By Amelia Faircloth
Mindfulness meditation has become increasingly popular in recent years, even serving as the basis for several popular apps, such as "Headspace" and "Calm," which are used by over 3 million people worldwide. The practice can help with depression, anxiety, and even chronic pain.
But Pierce Salguero, who teaches Asian history and religion at Penn State, Abington, says the public needs to know there can also be disturbing side effects.
Pierce Salguero, an associate professor of Asian history and religious studies at Penn State, Abington, visited UCSB to speak on the phenomenon known as meditation sickness. Photo courtesy of Penn State, Abington.
"Meditation isn't just Bamboo forests, dropping water, and all the other iconography of modern mindfulness," Salguero said in a recent UC Santa Barbara lecture hosted by the East Asia Center. "There are potential dark sides to this practice."
While researching his latest book, "A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine," Salguero began to notice a prevalence of meditation sickness, a phenomenon that occurs when meditation goes wrong.
Meditation sickness can produce symptoms such as depression, disassociation, psychotic breaks, and even physical pain.
"I had looked at a couple of texts in medieval China that referred to meditation sickness," Salguero said. "More recently, I started to hear about some of the contemporary research on the negative side effects of meditation."
An overlap in the fields of religion and medicine when it comes to meditation sickness inspired his recent talk, "Meditation Sickness and The Ethics of Buddhist Studies."
Salguero explored meditation sickness from both a modern biomedical approach and a traditional Buddhist perspective and said religion scholars have a role to play in educating the public on the potential risks of meditation practice.
References to meditation sickness have been around for centuries, appearing in medieval Chinese literature as early as 454 C.E. But it was not until recently that medical practitioners started to define what it is.
In the past couple of years, research that had primarily focused on the positive effects of meditation started to reveal the other side of the experience.
Salguero said research done in 2020 found that 67% to 73% of meditators experience what they call "unpleasant experiences." Another study in 2021 reported that 58% of meditators have "meditation-related adverse effects."
Since meditation sickness is not yet widely researched, definitions of "adverse effects" and "unpleasant experiences" vary from study to study. While one study may cite “depression” or “anxiety” as an adverse side effect, others may define adverse symptomatology as “suicidal behaviors” or “psychosis.” These discrepancies cause a variation in percentages.
But Salguero noticed something else: the clinical papers measure symptoms that makes sense in a biomedical framework but fail to account for the spiritual side that is part of Buddhist meditation theory.
“Some of the adverse effects include 'an altered sense of self and world,' 'auditory, visual hallucinations,' 'perceptual hypersensitivity' and 'out of body experiences.' Those are all listed as adverse effects whereas, in quite a few Buddhist traditions, these are the goals of meditation," Salguero said.
Penn State Asian history scholar Pierce Salguero used an image of a Buddhist carving split in two in his presentation. The picture represents the medical and spiritual divide on meditation sickness.
Labeling some of the goals of meditation as “adverse” caught the attention of traditionalist Buddhists who look to defend the practice of mindfulness. They counter that the dangers of mindfulness as presented in new clinical research are a “myth” and only happen to people who carry out their meditation incorrectly. This defense, however, is not rooted in Buddhist texts, Salguero said.
Some ancient Buddhist texts describe variations of meditation sickness very thoroughly. He cited a medieval Chinese text entitled the "Secret Essential Methods for Curing Meditation Sickness." Transcribed in 454 C.E, it describes what causes meditation sickness and how it can be prevented, but in a way that is deeply rooted in medieval Chinese tradition.
"These texts lay out the symptoms… [and] describe practices that are said to be able to resolve the issues or prevent them from happening in the first place," Salguero said. "But all of this, the symptomatology, the diagnosis, as well as the therapies, are all phrased in these difficult, archaic terms."
Even when translated into English, such texts are so steeped in the medieval Buddhist culture that they are inaccessible to the general public. Only those with an extensive religious studies background can decode texts of this sort, making them of little use to the millions of meditators worldwide practicing on their own or aided by an app, Salguero said.
As the scholarship around meditation sickness grows, Salguero hopes the work of religious studies scholars will provide a middle ground between the biomedical approach and the traditional spiritual approach.
Religious Studies scholars are in an interesting position, he says, because they can understand the traditional texts but are not bound by traditionalist practices. In other words, they can explain the symptomatology in a way that is accessible to the average meditator, yet still makes sense in the context of Buddhist practice.
“Are there people who potentially could be helped by my translation work if only I were to do it in a different way?” Salguero said.
He maintains that the more scholarship there is on meditation sickness, the better. Publication of data and research outlining the symptoms can serve as “a counterbalance to the mindfulness hype that we’ve all been experiencing for the last 10 years or more that has been presenting mindfulness as something that is strictly positive and great for everybody to do.”
Amelia Faircloth is a fourth-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in English. She is a Web and Social Media Intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.