Part four
[The first two parts of this thematic thread were posted on February 21st and the third part on March 2nd, 2024]
A painting, and a sympathetic yet critical perspective on meditation and mindfulness
Today’s post is two posts in one because I finished both things I was working on simultaneously. It includes a painting I’ve been working on over the last two months or so, part of a current art project [you can read more in my February 8th post], and a presentation of Dr Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm’s book, The Buddha Pill.
In their book, The Buddha Pill, Oxford psychologist and researcher .Dr Miguel Farias, and psychologist Catherine Wikholm, examine meditation and mindfulness practices, their potential value and benefits, limitations, the current hype and similarities with the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement and marketing, the validity and quality of the research, the potential adverse effects, and the darker side, in an attempt to tease out facts from fictions. They discuss what the empirical evidence, including their own study on yoga with prisoners, suggests about the benefits, limitations and potential negative consequence of these practices. They explore both the value and benefits and the illusions and delusions concerning these practices and the promises of personal change and well being, and they identify and propose corrections to seven myths:
Myth 1 Meditation produces a unique state of consciousness that we can measure scientifically.
Myth 2 If everyone meditated the world would be a much better place.
Myth 3 If you’re seeking personal change and growth, meditating is as or more efficient than having therapy.
Myth 4 Meditation can benefit everyone.
Myth 5 Meditation has no adverse or negative effects. It will change you for the better (and only the better).
Myth 6 Science has unequivocally shown how meditation can change us and why.
Myth 7 We can practise meditation as a purely scientific technique with no religious or spiritual leanings.
Farias and Wikholm provide a sympathetic yet critical review of both the research literature and the history of the practices. The authors display reflexivity throughout the book making their own experiences with these practices explicit, as well as, their relationships and encounters and how they changed as their examination of the research material and knowledge increased. I think, their narrative is balanced and cautious one could say, in an attempt perhaps to not throw out the baby with the bath water.
The book tells the story of their scientific examination into various meditative practices. It provides food for thought and can be helpful for anyone considering taking up contemplative practices or mindfulness in terms of what they need to know, in order to seek appropriate guidance and engage with the most suitable practices, and also, to be aware of potential risks or difficulties, and how to deal with them. It could also benefit people teaching and promoting these practices in making them more aware of the bigger picture or more willing to be transparent about the aspects of these practices that are not talked about, and finally more able to provide better guidance to people. The book promotes critical thinking about meditation and encourages our questioning some of the claims of meditation advocates. To some extent, one could say that it contributes to more transparency in the field, which I think can only be a good thing.
Farias’ first contact with meditation in childhood was through his parents’ engagement. His father was in the army, where he had been introduced to Transcendental Meditation (TM). He describes how when he began examining the research on TM a wave of nostalgia overcame him when he found the publicity images for Transcendental Meditation he had seen as a six-year-old: “young men and women smartly dressed (the men with ties and well-ironed shirts), all levitating. Their faces beamed with smiles as they sat cross-legged some 15 centimetres above the ground….”
Not knowing much about TM I actually I found the chapter on TM quite informative and mostly useful in understanding the current reality. It basically focuses on Farias’ examination of a great quantity of research on TM, part of which included many studies attesting to the impressive effects of the practice: decreased hypertension, reduced asthma and insomnia, improved intelligence, and positive changes in certain personality traits, such as neuroticism, etc.. He poses the question on whether meditation can really have such deep influence on the individual and society as a whole, as TM research and advocates claimed, and he looks at the major scientific findings in an attempt to tease out facts from fiction.
Farias mentions, for instance, that in 1976 two studies were published showing that TM didn’t produce effects any different from those of relaxation. The second study published in 1976 examined the physiology of five experienced transcendental meditators and found an unexpected result: “the measures of brain activity suggested that the meditators spent a substantial part of their meditation time sleeping. The authors wondered if, although fully awake, meditation put the group in a brain state similar to that of sleep. It didn’t. The meditators themselves declared that they had fallen asleep in most of the sessions. The article concludes that meditation gives rise to different mental states, but there is nothing physiologically extraordinary about it.”
