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Can meditation have negative side effects?
Skeeterkb
Explorer
Been reading about meditation causing people serious mental harm. Just Google the topic and there are a lot of hits, for example < http://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_meditation_have_negative_side_effects
http://edoshonin.com/2013/12/26/can-mindfulness-meditation-induce-psychotic-episodes/
Anyone here experience negatives from meditation and if so why?
0
Comments
If you go to the left on this page and under "All Categories" click on "Meditation" you will see just a few weeks ago we talked about this. It is also brought up several times in the past couple of years if you look through a couple pages of the list.
I haven't. And I have heard on the grape vine that it can be dangerous for mentally ill people. I do think there is a stigma even in sanghas. A leader of a sangha stopped returning my e-mails when I volunteered that I was having trouble with my mental grasp of reality. I am not sure it wasn't just coincidence. The incident was not returning my e-mails. My guru from my sangha has helped immensely and it retrospect she answers the e-mails from my being in distress from some issue or else onto something about the dharma. She usually gives my mental bird walks a miss on replying to. The other leader I am talking about is the one who stopped returning my e-mails when I said I was mentally ill. And I am pretty mature and respectful and have been that way for about 10 years.
Ditto on checking out the previous thread, there's lots of good stuff there.
When I read any article that makes an assertion like that, I make sure and plug in my critical thinking skills. Whether I agree with the premise or not, there's a ton of crap out there written by journalists just for the sake of a 'story'.
Buddhist meditators are very honest and open about this question, and are a better source of truer truth than just about anyone else. It is an EXCELLENT question to ask as a new meditator, so give yourself kudos for being sensible and smart
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The major negative effect is you know when people are avoiding meditation.
:orange: .
So true.
I've heard of 1 or 2 people having some bad experiences, but I'm pretty sure they weren't practising correctly.