Why do so many meditators want to silence this Neuroscientist [Willoughby Britton, Cheetah House]?
by Scott Carney
Scott Carney Investigates
Jan 4, 2024
When Willoughby Britton set out to study the potential negative side effects of meditation she never expected that the community would want to hound her out of her job. But that's what happened after her 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. Now she has a folder with 5000 threats from people all around the world who want to stop her from reporting the truth.
Transcript
0:00
hello thank you so much for being here at Scott Carney investigates I am so incredibly excited to have Professor
0:07
Willoughby Britain on the show today you know I first met Willoughby I think it
0:13
was about 10 years ago when I was working on this book called The Enlightenment trap about how intense
0:20
meditative experiences can have these really really
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radically um dangerous side effects that really no one wants to talk about and was scouring the world uh of Academia
0:34
looking for people who knew something about you know the Dark Side of meditation and you can find thousands
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maybe hundreds of thousands of articles about all the ways that meditation can make you better and healthier and
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awesome in a number of ways but what is missing mostly from the scientific
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literature and the clinical literature out there is how these things can also go horribly wrong wrong or at least just
1:00
even just a little bit wrong it seems like there's a taboo almost in talking about the downsides of meditation so
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this conversation that we're going to have today explores this idea of spirituality
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and all of its complexity and all of its richness we're not saying that meditation is bad by nature but we do
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want to paint a full picture and Willoughby is really the leader in this
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field in the world uh at least for this podcast and she is also the director of
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a place called cheetah house uh at Brown University where she talks with people
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she's she's a a LIC you're a licensed therapist right Willoughby clinical psychologist yeah clinical psychologist
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where where people who've had these hard experiences in Med their meditative
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Journeys um there are only a few places that that are that really specializes and cheetah house is one of those places
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so if you are somebody who's you know gone very deep in your meditations and something is not sitting with you will
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it be is really the person to at least talk to you or at least open the journey
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for for to give you the resources um to sort of understand what you might be
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going through so without further Ado willby thank you so much for being here I really really appreciate it it really
2:24
has been quite some time since I wrote The Enlightenment trap uh you know
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remember just coming to your your house uh cheetah house at Brown and just having this like really long all like I
2:37
think we talked for like four or five hours uh into the night uh about you
2:43
know something that's really really difficult because I think we both got into meditation because we saw something really really valuable in it uh but
2:52
there's also this dark side so maybe you could just tell me why people are so
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hesitant to even broach the the the possibility that there is a dark side of
3:02
meditation maybe we could Define what that dark side might be as well okay
3:08
well maybe I should maybe I should back up and and tell kind of how I how I got
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interested in this topic um I mean the first I sort of stumbled into this topic
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really I was also like most meditation researchers a meditation Enthusiast and
3:29
evangelist and promoter but when I did my dissertation study which was looking
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at the effects of meditation on sleep as measured by brain wavves in a lab
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um you know thinking without without any hesitation that meditation was going to
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improve sleep when I got the data back it basically caused cortical arousal you
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know insomnia in everyone and um in everyone
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well in in the med meditation group you know as a whole more than the on average you know
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significantly higher than the control group who didn't meditate so um and then
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when I I I didn't I didn't so I'm I am guilty
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of this thing that you're talking about already like I didn't publish that data because I was like okay this is the
4:22
wrong answer it's not promoting meditation um so I won't I won't publish
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it um and then you know during that time that I wasn't publishing it I went on a Meditation Retreat and I sort of was
4:34
telling this teacher about these findings and she kind of chastised me and said you know I don't know why all
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you clinical psychologists are trying to make meditation into a relaxation technique everyone knows if you meditate
4:47