The evaluation of the research revealed many methodological limitations. There were problems like ‘sampling bias’ and lack of random allocation. Another significant problem with meditation research is finding the right kind of activity for the control group because it is very difficult to find a placebo for meditation. The writers claim that “most scientists would say that you can’t, which is why the active control groups in meditation research usually consist of people undertaking relaxation, hypnosis or exercise. It’s not an ideal solution – you inevitably know whether you are in the meditation group or the control group. The best studies try to overcome this problem by ‘blinding’ the researchers.”
There is also reference to Jonathan Smith study, who used a bogus intervention called PSI that no one was aware of. He had actually written a 70 page manual about this bogus intervention. In addition to the TM and PSI groups, he also had a passive control group, where participants did not engage in any new activity. “Before and at the end of three months, all participants were assessed for anxiety, muscle tension and autonomic arousal. The results showed that, compared to the passive control, TM and PSI led to a significant reduction in anxiety and a more relaxed physiological functioning. However, there were no differences between the TM and PSI groups; they both showed the same level of improvement.”
There is also a discussion about Maharishi’s announcement concerning the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, his claims in relation to levitation and TM’s potential to reduce crime if enough people engaged with the practice. Farias writes that there was a glitch in the results of the research that studied TM and its potential to decrease crime if enough people meditated. Data was mispresented or bits of data were selectively removed. Farias writes: “The combination of sociology, forensic psychology, and parapsychology make the research into the effects of TM on collective consciousness one of the most uncanny enterprises in the history of modern science…………….. There is something troubling in the idea that a single factor, such as collective consciousness, can play a more important role in rates of aggressive behaviour and crime than factors such as an individual’s level of education, wealth or emotional maturity.” Summarily, their review of this considerable body of research into TM concludes that it has moderate beneficial effects and that better studies are required to address the grander claims made by its advocates.
The book also includes an overview of the psychology behind change and transformation. It touches upon topics like how change might occur, the obstacles and difficulties we humans face when trying to change, a short history of related theories and ideas from ancient Greece to more recent times, traits theory and critical perspectives like Dan McAdams’ that “argued that traits offer no context. His view is that traits don’t tell us anything about who the person is, or that person’s goals and motivations throughout life.” They discuss peak experiences, holotropic breathwork, the procedures and dynamics of conditioning and Pavlov’s accidental discovery that showed how it is possible to eliminate conditioning, which in turn has strong implications for the idea of personality change. There is also reference to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which I wrote about in the previous post.
The examination of the evidence for personality change suggests that meditative practices and yoga may have the potential to bring about transformation since intense physical stimulation can cause changes in our physiology & psychology, and meditative techniques can transform how we experience our flow of thoughts and feelings similarly to many psychotherapeutic modalities. However, the authors discuss whether mindfulness techniques are as effective in changing people’s thoughts and behaviour as more established psychological therapies can be. They write that both third-wave therapies and traditional CBT acknowledge the important role of our behaviour and cognitions in affecting how we feel. However, they continue: “with mindfulness-based interventions, the aim is not to change your thoughts, but your global beliefs about thoughts – essentially, you’re expected to stop believing that your thoughts are necessarily true or important. This is where the Buddhist philosophy really kicks in: your thoughts are mere ‘mental events’ – just thoughts, nothing more – and they don’t necessarily warrant any action. All you’re aiming to do is to be aware. From its early psychoanalytical beginnings, the goal of psychological therapy has also been about increasing awareness, bringing into the light what was previously hidden, unobserved or unacknowledged. But unlike in mindfulness practice, we don’t just stay with the awareness; we move onwards to explore what we have observed. In this sense mindfulness as a therapeutic technique seems somewhat limited in reach – but quite heavy on time….”
