Unexplainable Lost on the road to enlightenment
Nov 19, 2025
Willoughby Britton, an associate professor studying meditation's psychological effects, and Pierce Salguero, a professor of Asian history and health humanities, explore the darker side of meditation. They discuss unexpected lab findings showing meditation may increase cortical arousal and recount alarming experiences like psychosis and cognitive loss reported by practitioners. Salguero connects these challenges to historical texts, revealing that warnings about meditation difficulties have existed for centuries. They emphasize the importance of recognizing risks and balancing practices.
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Meditation Can Increase Brain Arousal
- Willoughby found that a meditation group had signs of increased cortical arousal and less deep sleep compared with controls.
- She originally withheld the study because the results contradicted prevailing beliefs that meditation universally improves sleep.
Psychotic Episodes After Retreats
- Willoughby Britton encountered two people who became psychotic after meditation retreats while working in an inpatient psychiatric hospital.
- Those cases prompted her to investigate meditation-related harms formally because they showed severe clinical outcomes tied to practice intensity.
Wide Range Of Meditation Harms Reported
- Willoughby Britton's qualitative study cataloged diverse meditation-related symptoms from about 100 Western Buddhist practitioners.
- Symptoms ranged from visual phenomena and convulsions to depersonalization, cognitive deficits, and suicidal ideation, complicating simple benefit-focused narratives.