enough you stop sleeping and so I thought okay well one
4:54
you know what are what are the assumptions that we're making
5:00
as researchers and often clinical clinically oriented Health Care
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Providers when we use meditation as a as sort of a health promotion
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device are we missing something are we kind of making assumptions because it really wasn't designed for that
5:20
initially at least in Buddhist practices um it had a little bit of a different or
5:25
a lot of a different you know origin story than that for health benefits so that was one
5:32
question then the second question was you know what else do meditation teachers know that they're not telling
5:38
researchers yeah so that was in 2006 and then in 2007 I I transferred to Brown
5:45
from the University of Arizona to do my clinical uh internship which is a you know a residency and my placement is at
5:54
Butler Hospital which is a inpatient Psychiatric Hospital in Providence
6:00
and during that onee residency there were two yogis who came off retreat in
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western Mass completely psychotic wow so I was like wow two yeah
6:13
go ahead what I'm I'm I'm gonna interrupt you but we're going to get right back into this I'm just thinking is that when you said you know what else
6:21
are these meditation teachers not telling us or that we're the message that we're not getting it's sort of like
6:26
that's the the fantasy though right the fantasy is that when you learn meditation you will find these other
6:32
secrets that the meditation teachers don't let you in on and that's one of the draws of meditation that you can go
6:38
deeper and deeper and deeper but what you're saying is yeah this is like an Open Secret and why and like and like
6:44
our it's our fantasy of meditation which is so proud and if you could just tell
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me what tradition of person were you talking to because you when we say meditation obviously there's thousands
6:56
of techniques I don't know like a bunch of techniques yeah I mean I I I have a
7:01
general policy to be very ambiguous about the who's of my stories but I will
7:07
just say that this is like these are I'm I practiced in you know the Western
7:12
Insight tradition which is Loosely tied with terraa
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Buddhism okay um so Western Insight teacher um that's who we're talking
7:24
about so yeah so I had two psychotic yogis meditators um at my impatient
7:30
psychiatric hospital and I went back to the same teacher and was like explained
7:35
what I saw I'm like have you ever seen this before and I I just remember that I
7:41
never got a verbal answer I just got this look that was kind of like oh
7:48
oh really like it was like yeah it was kind of like yeah we know about that
7:55
and I wish you hadn't asked kind of thing that's wait and okay go on wait sorry I was
8:03
interrupt so of course I'm like whoa there's a story here I mean if I had been a journalist I would have been like
8:09
okay like this is something so that conversation or that that sort of series
8:16
of events which took a couple years actually became the beginning of the varieties of contemplative experience
8:23
study which was which was basically like just going to different meditation centers I was already like that that
8:29
discussion was basically started to be the first interview you just go to meditation centers right you talk to the
8:35
teachers that have been there and teaching there for decades and you ask them like what kind of challenges have
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you observed in your students what do you make of them how do you interpret them and then what do you
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do about it you know what very practically like what's what's the like response and so that was why would you
8:54
say why would you say that he didn't want you to ask that question
9:00
well another another teacher this that was a woman by the way and um but another teacher that I talked to also a
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very famous Dharma teacher both have written many books um when I went to
9:12
talk to this other teacher about various things I was seeing
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um that teacher also looked not surprised and like kind of nodding and looking almost bored by the like this
9:25
array of symptoms that I was describing and I was like you know about this like
9:31
how come you know you've written all these Dharma books like How come you didn't publish this in any of your books
9:37
and he was like well it's not good advertising oh my God this is like the
9:43
problem in the world will be we want to be able to go into esoteric traditions
9:48
and say there's wisdom there that we can collect and yet as we do that as sort of Western professionals we're also aware
9:55
of this Spectre of people saying that's all woo woo that's all crazy stuff and so we feel this desire to sort of like
10:03
over boost the and I'm saying we in a sort of more Collective way right we
10:08
westerners who are into meditation but we want to like sort of protect that thing that we're going to By ignoring
10:16
some of the dangers that that go with it it seems like a pattern that's over and over again I don't know if you've seen what's been going on with whm Hoff and I
10:22
but there's all these deaths that now I'm talking about associated with the Wim Hoff method and the world is so
10:27
upset that I'm bringing this out because they're like no but this is so good the cold water and the breath work save
10:35
everything yeah I mean I think the question that you're asking which is why are people being so resistant to
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this after you know almost 20 years of doing this research and getting like
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extreme push back which I think is very odd an odd thing to do like to talk
10:53
about you know risks and benefits of any treatment like that should just be like
