I took up mediation at 50 in anticipation of two of life’s biggest challenges: my kids leaving the nest and my parents’ age-related decline. The idea was to make the midlife passage as gentle and merciful as possible.
Imagine my surprise, then, when on a meditation retreat in India, I found myself weeping through a morning session and immediately thereafter experienced a short-lived but excruciating migraine headache.
My teacher witnessed the whole thing, then smiled knowingly and said, “Better out than in.”
While meditation is proven to provide all the benefits you hear about, like reduction of depression, stress and anxiety, better sleep, improved heart health and burnout relief, the process of releasing thoughts and emotions can also unleash unpleasant emotional and physical experiences.
Who knew there could be a disturbing yin to that peaceful yang? Don’t worry — it’s ultimately all good.
Why de-stressing can be distressing
Zen Buddhists know this dark side of meditation so well that they have a name for it: makyo, which blends the Japanese words for “devil” and “objective world.” And Sanskrit speaks about how the practice deals with samskaras — deep grooves in your psyche worn by past, often negative, experiences.
The work of meditation is what Zen master Philip Kapleau described as “a dredging and cleansing process that releases stressful experiences in deep layers of the mind.”
This makes sense considering there’s loads of evidence that meditation actually changes your brain composition for the better. And it’s what led two Brown University professors, Jared Lindahl and Willoughby Britton, to co-author a study of newbies to experienced practitioners in order to help shed scientific light on the more difficult aspects of meditation.
As Lindahl points out:
Just because something is positive and beneficial doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be aware of the broader range of possible effects it might have.
Keep an open mind
The study found 59 different kinds of uncomfortable effects, including anxiety, fear, involuntary twitching, time/space distortion, emotional detachment, hallucinations, insomnia, hypersensitivity, nausea, irritability, and the reliving of past traumas.
(Kinda sounds like an antidepressant disclaimer, doesn’t it?)
But just because the feelings were difficult doesn’t mean the experience was seen as negative. The letting go of unresolved emotional issues that impact neurology was described by most in the study as challenging, not adverse. While this can lead to some abandoning the practice, the support of an experienced teacher can make sitting through the discomfort transformative.
From my own experience, I can tell you whatever emotional baggage I dropped off in India has left me feeling brighter, happier, and more at peace. As my meditation teacher says, darkness isn’t the opposite of light, but simply where light hasn’t yet reached.
There’s a Dark Side to Meditation That No One Talks About (Quartz)
