Is meditation effective?

Suzanne (No)

Meditation is a billion-dollar industry, elevating images supporting this brand of lifestyle only. Unfortunately for the mindfulness empire, studies exist showing meditation is not across-the-board healthy, even for meditation masters. Mindfulness guru and motivational speaker, Leo Guro, informs his following to, 'expect depression, expect suicidal thoughts, expect sometimes to have waves of insanity and madness. It might feel like you're losing your mind, but you actually have this weird energy moving through you... it's almost as if you've been possessed.' Volumes of research (see Epstein & Lief, Lindahl, Shapiro, Lazarus, Burrows, Boyd, and Castillo) reinforce what Guro warns about, and more. 

Dr. Britton's 2017 study, documenting negative side-effects meditators experience, followed 60 participants (Sixty percent of whom were meditation instructors) over ten years. Each participant had at least 18 years of meditation experience. They were not novices, so the results were staggering. Eighty two percent reported anxiety, fear, panic, and paranoia. fifty seven percent: depression, dysphoria, or grief. Forty seven percent: illogical, paranormal, or delusional experiences. Thirty percent: increased anger, aggression, or rage. twenty seven percent: sleeping disorders. twenty five percent: self-conscious thoughts and insecurity. Eighteen percent: suicidality, and seventeen percent required hospitalization. The list of effects continues, including agitation, headaches, and fatigue. Eighty eight percent of the participants reported these experiences impacted their daily lives, even after the session was over.

Treleaven's 2018 study found mindfulness meditation to 'exacerbate symptoms of traumatic stress [as trauma] survivors can experience flashbacks, dissociation, and even retraumatization.' A 2007 study found meditation to induce psychosis 'in patients without a psychiatric history.' So given these risks, does meditation “work”? Not always toward the marketed outcome. Acknowledging the intense physical and emotional harm meditation does to its participants is, simply put, bad advertising.

Bre (Yes)

Consistently recommended by the happiest, most successful people, the practice has persisted for thousands of years and continues to be promoted worldwide. Why? Because meditation works.

Meditation offers a myriad of mental health benefits. It cultivates mindfulness, bettering our ability to identify, express, and regulate emotions, thus improving relationships and mood. Meditating reduces stress and anxiety (especially at their highest levels), combats depression, and promotes positive, prosocial emotions and behaviors. It provides lasting gains in body appreciation and self-compassion while decreasing automatic age and race biases, fostering greater acceptance and less judgment towards others. More welcome mental side effects include boosted cognition, memory, focus, and creativity.

Physically, immune strengthening, pain reduction, and benefits to cardiovascular health are just a few of meditation's upsides. Our brains' gray matter is increased with meditation, and its atrophy offset in those with degenerative disease. Adults suffering from primary headaches (migraine, cluster, tension) had less intense pain following meditation intervention. Fibromyalgia patients who meditated showed improved physical symptoms as well. Meditation doesn't just reduce our perception of pain, it also improves our neurological response to it.

Insomnia sufferers find effective relief through meditation. It's even a useful tool in the recovery of addicts and alcoholics. Unsurprisingly, many stress-related health conditions benefit from meditation. Research shows reduced blood pressure in hypertensive adults, less extreme physical post-stress responses in those with chronic inflammatory disease, and improved life quality for cancer patients.

Among the most popular complementary and alternative medicines, growing in popularity since 46 million US adults reported regular meditation for a host of various ailments in 2017, the abundance of evidence speaks for itself. Meditation is a powerful, dynamic force.