Background Information

Meditation is widely associated with clarity, calm, and emotional regulation—but this view, though popular, is incomplete. Historical Buddhist texts and Christian contemplative writings have long described meditative experiences that are not purely blissful, but instead disorienting, painful, or even destabilizing. This study aims to recover those neglected accounts, offering a richer, more complex view of what can happen on the path of contemplative practice.

The authors - an interdisciplinary team of psychologists, neuroscientists, and religious studies scholars - sought to document not just the nature of these difficult experiences, but also how practitioners interpret, endure, and integrate them. Their work offers a vital counterbalance to the wellness narrative that too often treats meditation as a benign, universally beneficial technique.

What They Did

The researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 60 experienced Western Buddhist practitioners, spanning the Theravāda, Zen, and Tibetan traditions. All participants reported having experienced meditation-related challenges that were unexpected, distressing, or functionally impairing. The team also interviewed 32 meditation teachers and clinicians to gather second-person accounts and expert interpretations.

Using qualitative coding and thematic analysis, they categorized 59 distinct types of meditation-related difficulties across seven domains: cognitive, perceptual, affective, somatic, conative, sense of self, and social. In addition, they identified 26 factors that influenced how practitioners experienced, interpreted, and coped with these challenges.

One Big Result

The single most important finding is that challenging meditation-related experiences are both common and extremely diverse, occurring across multiple psychological and somatic dimensions—even in highly experienced meditators with over 10,000 hours of practice.

These included:

1. Cognitive: Including changes in worldview, delusions, hallucinations
2. Perceptual: Hypersensitivity, visual/auditory hallucinations, distortions
3. Affective: Emotional lability, fear, anxiety, panic, depression, suicidality
4. Somatic: Body pain, pressure, temperature dysregulation, sleep changes
5. Conative: Changes in motivation, dysregulated arousal
6. Sense of Self: Self-disturbance, dissociation, Depersonalization Depersonalization is a dissociative experience characterized by feelings of detachment from one’s self, body, or mental processes. Individuals experiencing depersonalization may feel like an outside observer of their thoughts, feelings, or body, or they may feel as if they’re in a dream. It can occur as a temporary response to stress, as a symptom of psychiatric disorders, or as a feature of certain meditation experiences.
   
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7. Social: Relationship disruptions, difficulty functioning in jobs/roles

Importantly, these effects weren’t limited to novices or those with pre-existing conditions. Even experienced meditators reported adverse effects, sometimes occurring after years of problem-free practice.

Miscellaneous Interesting Takeaways

Interpretive Frameworks Matter

Whether an experience was judged as pathological or transformative often depended on the interpretive lens available to the practitioner. For example, what might be seen as a psychotic break in a psychiatric setting could be framed as a “corruption of insight” or “nyam” in a Tibetan or Theravādin context. Practitioners who had access to traditional contemplative maps often felt less fear and confusion than those without such frameworks.

For a specific examination of depersonalization experiences in meditation contexts, see Castillo’s (1990) work highlighting how interpretive frameworks influence whether practitioners experience depersonalization as distressing or as a positive state of calm awareness.

Duration and Severity

The duration of these effects varied widely. While some lasted days or weeks, others persisted for months or even years. About 25% of participants reported symptoms that lasted longer than a month, with many describing long-term disruptions to work, relationships, and mental health.

Not Just the Vulnerable

Contrary to common assumptions, these difficulties did not only affect beginners or those with preexisting mental health conditions. A full quarter of the sample had practiced for over a decade before encountering major challenges.

Key Influencing Factors

The study identified 26 categories of factors that shaped the nature and trajectory of the difficulties. These included:

• Practitioner-level: personality traits, trauma history, motivations
• Practice-level: technique used, duration/intensity of retreat, improper application
• Relational: support from teachers and peers, community responses
• Health-related: diet, sleep, exercise, psychiatric care

Importantly, the same factor, for example silence on retreat, could be healing for some and destabilizing for others.

Final Reflection

This paper offers a long-overdue correction to the myth that meditation is always safe or inherently therapeutic. It urges us to treat contemplative practice with the same nuanced respect we give to any powerful psychological intervention. Meditation is not always gentle—it can open us to transformation, but also to trauma.

Citation

Lindahl, J. R., Fisher, N. E., Cooper, D. J., Rosen, R. K., & Britton, W. B. (2017). The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists. PLOS ONE, 12(5), e0176239. 10.1371/journal.pone.0176239