressed about the things that we are lacking. In example, if you bring home a large haul of food for your family, you’ll be awarded with endorphins. Our instincts believe that this is a good activity for us to engage in. On the counter, if you’re largely unsuccessful at most tasks and spurned by potential lovers, you’ll feel depressed and stressed - your brain signaling that you need to change your ways to something more instinctually acceptable.

For a more practical, modern day example, you might have an assignment at work. If you aren’t working on it and aren’t sure how to do it, you’ll experience anxiety. This is as it should be; you have something that you should be doing and which you aren’t, and you might fail at being able to do it.

At this point, we could spend our time doing research to figure out how to succeed at our project or, conversely, we could go sit in a corner and activate the endorphin releasing part of our brain. The first strategy should, ultimately, get us our endorphin release as well but - more importantly - it’s a much better strategy for personal success in the world.

Meditation and Side Effects

The default understanding of meditation, today, is that it is an activity with no side effects. But, I would note, the medical world would generally not view religion nor transcendental experiences as negative things. They’re accepted in society as normal and - by many - as good. There’s a good chance that you, my reader, are all into that sort of thing.

But let’s say that a transcendental experience for some people - not you, of course - is the conjunction of low outside stimulus with a large flow of endorphins, endocannabinoids, serotonin, etc. and let’s further say that a practitioner is unaware that she is engaged in an activity that can produce that sort of effect. Let’s say that several million people, over the course of several thousand years, engage in that sort of practice.

We would probably expect to see a large body of people who feel like they have achieved amazing and holy things while an outside observer might note that they’ve reinforced beliefs about race, caste, gender, etc. into their religion and hop around on their knees like a bunch of loonies. The ability to reward yourself for the way you live today and believe today, and to hypnotize yourself into thinking that you can accomplish magic would give us the history of meditative practice, exactly as it is. We see exactly what we would expect.

And, likewise, we would expect to see a medical community which holds that meditation is an effective and side effect free practice.

Self Medicating with Meditation

Now, to be sure, there’s no rule in life that you can’t be a person prone to anxiety because of a busted body chemistry. You might get stressed about your clothing being just slightly less mauve than it had been in your memory, and break down crying about it and other matters of similar scale. That would be a fair signal that we need something more strong than “getting your act together”. A side effect of a heightened likelihood of gaining some nutty beliefs might not be the worst trade off, just as amnesia and sleepiness might be reasonable tradeoffs to start taking Xanax. Ultimately, that’s up to you to decide. But, just as you should be aware of the side effects of Xanax, before you decide to start taking it, you should be aware of what meditation is, how it works, and what effects that could produce. And particularly if that could help to guide you away from using it in a way that would be more likely to produce those effects.

As example, most people who I have encountered who seemed to have regular issues with anxiety seemed to have a lot of pent-up energy and overly active mind. Maybe they have some task they need to do and they get so fixated on it that the scale inflates and their need to perform it perfectly becomes too strong. It’s simply impossible to ever, adequately succeed at a task if it’s 10000 times more imposing than in reality and only sheer and pure perfection could ever be a sufficient resolution!

From medical literature a commonly recommended suggestion for correcting stress is exercise. Exercise helps to divert the mind, release pent up energy, and also rewards you with endorphins. And, certainly, we are far less active in modern day than our ancestors. Just as it would, generally, be better to do research if you’re incapable of accomplishing a task; if you’re inflating the task because you have too much pent up energy, then the right answer for many would be too let it go in the gym.

But for our example let’s say that, even with exercise, you still have too much of an issue with fixating and being unable to focus on your tasks. You would prefer to try meditation rather than moving on to Ritalin or some other drug.

If you understand that the source of your anxiety is fixation and a need to be perfect, rather than your body having a mistuned regulation of Cortisol (the stress hormone), you might choose to use the power of meditation to consciously adjust yourself to be less fixated and less obsessed with perfection, rather than just trying to seek a relaxed, endorphin-filled state of transcendental bliss.