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science I mean that's just part of what you do the fact that we're getting such strong push back that itself is so
11:07
interesting to me that now it's become a research question well why are people pushing back so much because if you say
11:14
like you know cognitive behavioral therapy has side effects right obviously it does or or
11:22
Prozac you know they're like yep they do and like we have this long list of of
11:27
drug effects and they're required to list them on every single package and like so what it doesn't deter people
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from taking it my research is not going to deter the millions and millions and millions of people meditating right it's
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just going to help them do it in a more informed way so so yeah so what is that
11:46
about and so I think there are you know lots of different possible answers one
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of them the most obvious one is financial conflict of interest so a
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number of people are making money off of their meditation
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products um and you know this Behavior like a brand defense kind of strategy
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all of the same strategies that you would find in a brand defense um strategy you know Playbook
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are being used in the meditation industry so I'm seeing um you know it's
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not it's not the meditation it's the user it's a user error or it's um you
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know it's a pre-existing condition trying to De trying to unlink the the harm with the product you
12:43
know saying that the harm is actually a benefit like back way back if you go back into big tobacco they actually said
12:49
that coughing was good for people because I mean they would they would have sold cancer as being good for
12:56
people if they could they said coughing was good for people because it would help like bring up stuff you know which is exactly the same thing we're hearing
13:03
in the meditation industry like oh all these bad things you know negative experiences traumatic memories that are
13:09
getting flooded through your system well these are all good things because you're you know you're working out your your
13:15
trauma or your karma so I see so there there's actually a great book called um
13:21
industrial strength denial which goes through the the brand defense strategies
13:26
of all these different Industries including tobacco and big Pharma and the
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Auto industry and you know kind of classifies all these brand defense so so that's like one
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really um disheartening answer but also like seems to be pretty
13:45
accurate and then the other is just you know also a conflict of interest but not
13:51
necessarily Financial which is that when something has helped you and
13:57
you are relying on it to be kind of your Refuge um and your buffer to you know
14:05
death anxiety and life existential doubt and crisis when
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somebody says oh that thing isn't perfect that becomes extremely threatening and people will lash out
14:18
like that's why I'm like why is this why is why are you lashing out with like a life or death kind of like survival
14:24
response at me you know like it doesn't immed why do you go immediately go into fight
14:31
or flight when basically you're you're saying like I am in control of my emotions and yet you you poke the thing
14:38
that they their tool and and all of that mental training seems to just go out the
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window well and also like you know Buddhists in particular are very kind of
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condescending or or you know on their high horse about being more compassionate than everyone else too and
14:57
so I was like well some Buddhists have a like plenty of aggression I show you my I have a
15:05
stalker uh stalkers and haters two separate folders with more than a
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thousand emails on them from people who just come after me and just like can't
15:16
can't hold back um I mean go look at my Dalai Lama quote like my Dalai Lama
15:23
interview when he when I gave my talk to him and it's like on YouTube and people can like comments
Dalai Lama Presentation: Mind and Life XXIV, by Dr. Willoughy Britton, Cheetah House, Mar 28, 2018. Dr. Willoughy Britton presents here research on meditation-related difficulties to His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the Mind and Life Dialogues XXIV " Latest Findings in Contemplative Neuroscience" 2012
oh my God wait what's
15:31
it say give me The quick summary because I I try not to read them because they actually do hurt my feelings by the way
15:37
everyone I do actually have feelings and I actually am a person like I'm not made of
15:42
titanium um I don't know I I I just read one that said something like this is a
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conversation between an ignorant lady me
15:53
and you know a wise blah blah blah like it's just like it's just like let's make it really really simplistic you know
16:00
right right I'm sure that was the lightest one as a a common perer of my
16:05
own internet comments um you know leave a comment in the video down below and you know you get so much there's so much
16:14
sort of out ofth box hate that exists there but rather than go down that path
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I want to ask you let's actually get get into like a little bit of that evidence what can you tell me what are the
16:25
symptoms of of what are some of these negative symptoms that you observe other than someone being admitted to Butler um
16:32
what what what might happen to somebody who goes intensely into meditation if we can just give like a quick rundown quick
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rundown yeah like 30 30 years of your career compacted into no more than three
