As a kid, I learned to meditate from animals first, then from books. Western Mysticism was one of my main areas of focus after leaving traditional school at age 14. And my study of meditation greatly intensified during my screwy high school experience. By my mid twenties, I had an intense meditation practice which I credit with helping me psychologically manage the onset of cluster headaches and other intense challenges I faced at that time.
For years, I meditated for a minimum of 2 hours a day. During some periods, this was increased to 4 or more hours a day. This practice had many benefits. It taught me a great deal about my consciousness and the nature of being present. But it was never what I'd call fun. And sometimes, it was downright disturbing.
Today I ran across an interesting post by a longtime teacher of mindfulness meditation named Dan Lawton. At a meditation retreat, Lawton had an extremely negative experience that shifted his perspective on his practice. Here's a quote from the post:
What happened to me that night may sound exotic, bizarre, psychotic and unusual, but it’s actually more common and predictable than many people think. As meditation practices have exploded in popularity in the West, they have brought with them an array of adverse experiences far beyond the typically-billed benefits of lower stress, decreased anxiety and reduced pain. The terrain of fractured, disruptive and altered states of consciousness has often been explored in Buddhist teachings through the centuries, but when these practices made their journey into Western culture, a sufficient understanding of the downsides of meditation was lost in transit.
This experience apparently upended Lawton's life, filling his everyday experiences with unpleasant sensations and problematic perceptions. In trying to make sense of what had happened to him, he sought the counsel of Willoughby Britton, who runs Cheetah House, which helps people who have had adverse experiences while meditating. A study coauthored by Britton found 59 challenging or distressing outcomes of meditation that aren't usually talked about by Western meditation practitioners.
Britton explained to me that it’s likely that my meditation practice, specifically the constant attention directed toward the sensations of the body, may have increased the activation and size of a part of the brain called the insula cortex. “Activation of the insula cortex is related to systemic arousal,” she said. “If you keep amping up your body awareness, there is a point where it becomes too much and the body tries to limit excessive arousal by shutting down the limbic system. That’s why you have an oscillation between intense fear and dissociation.” She suggested I try a trauma therapy called Somatic Experiencing.
The term Somatic Experiencing was only vaguely familiar, so I looked it up. On the website of Somatic Experiencing International, I found this explanation:
Dr. Levine was inspired to study stress on the animal nervous system when he realized that animals are constantly under threat of death, yet show no symptoms of trauma. What he discovered was that trauma has to do with the third survival response to perceived life threat, which is freeze. When fight and flight are not options, we freeze and immobilize, like “playing dead.” This makes us less of a target. However, this reaction is time-sensitive, in other words, it needs to run its course, and the massive energy that was prepared for fight or flight gets discharged, through shakes and trembling. If the immobility phase doesn’t complete, then that charge stays trapped, and, from the body’s perspective, it is still under threat. The Somatic Experiencing method works to release this stored energy and turn off this threat alarm that causes severe dysregulation and dissociation. SE helps people understand this body response to trauma and work through a “body first” approach to healing.
All of this has fascinating implications. The basic idea that meditation can be traumatic seems obvious, yet I've rarely heard this talked about, except quietly among experienced practitioners. Now I'm thinking about acutely unpleasant moments in my own meditation history, wondering whether I was merely playing dead in the face of threatening material.
My meditations these days aren't at all intense. Material comes to mind and then dissipates while I observe it. The process is therapeutic, not traumatic. But it seems important to recognize the traumatic potential of intense meditation. It would've been nice if those books I started reading when I was a teenager had included warning labels with the meditation techniques they taught.
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