If your issue is high, unexplainable Cortisol then, sure, go ahead and start doping with meditation-induced endorphins as the need takes you. I wouldn’t say otherwise.

Meditation should be considered along with its risks, just as it would be with any treatment, and its use should be optimized for the task at hand, in the minimal dosage.

And yet many successful people engage in meditation, because it works for them to reduce the anxiety creating vicious circles in their thinking. And “spend our time doing research to figure out how to succeed at our project” isn’t a concrete suggestion, it’s dangerously close to being “instead we should just do a thing that works”.

Like any treatment or intervention it’s important to consider side effects, but how many people who are recommended meditation by doctors, their therapist or friends end up dedicating their lives to mastering yogic flying? Your post seems like a lot like shouting about the rarer side effects of a medication. For instance few people really think about how the drug information for their nasal spray lists getting a hole in their septum before they decide to do the pretty safe and effective treatment for allergies their doctor recomends.

Okay, I realize this is ironic given the thread I just started about the psychological risks of meditation, but you are making a number of unsupported claims here.

Also, you seem to think meditation is either religious or transcendental and that it must be associated with, as you put it, “nutty” beliefs. For many people it’s not something you believe, it’s just something you do. No religion required.

By your logic, this superior culture must have been due to Christian prayer, right?

Do you have evidence that meditation in the laity causes people to abandon personal responsibility?

No, I would not expect that at all. Given what else you’ve written about India, are you just mocking Indian culture and blaming it on meditation? You realize meditation is practiced in tons of countries and cultures, don’t you? And that its purpose and effects vary dramatically depending on context, type of meditation, duration, etc? I admit this is the first time I’ve ever seen institutional oppression blamed on meditation.

Do you believe therapists teach their clients to believe they can fly? No. It’s “pay attention to your breath” and “notice your thoughts” and other helpful but innocuous practices. Anyone who teaches a client that meditation will give them magic powers is a quack.

Exercise would be a wonderful choice. I’d argue that it does everything meditation does and more. Do you know how difficult it is to get clients to exercise?

Anxiety is not either a distressing thought pattern or a biological phenomenon, it’s both. It’s a continuous feedback loop.

You seem to be using a very narrow definition of meditation and assuming that very specific kind of meditation is the default recommendation for clients with mental health disturbances. While there will always be quacks, my experience with mindfulness practice in evidence based psychotherapy tells me that your woo definition is really out of line with present-day psychological practice.

Be aware of the risks, yes - there seem to be some very real ones, especially if you meditate more than 30 minutes per day. But don’t invent risks out of whole cloth.

Best to insist on being taught flying skills first, to allow fast escape from attempted fondlers.

An acknowledged master of yogic flying is Jeffrey Smith, who demonstrated his technique at a news conference.

Master Cecil was right, as usual: there are loads of cool people here, plus a few total dipsticks. A large segment of the populace behaves in crazy ways that beggar belief? My my, I didn’t notice that, and I lived there decades. I was too busy meditating, perhaps.

I meditate off and on. It’s easy to get out of habit. When I am at my best, is when I meditate twice a day for about 15 minutes each time. While I am religious, I do not meditate for spiritual or religious purposes. When I meditate regularly, I find myself less stressed, and I am not a very stressful person. I also find I feel more rested and have more energy, and also more happy.

ETA: I’ve never tried to fly nor have I been fondled while meditating. Mainly because I meditate at home.

Meditation need be nothing more complicated than a relaxation or anxiety-reduction technique. With that perspective, there nothing dangerous about it.

Modhat on: I’m closing this thread for now, it will probably stay closed. Parts like I quoted below are pretty much a broad-brush attack the people of India. It seems like it is bordering on hate speech.

Also this entire Op appears to be more bloggy rant than a Debate of any sort.

I’m not sure what to do with this mess, but it will be further reviewed tomorrow.

@raventhief & @Hari_Seldon requesting you both review this mess when you get a chance.