Meditation can be a bad trip for some. PSA from a mindfulness teacher & researcher.

Heatstroke can also be a disorienting trip through the desert or anywhere else.

The video has a click bait title so my initial impression was negative and set me up to dislike it. I was reading comments and added a couple while listening to it. I continued listening and some valuable points were made by Professor Willoughby Britton.

• Why do so many meditators want to Kill this Neuroscientist?, Scott Carney (Youtube). After Professor Willoughby Britton’s “…study on the "Varieties of Contemplative Experience" came out and she documented how one out of every ten people who start meditating have a clinically significant negative side effects,” she got a lot of negative email and comments on her videos. It has been traumatic for her and she doesn’t make a lot of money out of sharing these unwelcome findings.

The problem with meditation, mindfulness, any other self help strategies can be overhype, over expecting miraculous change with little effort . . . and there are people who really want to get some money from you . . . and on an ongoing basis too probably.

The adverse effects being discussed include a few types of issues. As someone who has visited the dark side of mental illness, and returned, I feel qualified to speak about the topic and even needed. Dietetics is involved too, so let's press forward.

Adverse possibilities of meditation or mindfulness practice, as I think of them, not necessarily exactly what the video said — and note that these same adverse possibilities can happen with any other service provider or sales pitch-y product:

1. Disappointment after having believed the myth that this might be a quick fix or total turn around for your life.

2. Developing a Transference attachment to a charming teacher or coach/therapist that sets up codependence in the person and an ongoing need to see that coach (and keep giving them money and keep listening to their goals and theories about your life).

3. Spending money you don't have on trainings, retreats, or ongoing sessions with a practitioner. Ideally mindfulness I'd just something you do throughout your day, about any and everything - paying more attention to good and bad. Example, I was thinking 🤔, looking up, and noticed spots, like pomegranate juice spray, on the ceiling. So I get a paper towel with a little bleach and a chair and wipe them off. Now closer to the ceiling, I see that I have now made a white area amongst a grungy off white. So I keep wiping and realize the whole ceiling needs to be washed. And the walls. Is that an adverse effect of mindfulness? Or an adverse effect of years without my mom being as dedicated a housekeeper as she had been during my youth? Yes, I was taught how to wash walls and ceilings and how to repaint them every few years or so.

Retreats in more detail: Professor Britton is talking about some intense ‘meditation’ practices or retreats which I do not have experience with. An all day meditation retreat sounds a little like torture to me and I would have no interest in trying that. I have learned sitting meditation and tried it s few times, even having a major break through about my early childhood trauma, but sitting still makes my body hurt. I just really don't like it and prefer walking meditation or just doing the dishes in a relaxed state. In the video one of the ‘adverse effects’ of meditation was described as some participants had felt a little too disoriented after an all day retreat to drive home immediately and had walked around for a little while first. Prof. Britton made this sound as if it was really bad and was a total surprise to get to hear later from them, as the teacher of that retreat.

Dietitian and sensible person sounding in - duh, 🙄, yes, it is extremely likely that if you spend a bunch of time focused on altering your mental state, then your mental state will be altered, and will likely remain so for a little while afterwards.

Generally I have seen it advised to drink extra water to help clear lymph after meditating and to give yourself at least a few minutes before getting back to busy world activities. I am surprised that a mindfulness teacher and researcher wouldn't have warned her students or built a half hour cool down/wake up with tea and snacks at the end of her all day retreat.

The video discussion gets into even more extreme week long events or preparing for it with a story of Tim Fenriss going overboard with fasting and psychedelic drug use and meditation. He had a bad enough time that he had been speaking out in caution about not mixing these powerful methods, or overusing them. Brava and learning things through hard way is too often my method too

4. Bad trips - meditation practice has led some people into worse mental health or an example was given about a therapist’s comment about the mental ghosts being real led to a year of nightmares for someone. Bad stuff or powerful stuff is likely to surface with deeper relaxation and a quiet listening mind. Having a good therapist to talk to can help. Dwelling on it doesn't really though and the best strategy I have seen for the really bad stuff of memories is to mentally fix it up and stick it on a back shelf. Let it collect mental dust, done with that. Yes, it was bad, yes you gained some knowledge and resilience, now if the box leaks a bit, just pack it up, shut the lid again, move on with your life. That old stuff is just old now.

5. Suicides have happened - and psychiatric drugs are associated with numerous mass murders but we aren't hearing about that either, are we? The speaker points out that some of these adverse effects are well known among meditation practitioners but it isn't talked about because it would be bad for business - and that is so bad,….as if it is rare instead of standard in the medical industry to cover up adverse reactions.

   1. And anything that gobs of people try is going to include some troubled people trying it too, and sadly some of them may self harm no matter what else happened in their life.

   2. Personally, I am glad to have survived histamine excess. The mental messaging becomes horrible — the feeling is that the world would be better off without you. It would be helpful to end your own life. I have seen that same thought written by other survivors. It is a really powerfully strong thought but I resisted it. And it happens daily, but in fluctuating amounts, random symptoms because foods vary in histamine content. Many common favorite foods have histamine so it is hard to avoid. Lots of things have to be avoided.

6. Sleeping less, needing less sleep, may be common for long-term meditators anc the Buddhist community knew that. The researcher has done her dissertation on the benefits of meditation for sleep and it turned out to be a wrong hypothesis and she didn't publish initially. This seems like a question that needs more clarification - needing less sleep and functioning fine would not be an adverse effect in my opinion. Insomnia when you do want to go to sleep would be adverse. The researcher used the word insomnia. Her description of what she was told from the meditating community was ~ less sleep is common. When I am feeling fit, 6 hours can feel adequate and when my health is weird at times, 12 hours seems like what I have to have in order to function but that might have been mild CoV too, or autoimmune flare-up. The salicylate excess makes me want to lay down to slow the racing heart but I don't tend to sleep right away.