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minutes if we could yeah and you're wondering why no one knows about this the journalists play a role there and
16:50
that's one of the problems is that you guys are like give me a sound bite and I'm like no there isn't a sound bite
16:55
This is complicated deal with it um so
17:00
in the varieties of contemplative experience study we documented 59
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categories of meditation related challenges U across seven different um
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domains and so I'll go through the do domains the cognitive domain is
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basically anything related to thinking um and and I would say you know it could
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be your your thoughts speed up to like an insane pace or they disappear
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altogether so there's like no thoughts at all we call that mind emptiness or you could like have um the
17:38
ability you lose the ability to form Concepts so it's concept loss so for
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example there was a woman in our study that was leaving Retreat um and driving which is not a
17:53
good idea by the way but um you know and got to a red stoplight and
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um saw that it was the color red but what couldn't register like couldn't remember what red meant did it mean stop
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or go luckily there was another car in front of her that stopped and so she didn't run the red light um but that's
18:13
that's concept loss and then there's also delusions which would be you know having really um you know false ideas
18:21
about things so that's that's cognitive and that that can kind of bleed into psychosis um perceptual changes is
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probably the most common you know early thing that's not necessarily an adverse effect but just
18:34
is perceptual hypers sensitivity so you tend to see your colors get brighter um
18:40
The Sounds get more suddenly you hear the clock tucking on the wall you hear your own breathing you hear your own
18:46
blood in your ears you know like you just get more sensitive and that might
18:51
not be a problem um unless it starts you know when you come back to the city and
18:57
then suddenly you hear every car door slam you hear like the you know the traffic feels like something's driving
19:03
right through your body um so that can be too much um and
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then you eventually that same process and we've written some papers about the
19:15
neurobiology of this but eventually that same perceptual hypersensitivity process can lead to you know outright
19:23
hallucinations in any modality it could be could be visual but it could also be
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um you know auditory or even U motor like you could have ticks or something
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like that creas they would call them in the in the that's in the sematic domains
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right it's not quite yeah um in the in the emotional domain affective domain um
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the most common emotion that we see is fear so some something in the fear
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Spectrum anxiety fear paranoia that kind of thing you can also see really any
19:58
kind of emotion just like on steroids kind of thing um and then also you know
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reexperiencing of past you know traumas or stressful events so flooding of kind
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of of that and then you can also see the opposite so in on one hand too much
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emotion um and then also loss of all emotion altogether um so we call that affective
20:25
blunting um and then in the sematic domain probably one of the most
20:31
interesting because there's not really a category for it in science that we know
20:37
of is the what we call El's energy like sematic experiences so people have these
20:45
these Sensations in their body that feels like electricity energy pressure
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movement um so we wrote a whole paper about that about the different um metaphors people use for that but that
20:58
one tends to be really annoying and very not more than annoying it's like disabling people like are unable to work
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or do anything it's so it's so overwhelming um sematic can also be like
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changes in appetite or uh insomnia is also super common it's so interesting
21:17
because everything you're saying as a negative symptom is also things that I've heard described as positive
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symptoms like oh that person is a really good energy worker they can move energy through through their bodies is something that I hear fairly regularly
21:30
in the The Meditation Community or the idea that oh this will heighten your senses so that you can hear more things
21:37
like there's all these positive spins on these but what you're saying is is you're seeing those same symptoms but
21:42
they they make it Mal adaptive for the person the person is so hyper sensitive that all of this stuff is is too
21:50
much I want really want to answer that question but I have to like just finish my list before I
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geted that's a really really important Next Step so um so after sematic we have
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cognitive which is just changes in motivation so some people get like you know Enlightenment or bust tattooed on
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their forehead you know not literally but you know they people leave their families and go like I'm go you know go
22:15
