Subhuti on why the media is warning the public about mindfulness
When you start to lose your identity, it can be good news or bad news.
To seasoned meditators like you, my friends, who are now reading this article, it can be welcomed as a step towards freedom, breaking out of the prison of a rigid personality. But to those who do not understand how meditation works, it can be a frightening and traumatic experience. Even when meditation is diluted, sanitized and repackaged as ‘mindfulness’ it can still spring unpleasant surprises.
The media, of course, is ready to pick up on this negative aspect. Journalists, after all, are not great meditators. Their job is to reflect the mainstream, and the mainstream is nervous about closing its eyes and looking inward.
For example, a recent article published by PsyPost, an online psychology magazine, warns its readers that mindfulness meditation can “worsen mental health problems” and even plunge people into depression and psychosis.
The PsyPost article is just one of several recent reports warning about such negative effects. Shocking news? Well, looking from a different perspective, what is perhaps even more surprising is that it has taken this long for mindfulness to get a bad name. Over the past three decades, this new approach to meditation has enjoyed consistently positive reviews.
It began in the Nineties, when Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn, a medical doctor at the University of Massachusetts, published a book called Wherever You Go, There You Are. His book included a step-by-step guide to mindful meditation techniques and exercises. And the good news was that these exercises had succeeded in helping his patients to cope with the long-term problem of chronic pain.
The success of his techniques attracted increasing attention, first in the localized field of pain management, then in other areas of medicine and healing, then as a handy tool for ordinary folks to use as a way of coping with the stress of everyday living.
As a result, mindfulness took off and was soon being introduced in many areas of life, including primary schools, prisons, professional sports, finance, and the British parliament, as well as being featured on TV shows, in magazines, and so on.
The commercial potential of mindfulness was soon spotted, with online sites like headspace.com gathering millions of subscribers by offering simple ways to reduce stress, quieten the mind, and get a good night’s sleep – all for only $9.99 a month.
Small wonder, then, that by 2018, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that meditation was the fastest growing health trend in the United States.
But what exactly is mindfulness? In a nutshell, it can be defined as: “The practice of being aware of your internal states and surroundings, intentionally focusing on the present moment, without judgment.” This includes, of course, being aware of one’s thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and other sensory input, without reacting to them.
When I first read this description, I was puzzled. Wasn’t this a bit like reinventing the wheel? Didn’t Gautam the Buddha develop this technique 2,500 years ago, with his Vipassana meditation? More recently, didn’t the Indian meditation teacher, S.N. Goenka, teach this method, first in his own country, then around the world, beginning in the early Seventies?
If so, then what was all the fuss about? How did mindfulness break into the mainstream? Why was it being hailed as a new and revolutionary method?
The answer lies in Dr Kabat-Zinn’s approach. The good doctor had, indeed, developed his method from Buddhist and Hindu sources. But, realizing that this could prove an obstacle to acceptance by the medical profession, he stripped the method of its spiritual ancestry. It was no longer called Vipassana. It was given a more neutral name, provided with a context in modern psychology, and backed up with medical research.
As I began to familiarize myself with the mindfulness journey, it gave me a fresh perspective on Osho and his active meditation methods, especially his signature technique, Dynamic Meditation.
If even a mild method like Vipassana had to be stripped of its spiritual roots, then clearly Osho was never going to appeal to the general public with such a wild practice, especially when combined with his personal reputation as a controversial mystic. So, mindfulness grew and flourished where previous meditation methods had not, and for years it seemed to enjoy unquestioning acceptance.
Then why this current backlash? Why these warnings that it can harm as well as heal? As I see it, the seeds of potential trouble were sown by the method’s success. Mindfulness spread too far and too fast, reaching areas of the public that did not understand what meditation is really about.
Yes, taking a moment from a busy day at the office to sit down, focus on your breathing and observe your thoughts, can help to relieve the stress created by the fast pace of modern living. But it can also bring unwelcome insights and unexpectedly deep experiences.
For example, Kate Williams, a mindfulness teacher who is also a researcher in psychiatry at the University of Manchester, reported that, “Longer periods of meditation have at times led me to feel a loss of identity and left me feeling extremely vulnerable.”
If Kate had read a couple of Osho books, she would have known that this is exactly what meditation is supposed to do: bring us to a deeper state of consciousness where we can see that our identity is a false, fabricated phenomenon.
Leonard Cohen, the soulful singer who was also a passionate meditator, put it like this: “Meditation is not what you think. You sit in absolute silence and your mind starts going over all your movies. During that process, you become so familiar with the scripts you keep in your life that you end up getting sick of them.” He continued: “Then you realize that the person you think you are, is nothing but a complicated script you spend most of your energy on. It’s not really you.”
So, this is the danger that comes with popularizing meditation, even when it is sanitized as ‘mindfulness’. It has the potential to shake you to your core, because the core you believe in, isn’t really you. And for many people this is not a desirable experience.
They don’t want depth. They want to feel good.
They don’t want to disappear. They want to fulfil their social ambitions.
Just think about it: people who have been sold the idea that meditation can make them more successful in their careers, would naturally be dismayed if, instead, they found themselves stumbling upon such subversive thoughts as, “Who am I? Why am I working my ass off in this lousy job? What’s the point of living like this?”
Back in the Seventies, I remember being scared the first few times I did Dynamic Meditation. It seemed too overwhelming, too intense, too… well… just too damned effective at pulling me inwards!
But then we had Osho talking to us every morning in discourse, mapping out the inner journey. We had those blissful moments, in his presence, when we would gently slip into the ‘nothingness’ space of meditation, temporarily disappearing, with no sense of fear or foreboding.
Returning to the present, it is probably a good thing that the public is being made aware of the potential pitfalls of meditation. According to these media reports, some people just aren’t ready for it, suffering panic attacks, flashbacks to childhood traumas, and increased nervousness rather than greater relaxation.
True, compared to the huge numbers using ‘headspace’ and other mindfulness apps, such negative experiences are few and far between. But I like the fact that people are starting to understand that meditation isn’t just a useful aid to daily health, like going to the gym and working out.
Or, come to think of it, maybe it is like the gym. Because in a physical workout you can overdo it, strain a muscle, and hurt your body. The same goes for meditation. If you’re mental health is in a fragile state, it’s better to go slowly and gently, with a good guide to hold your hand.
By the way, the number of people willing to dive headlong into a powerful method like Dynamic Meditation is now, as it was in the old days, a very small minority. With its mind-blowing stages of rapid breathing, screaming and shouting, and vigorously jumping and down, Dynamic has never really lent itself to the idea that meditation can help you climb the ladder to social success.
Mindfulness or no mindfulness, Dynamic’s awesome reputation is not about to change.
Featured image: unsplash.com
And this, to me, is very good news.
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