Dear Lighthouse Trails:
This article came up in a feed, and I thought it might be a useful reminder to your readers. It’s a 2017 shallow academic re-run of what LHT has devotedly and thoroughly covered in depth for years!
I imagine a title like:
“Study Names 59 Categories of Unexpected and Unwanted Side Effects Of Meditation”
This is the mainstream article that covered it in 2017:
“Meditation can bring about a wide variety of thoughts and emotions—some are peaceful, others are not.”
Key Quote: “The researchers identified 59 kinds of unexpected or unwanted experiences, which they classified into seven domains: cognitive, perceptual, affective (related to moods), somatic, conative (related to motivation), sense of self, and social. Among the experiences described to them were feelings of anxiety and fear, involuntary twitching, insomnia, a sense of complete detachment from one’s emotions, hypersensitivity to light or sound, distortion in time and space, nausea, hallucinations, irritability, and the re-experiencing of past traumas. The associated levels of distress and impairment ranged from “mild and transient to severe and lasting,” according to the study.”
This is the original study (2017):
“The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists”
A key Quote: “The vast majority (88%) of participants reported that challenging or difficult meditation experiences bled over into daily life or had an impact on their life beyond a meditation retreat or beyond a formal practice session. The term “symptoms” is used here to denote the subset of experiences that were experienced as challenging, difficult or functionally impairing. Fig 1 shows the duration of symptoms and their associated impairment. The median duration of symptoms was 1–3 years, ranging from a few days to more than 10 years. While 10% reported minimal impairment, impairment tended to mirror symptom duration, lasting from days to more than a decade. The majority of the sample (73%) indicated moderate to severe impairment in at least one domain, with 17% reporting suicidality, and 17% requiring inpatient hospitalization.”
BLESSINGS,
E.P.
(photo from bigstockphoto.com; used with permission)
Related Information:
BOOKLET: Meditation! Pathway to Wellness or Doorway to the Occult? (If you are practicing meditation of any form or know someone who is and would like a free copy of this booklet to share with that person, please send us your name and mailing address to editors@lighthousetrails.com. Your information will be kept confidential.
That is rather dumb. John you made me laugh out loud! I have been sleeping like that myself and I just never knew it was ‘the easiest pose’. It’s almost as though someone is mocking us. He He
Anne,
There’s a (dying) yoga position for any problem, didn’t you know?
Who wants to meditate upon the Creator of everything’s Word? That is so almost 10,000 years ago. What does He know, anyway? He (or she, or whatever), is not in the Me-Too movement.
By the way, I got myself into this very difficult yoga pose and have been in it for most of my life; maybe I’m kidding and maybe I’m being sarcastic (oh, no!).
This is it (don’t try it; just read and laugh and warn):
https://blog.niceday.app/en/this-is-by-far-the-most-challenging-yoga-pose/
No wonder it seems everyone is acting differently. When one realizes that in every area of life today ‘meditation’ is used in all programs in every agency, governments, hospitals, schools, work places, Dr. offices, etc., and even church for babies to the elderly, from birth to nursing homes to hospice. The cure for ailing sinful souls without of course the Bible which is the place we all should go instead, but we are not allowed to use it for it has been banned! Even in church, we have fleshly cures and programs for what should be repentance and or separation in a ‘judge not’ society. 1 John 1:6-10