on Retreat um and then other people just lose all all all motivation altoe and
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like literally sit and stare at a wall for two years and like don't do anything um um and then the next the next part
22:31
the next domain is the sense of self which is a huge one it would probably do
22:36
an entire podcast just unpacking changes in sense of self I teach an entire class on it with my husband Jared lindall um
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but there's a lot of different changes in sense of self um but often around
22:49
loss of sense of self and this is a really good example of what you're talking about because you know losing
22:56
your sense of self you know ego death or ego dissolution is is a highly sought after effect of many different types of
23:04
spiritual practices um so you know how do you know when when is it not you know
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so this is so the so the issue of the issue of
23:15
appraisal um became a really really big piece of the when you say appraisal
23:23
what does that mean I'm not not so the issue of
23:28
who what what is an adverse effect what makes it adverse and who gets to
23:36
decide and so we found that that question actually became really kind of
23:41
pivotal and that of the 59 categories there weren't really any except for
23:48
maybe suicidality there really weren't any that every single person who had the
23:54
experience and every single teacher that we interviewed all said this was a bad thing MH there wasn't one single
24:01
category that was like that but every category there were some people that said this is was was bad for
24:10
me and the other and then so there was so every so every single
24:16
experience um we we called them potentially challenging experiences because the same experience could be
24:24
positive in one person and negative in another it could be positive in the same
24:30
person in One context and negative in another so a lot of these experiences
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when they happen on Retreat which is if if you haven't ever been on a Meditation Retreat it's extremely boring there's
24:43
nothing going on there's nobody talking it's silent you're usually at this place where all of your needs are met all you
24:50
have to do is show up for the meditation CL you know sitting and then you you don't even put your shoes back on you
24:57
just Pat over to you know the food and then you get fed and it's very um you
25:03
can have a pretty high level of cognitive dysfunction and still like manage to do the retreat right that's a
25:12
really good point that's the retreat creates the environment where you're just having one experience which is what
25:17
they want you to have but it doesn't show how you integrate in society and you know just to bring up this you know
25:23
you mentioned suicide on these Retreats I mean the way I got into this was of course doing a Meditation Retreat in
25:30
2005 where um I was leading an abroad program through North India one of my students on a Tibetan retreat at um an
25:38
fpmt retreat in bod gaaya one of my students committed suicide at the end of The Retreat and her journal sort of
25:44
indicates she was a bodic SATA and like that's been that was like the starting point for me realizing going from the
25:51
moment is like oh meditation is great it's going to make me it's going to make me a great snowboarder or whatever like you know that like sort of like very
25:57
dumb understanding of what meditation was about to suddenly seeing this drastic
26:02
consequence of somebody not killing themselves not not because they were um
26:08
uh dissatisfied with things that because they were they had some sort of overwhelming grief but because they were
26:16
supposedly enlightened they they were supposedly at some sort of spiritual moment of transcendence you know that's
26:22
like the the whole thing of my light and I I reprint a lot of her journal in that um because I want people to understand
26:30
how difficult it is to Grapple with these ideas because you're told when
26:35
you're meditating that you're going to have experiences which are greater than yourselves that that's unusual and
26:42
depending on the tradition these can be much more magical Traditions than other Traditions you know there sort of just a
26:47
big Continuum of what's out there um and there's also these this idea that you can accumulate superpowers like if you
26:54
go to certain meditation uh organizations you're like you can get super hearing you can become impervious
26:59
to the cold you can be telepathic you can um you can levitate you know Transcendental Meditation like there's
27:05
this big levitating component to it and and all of that plays plays into
27:12
exactly what you're talking about here and and then in addition you're also bringing up you know just even exploring
27:18
your mind creates this you know hypers sensitivity is a really interesting question right because when you become
27:24
very aware of things that are going in your mind that is sort of the goal and also the problem you just threw like 20
27:31
things at me which one would you like me to answer I mean all of well we we this is just free form just tell me what
27:37
comes into your mind I mean I think that let me let's just say a little bit about
27:42
suicide because I don't often publicly or I
27:48
don't even think I've ever talked publicly about suicide and the reason
27:54
isn't I'm not particularly proud of but it's really because one of the one of
28:00
the tropes that like I get attacked with is kind of like the hysterical woman
28:06
Trope that I'm a fear mongerer and I'm doing all of this for attention and um
28:12
that I that I'm over the top you know that I'm I'm sensationalizing these experiences which I'm totally not
28:20
because I don't even talk about the suicides and there are too many and there are so many in
28:26
fact that we have to have an entire special group at cheetah house for
28:32
parents oh my god of of children or you know young adults that have gone on
28:38
Retreats and Ked killed them not come back how how I mean what what do numbers
28:44
look like are you able to to tell to give me sort of a figure of what this this actually
