When Meditation Causes Harm, with Willoughby Britton & Jared Lindahl

Today I sit down with Willoughby Britton and Jared Lindahl, the interdisciplinary team from Brown University that is responsible for the “Varieties of Contemplative Experience” study on the challenges and adverse effects of meditation. We talk about the design, findings, and outcomes of the study, and how it opened up a new field of interdisciplinary investigation. Along the way we ask: if someone suffers harm from practicing meditation, whose fault is it? What is the ultimate cause? And who gets to interpret the experience?

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Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Complete Varieties of Contemplative Experience study publications list
• Willoughby on the Mind & Life Podcast
• Willoughby & Jared on The Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness Podcast
• “The Varieties of Contemplative Experience: A Mixed-Methods Study of Meditation-Related Challenges in Western Buddhists” (2017)
• “The Roles and Impacts of Worldviews on the Onset and Trajectory of Meditation-Related Challenges” (2022)
• “The Teacher Matters: The Role and Impact of Meditation Teachers in the Trajectories of Western Buddhist Meditators Experiencing Meditation-Related Challenges” (2025)
• “Progress or Pathology? Differential Diagnosis and Intervention Criteria for Meditation-Related Challenges: Perspectives from Buddhist Meditation Teachers and Practitioners.”
• CheetahHouse.org

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Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. www.piercesalguero.com.

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