What a neuroscientist says about meditation's bad side effects

Good and bad is too simplistic in the first place. Clearly what most people do is pigeonhole things into one of two categories, and never qualifies it in a specific way.

We don't have to look any further than the device we're on to recognize that with a powerful tool it can cut both ways, the same is true of peoples own mind - and yet people do not question this simplistic polarized position taking instead of understanding and making distinctions.

So for the same reason some may opt for a dumb phone, some people may not want to meditate. If you're not ready to take responsibility for the mental process of your own mind with any significant detail and distinctions then you're just going about it blind.

Of course, the difference is one is an external device, the other is your own mind and you have to live with it.

The irony is there IS NO MINDFULNESS when people are indiscriminately practicing. Lots of people of course just log time and do the same practice over and over, and once AGAIN with the "more is better" mentality which is also the basic logic of addiction. (interestingly, sometimes people on a meditation retreat will be told to stop and go home - though of course this is a teaching staff with psychology degrees) It's just repetition, and there's not much intelligence in just repetition. You may be mindful about whatever you're experiencing during the meditation, but are you mindful of what kind of meditation you are doing and why? Or is that initial decision completely arbitrary, or little more than just "it's a good thing"? Did Martha Stewart suggest it?

Making distinctions is basically the concluding point of the article:

This is why I say sometimes people don't actually have a recovery program, they have a laundry list of things they do. The word "program" implies some logical process at work. If someone is too lazy to make distinctions and look at details then there can be no mindfulness and there can be no program other than a rote script.

 

This study doesn't have a great value

It only takes in count meditation experts , not normal people doing some meditation when they feel bad emotions.

A study on 60 pople doesn't have a great value. It's a too small group.

But what makes me think bad it's that they talk about '' largest study on meditation- related problems '' interviewing ONLY 100 people , with only 60 to be taken into account

Source: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0176239#sec028

 

You said it all.

 

< Pyramid of Levels of Evidence

I would like to clarify , what i mean about '' high value study '' . It is a scientific concept to analyze studies

Not all the studies have the same value , for exemple if a study take in control 10k people it has more value than a study with 60 people.
If a study indicate an result , it is not necessary true. Observational studies are only theories that requires many validations.

Some validations comes with Meta analysis studies.
They take in considerations plents of studies , discard the less valid , they try to find a truth behind the randomness and mistakes of scientists.

Moreover If a study is published for exemple on Nature , it has more value , but it is not necessary a truth. Simply Nature has a rigid committee of scientist.
Not all journals are equally valid.

If these concepts are not understood by the population, there will always be anti vaccinators and those who believe in lies...

 

If I was, would I have written the reply the way I did and talked about taking responsibility? The entire idea of understanding in context doesn't lend itself to only promoting the good, but it seems you did not take responsibility for reading the entire post and only want to press one point.

I agree you want to take responsibility for what you post online, but at the same time you cannot take responsibility for other people doing what they do, whether it's not reading something through or doing/not doing something, according to detailed qualifications and evaluating your own experience.

Do you ever consider the idea of qualifications? Since you insist on framing it as good and bad it doesn't seem like you do. Put simply, to qualify something is to say it's good FOR a certain condition or person, or bad FOR them, not that something is absolutely good or bad across the board. It's not a complex concept. Some physical exercises are not good FOR certain people, but you don't hear people talk about it in the way you are, in terms of side effects.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with meditation, but what we can say is that it (whatever type of meditation, again it is qualified otherwise 'meditation' is a general word only) was not good FOR YOU. Yes, it may be true for other people as well, but without knowing more detail you can just post a general warning like this and there is nothing to discuss because there is simply no new information. You are essentially just repeating the same point with different words.

In my reply I specifically quoted from the article YOU LINKED TO in which their entire point is to make this kind of distinction, but curiously you don't seem to be interested in details. If your entire point is "it could be negative", fine, point made. But it basically takes using those four words along with any "supporting" information which people can look at if you are not interested in talking about any of the details. It almost seem like you don't want other people to think it through, just that "it could be bad."

 

There's just one little problem with that sentence, mindfulness does not mean meditation. You can be mindful going through life without ever doing a single second of meditation practice, you're just aware of whatever it is you're mindful of, that's what the word means.

I don't think things should be chosen by their marketing/advertisement anyway, but that is also precisely what you are doing. You are advertising the negative side effects, which is understandable but regardless of positive or negative it isn't helpful for people who want to understand beyond basing on this kind of laundry list way of thinking, which is just like how the average user think about a list of benefits to be had, your thinking is the same except it's the negative side as it relates to meditation.

There is a simple way to UNDERSTAND and look at this though, and that is contraindications. With medicine or any kind of therapeutic treatment there are things that can be helpful in general but certain situations should definitely not be used. That doesn't mean it is exclusively bad, but again the SIMPLE idea that it is not good FOR that person in their particular situation.

If a healthy body can do some kind of exercise but not when it's not healthy, it's not hard to see mental exercises might be appropriate for a healthy mind but when there is mental problems it is contraindicated. That doesn't mean it is inherently bad or, perhaps more importantly that the decision should be motivated by fear, which sounds to me like where you're coming from. Just my perception and I own that but I think given the string of posts you've made it is not completely unfounded.

If you are completely unwilling to talk about a qualified consideration or even acknowledge the simple logic of that point in general then there is no discussion to follow this point. You can keep repeating the point about side effects as your PSA to the world but it will not advance anything resembling a dialogue. Ironically what you are doing seems to be a kind of "meditation" given it is repetitive sort of like a mantra, even if you use different words. You're kind of meditating on the idea of the side effects. To me this is a mindless meditation that I see little benefit in whether it's on something positive or negative.

It might surprise you to learn there is such a thing as analytical meditation, which is about logically reasoning things out and understanding how it works step by step. I'm not stretching the meaning of the word, it is literally something they do in Tibetan Buddhism and that's what they call it. Just because all the common person knows about meditation is the "spacing out kind" it doesn't mean that's what all meditation is. It might as well just be a word meaning "mental exercise."

 

Is that a sentence from the study or did you paraphrase what you consider to be the most important point?

I would think what is most important would be decided by the people who actually wrote it. I directly quoted the articles concluding point, which is more likely to be what THEY consider most important, and you ignored that.

Cherry picking is basically not scientific, anyone who wants to can look that up. It's one thing to want to inform people because they may not be aware of another side of the issue, but that thinking process is essentially against what scientific inquiry is about. It's looking to support a position rather than to understand.

You may be disappointed if your sole agenda is to highlight bad effects, and think of this as your thread, but you cannot expect a message on an open forum to only consist of people who agree and want to support your point in the same way. It's not just a matter of "fair play" but people actually will think about it and reason on it, if you won't follow that and ignore other points in your response it ends up being you looking like the one lacking in fairness, even if you did present information that wasn't represented before.