28:50
is no I don't think we really know but I mean I know I I can count five on on my
28:57
hand like pretty much right off the top of my head that I know about yeah well it's interesting even even in the in the
29:04
venea so when the Buddha was teaching meditation right originally in the venea
29:09
there's this story of the melanda which which is one of his monks where 500
29:15
monks in the sort of the very first in writings on Buddhist Meditation
29:21
all committed suicide or were murdered by migal andika uh because they were doing an intensive form of meditation
29:28
and at the end of that that in that story and this is in the poly Canon um
29:33
at the end of that story The the Buddha says well maybe we shouldn't do this really intensive type of meditation
29:39
which at that point was meditating in journal grounds and graveyards and watching corpses Decay very intense and
29:44
related to a Tibetan tradition called Chu which is out right now which is still you know in the Consciousness
29:51
after that the Buddha was like no let's just focus on breathing it's way better to do breathing which is is such a fascinating story to me and I love this
29:58
story because it shows that the Buddha can make errors right right self correct
30:04
like great can we keep doing that yeah Y and and it's in it's in the lurgical
30:10
tradition right it's like it's not just you Willoughby saying that there could be problems it was the Buddha saying
30:17
this so and also just say that you know these experiences these intense
30:24
experiences um are documented in all three major schools of Buddhism you know
30:30
Tibetan Buddhism calls them yams um there's the whole Zen sickness or or
30:35
meditation sickness of of Zen um terraa Buddhism has the stages of insight with
30:41
some really harrowing stages that are known to be um pretty challenging so we
30:48
there are and and they don't agree by the way on whether these are a problem or whether they're progress either right
30:55
well you said stages and I'm like well someone's just going to hear stages they're like well you didn't get through stage four but stage five you're going
31:01
to be okay you just got stuck because you did it wrong right that's sort of the so I mean we know so so yeah these
31:10
are well documented in Buddhist texts these are so that's that's another
31:16
reason why people should just know about it just have be have informed consent about what
31:22
they're getting into just be more informed and now we heard from our sponsors by which I mean you thank you
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boost to let my channel spread all over the internet without further Ado back to
32:12
the video let's let's get into the like like the goals of someone who who gets
32:17
into meditation in the first place usually you go there seeking something right most especially in the western
32:23
tradition right we're not raised in it usually it's something that you're raised in either atheist or in a religious tradition they're like oh no
32:29
let's go into Buddhism so they're they're they're obviously seeking something and there's something called
32:34
like a Kundalini Awakening that you hear you read about all the time could you tell me what a calini Awakening
32:42
is I mean Kundalini Awakening is kind of like it's like the
32:49
fibromyalgia of or autoimmune disorder of the spiritual World I.E it is a garb
32:57
garbage category that like everybody just throws everything into when they don't really know what's going on so I
33:04
think there's probably like a clean calini you know where it's very specific
33:10
where it's like just you know heat or Sensations like going up the spine and
33:15
that's like you know there's there's something very specific but if you look at the way the word calini has been used
33:21
in the sort of literature um it's there there's kind of
33:27
everything is Kundalini and so I don't find it particularly helpful and also when when
33:35
people who get into meditation for largely secular reasons to manage their stress to help them manage their
33:41
emotions um to work through grief or loss um when they start to have symptoms
33:48
and then somebody says it's Kundalini Awakening and now they have to like deal with chakras and gurus and and you know
33:55
Reiki that itself can be such a terrifying idea that it just it doesn't
34:03
tend to be a super helpful category for most people that I that I see for other
34:10
people you know who have um who really want a spiritual
34:15
interpretation then it you know it can be somewhat useful but um you know I
34:21
think there are some other like there's a book called Gopi Krishna it's on my it's on my one of my
34:27
bookshelves back there and he has like I forget what they're called but one of
34:33
them's called like living with Kundalini and then it's like you think that he that's his only book but then it's like
34:39
10 years later he writes another one that's basically like still living with Kundalini you know and it's like oh boy
34:45
like that's a long time to have this these intense symptoms and they're very very difficult you know to the sort of
34:52
classic Kundalini which is like all these energies you know these Elsa
34:57
it's interesting there there's something here that I've I've talked about on other episodes of my podcast where I
35:03
talk about the the difference between a disease and diagnosis and the way we think about things just in the Western
35:09
Medical tradition but you know in this when we're talking about uh something in
35:15
an esoteric tradition in a in a meditation tradition such as they they give diagnosises for um this spiritual
35:22
sickness for instance in the Tibetan tradition there's also this thing called lung which is wind disease and it and it's like your Shakra winds get you know
35:29
they're going all over the place in the wrong order and and and bad things happen it's it's fascinating to me the
35:37
the way you're positioned in this is that that you're taking a western clinical approach and there's also this
35:43
other esoteric approach they're both recognizing the same condition how how
35:50
do the treatments vary between those in the in the Buddhist Traditions or the Hindu traditions and the the the Western