The researcher, Prof. Britton, seems to want western style definitiveness about subjects that are undefinable. What is the definition of “kundalini”? My impression was that kundalini is just another word for the energy flow within our body. The researcher calls it a garbage term like fibromyalgia that is used to label anything else that is not well understood (suggesting she doesn't understand fibromyalgia either). The term was used to describe reactions to meditation that she was asking about. “People were becoming aware of their Kundalini.”

To someone who has never experienced snow, a snow cone might seem like snow. But it isn't really like snow or not like all variations of snow, for which is the Inuit people have different words for… Words are useful but also have limitations. The researcher has gotten the online abuse that anyone with a controversial point to make gets these days and it is psychologically difficult to cope with. She does make it clear that the extremes of a truly bad experience or a life changing positive one are both less likely to occur with the practice of meditation or mindfulness than just feeling more relaxed as a result.

Mindfulness while eating is something I had to work on to stop emotional overeating. I had to become more aware of both the act of eating and what I was eating, but also in combination with why am I eating right now. To help stop myself from the emotional eating, initially I literally would spit out a mouthful of good as soon as I noticed that I was eating out of anger or a desire for comfort instead of true hunger. Then I would rinse my mouth to get rid of any lingering sweet or saltiness that tends to encourage you to eat more.

Mindfulness or meditation can be helpful tools to use on a journey towards more self awareness and change, but it isn't a magic wand that is likely to turn you into a frog or a princess.

I still slip up on emotional overeating at times. But less often and I climb out again sooner. Grieving my father's loss had me there again but I have been doing better.

Mindfulness, meditation and other therapy or coaching may dredge up the toads, frogs, or dragons in your memories and you may not want to go in there too deep without a caring friend and weekend to process it better before having to return to a busy schedule. Ideally I would think a retreat would include some unwinding time, not just introspection.

Brooding is not growth. Meditation and mindfulness teaches us to not judge outlet thoughts, just observe them and let them pass by. Low serotonin may promote repetitive thought. “Chemical imbalance” became a negative, wrong theory of psychiatry, but mental effects can occur with shifts in the balance of our neurotransmitters. It would be good to look at areas of study from an observer point of view - somethings may have value and others less, some things can be more positive and others negative, and both are part of life.

Mindfulness teaches us acceptance of what is, gratitude for the beauty and joy, and that we are interconnected with all else. Our actions have impact through the ripple effect (life is a mystery) and putting out more positivity adds more positive ripples to the world.

Life isn't easy but we can focus more on the good 😊 and less on the bad 😔. And if you really can't seem to make that shift, then you may have physical issues affecting your mental wellness. Many nutrient deficiencies can affect mood, histamine excess and salicylate excess can cause severe mental effects in addition to physical symptoms and it turns out that liver disease is associated with anger. Hmmm 🤔🙄😕 sorry for my cranky posts.

The discussion of lengthy meditation retreats leaving people feeling disoriented reminded me of an old post I wrote about the song “A Horse by No Name”. A lengthy experience might lead to less fluid intake or less food or an unsafe fast. Lack of sodium or the other electrolytes can cause disorientation and mood changes.

Any type of event held for people needs to take a variety of health needs into account and that includes proper hydration with adequate salt, magnesium and potassium replenishment, especially if sweating is involved from a sauna, hot day, overcrowded room, increase in exercise, etcetera - stuff can happen, plan accordingly.

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'The Horse With No Name' might have been called Heatstroke.

transcendingsquare.com, June 14, 2014

A popular song from the 70's is a good reminder to pack salty snacks and plenty of water when travelling. The song "A Horse With No Name," was written by Dewey Bunnell at age 19, and performed as one of the three members of the musical group called America, (1972). He describes it as a travelogue song about the deserts he and his family travelled through during his childhood. The artist adds that he was also trying to capture the feeling of the desert portrayed in a painting by Salvador Dali and "the strange horse" pictured in a piece of metamorphosis art by M. C. Escher.  The artwork can be seen with the full article: [1] [lyrics]

1. "A Horse With No Name" -What Does That Mean?, Miss Cellania, Oct. 3, 2013.

The song later became associated with ‘horse’ as slang for heroin in some circles. To me it seemed like a song about heatstroke and disorientation in the desert.

The song has always stood out in my memory because of the vivid descriptions of wandering lost and hot in the desert for at least nine days - he let the nameless horse go after nine days. Heatstroke can cause hallucinations. I always assumed that the song was about a friendly imaginary horse that was released when the author found himself. Some cultures have rites of passage into adulthood or for spiritual reasons that include times spent alone while fasting (not eating). The person on a vision quest might go off into the wilderness without food or water in the hopes of receiving visions that might help guide them in their future. Hopefully most of them survived the fasting process and had a future to enjoy. The body can survive without food longer than without water but add extreme dry desert heat and visions of nameless horses might seem pretty tame.

PS Don't leave your child or pet alone in a locked vehicle because it can heat up quickly. [2] And they might write a pop song about the experience later in life . . . or they might feel sick.

And if you have to work (or play) in extreme heat than have adequate water throughout your work day. [3] A salty snack might help replace lost electrolytes if sweating is excessive.

2. Take Action to Prevent Heatstroke, press release and other resources: (safekids.org)

3. Heatstress, (cdc.gov)

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Disclaimer: This information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use and is not intended to provide individual health care guidance.