35:57
clinical um Paradigm
36:03
so I mean I think you know meditation itself is positioned in this very
36:08
interesting place where on one hand it's offered as
36:16
secular scientific you know neuroscientific um it's often compared
36:24
with you know different kinds of drug drugs as having a you know can can you know anti-depressants or or you know
36:32
Ridin can be compared to different kinds of drugs as you know being a better
36:38
treatment so it's playing all the roles of a medical
36:44
treatment um when it's convenient and then when it's you know when it's also
36:49
convenient it can also be by the same people presented as you know uh a
36:55
magical sacred practice that can't be captured by science um and so that switch often
37:02
happens when bad things happen you know somebody's like going to you know
37:08
they're going to this like mindfulness class and it's secular and it's scientific and then bad things happen and they're like oh you're experiencing
37:14
you know Kundalini that's and they're like what what are you talking about you said it was secular what is Kundalini so
37:21
that's like and then that's called that's called institutional betrayal and that's like another kind of trauma so
37:27
that's a whole other thing that happens but um so you know it's obviously it's
37:33
we're going down it's a it's a hornets nest of complexity um but I you know I
37:39
as somebody who works with people who are in some in some ways victims or
37:46
patients I try to take their perspective and I try to be advocates for them so um
37:52
I'm going to answer your question but I just want to caveat the hell out of it just like a good scientist um which is
37:58
basically like I want to know how that person is experiencing it and interpreting it because what happens is
38:05
you know the authorities whether they're medical authorities or whether they're spiritual authorities basically step in
38:12
and be like I will interpret that for you and now determine the rest of your life because if I if I determine it you
38:18
know regardless of what you think this is a spiritual awakening and you may not medicate it which means that you will
38:25
have these Energies surging through your body for the rest of your life and you will not be able to work or take care of your family like too bad that's your
38:32
spiritual calling whoa you know it's like whoa does this person get any vote
38:37
in their life you know do they want that um is do they even believe in that so I
38:44
I want to like I want to be able to give power back to the person who has to actually deal with it which is the
38:50
experiencer right and so you know so I always when I'm asking people when they come to cheetah house I always ask like
38:56
well how are you making sense of this you know what interpretive Frameworks that you've been offered like are
39:02
resonating with you and which ones are not resonating with you and I often find and I can you know I'm probably a biased
39:08
Source because people see my website and my degree and they're like oh she like she's a neuroscientist I'm going to her
39:14
so I probably like only see you know one group of people but people tend to be
39:20
pretty freaked out by the spiritual interpretations and pretty you know put
39:27
at ease when there there can be a biological explanation so that's my huge
39:34
caveat sure okay and then in terms of you know like I said the different
39:41
different schools of Buddhism um have words for for these same experiences
39:48
that we documented however they don't all agree whether they are things to be intervened upon or whether they are
39:55
signs of progress and so you you can't say that there's like a spiritual interpretation and then a
40:02
medical one and that all the spiritual ones say oh this is good this is part of the path because they don't there are
40:08
many like I said Zen has something called meditation sickness which is considered a problem something to be intervened upon um there are certain
40:16
kinds of problems like you mentioned l in Tibetan Buddhism you know stop meditating if you have L like that is
40:23
not something that you want to continue it's not going to get better on its own so it really depends on the symptom and
40:29
the tradition um how it's going to be treated but I would say that often or or
40:37
more often there are places where certain kinds of experiences are
40:44
normalized or expected and are not necessarily grounds
40:50
for concern or intervention um and so that's
40:57
that would be one sort of difference is that it does tend to be more normalized within spiritual Traditions but also you
41:04
know I think that to some extent that is sort of back to where we started or like
41:10
why are people getting so mad at me for calling out harms which is that
41:15
spiritualizing is a really easy way to deflect any claimed of harm this you're
41:20
not having spiritual bypassing is the is the you know spiritual bypassing is when you you know take up a meditation
41:27
practice to avoid or get super spiritual to avoid all of your like regular human
41:32
messiness and Milestones this is another kind of spiritual bypassing where it's it's basically spiritualizing in order
41:39
to deflect liability right to protect the actual institution yeah which in some cases it
41:46
is started you know in all of in I guess many of these cases that we're talking about these Traditions start in medieval
41:53
periods sometimes even ancient periods in an ancient context of a monastery or
41:59
a person by a tree and like we're taking these Concepts and we're migrating them
42:04
to the modern world which is not necessarily a bad thing like lots of ancient things migrate to the modern
42:10
world just fine but not all of them right and and and and just because
42:15
something was really adaptive to be a Madman living under a tree having no you know having no thoughts um might have
42:22
been okay in small some instances in the 600s in Nepal it
42:29
doesn't necessarily make you uh it work well when you are an investment banker
42:35
or a you know or a you know a mindful sniper right that's a big category now
42:40
like or these people who are like trying to to take that old tradition and put it
42:46
in an entirely novel context