Another issue they raise is the fact that it is difficult to pin down what factor has contributed to a successful outcome when evaluating the use of mindfulness in therapy, for instance. They pose questions: Could a relaxation technique have brought about similar results? Could the passing of time bring about change or shift of mood? Or more crucially, could it be the therapeutic alliance? They assert that thirty-years-worth of studies suggests that the most important factor, in terms of what leads to change or a good therapeutic outcome, is not the particular interventions or model of therapy used, but the quality of the therapeutic relationship. They suggest that a good therapeutic alliance is of great importance. They claim without a supportive environment and informed guidance any change that is achieved through meditation practices may be less significant or slow or may have a variety of negative passing effects or more long term adverse consequences, which have been documented by psychologists since the 70s even though the majority of research still ignores these risks.
For instance, in the 70s Lazarus strongly criticized the idea that meditation is for everyone and argued that ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’, and that researchers and therapists need to know both the benefits and the risks of meditation for different kinds of people. In the late 80s Stan Groff and his wife edited a book on spiritual emergencies, in which they caution psychologists and psychiatrists to be aware of and respect what on the surface may look like mental illness, but is, in fact, the expression of spiritual experiences that are having a profound and at the same time stressful effect on the individual. They also cautioned that not all difficult experiences associated with these practices are necessarily ‘spiritual’. In 1992 David Shapiro, a professor in psychiatry and human behaviour examined 27 people with different levels of meditation experience and found that 63 % of them had at least one negative effect and 7 % suffered profoundly adverse effects. Finally, a new category was added to the 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) that of Religious and Spiritual Problems, which acknowledges that some mental health problems may arise as a temporary result of spiritual practices.
Farias also refers to Willoughby Britton, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Brown University, whose interest to study adverse effects arose from witnessing people being hospitalized after intense meditation practice, together with her own experience after a retreat in which she felt an unimaginable terror. While reading through the classical Buddhist literature to try to understand what was happening to her Farias and Wikholm Britton realized that these negative experiences are mentioned as common stages of meditation and that these negative effects could turn out to be a stage in one’s spiritual journey, but if we don’t address them properly they can be destructive and harmful.
[You can read more about Britton’s work and adverse effects in previous posts mentioned above]
Moreover, they confront the myth that unlike other religions Buddhism is an exclusively peaceful religion. They provide historical examples of Buddhists and violence across historical contexts that prove that Buddhism, like other religions, has a history that links it to violence and forced conversion. They asked people, who specialize in the study of Asian religions like Torkel Brekkel and Bernard Faure about violence in the Eastern spiritual traditions. They refer to Zen Buddhism during WWII, which provides a powerful illustration of the link between Buddhism and militarism, and also, of how meditation can be used toward violent goals. They also refer to many historical, and also, current violent conflicts, and also, texts and views held by significant Buddhist figures in support of violence. In particular, they refer to the concept of emptiness and how it has been used to justify violence. They write that one of the crucial teachings of Buddhism is that of emptiness: “the self is ultimately unreal, so the bodhisattva who kills with full knowledge of the emptiness of the self, kills no one; both the self of the killer and the self of the killed are nothing more than an illusion.“ They also mentions the Kalachacra-tantra, in which it is stated that the final battle of the world will be between Buddhists and heretics.
They discuss the idea proposed by many that meditation could eventually eradicate violence. During this endeavor the writers interviewed various people from the science and clinical world, people working in different settings like prisons, and monks in Christian and Buddhist settings. They quote one of the people they interviewed: “There are various factors that explain violence, right? Some psychological, others societal Put them all together in a statistical regression model: start with level of income, education, access to health, then consider psychological factors such as the presence of childhood abuse; see how much of these explain the likelihood of my neighbour being in a fight at the pub or hitting his partner. Then, add meditation to your statistical model – would it add anything in predicting violence compared to the other factors?…… Would it have made a difference if Hitler had meditated?” So, really it is common sense to acknowledge that we can’t remove people from the larger context, their psychological makeup, their ambitions and motivations, and so on.
Farias also recounts a visit to an Indian yoga guru’s ashram, where he was confronted by machine gun-carrying guards and where they were advocating for the death penalty. He writes that his doubts about meditation and yoga having a role in solving the world’s violence substantially increased after this trip. Some of his relevant commentary; “I was coming to the conclusion that meditation is only a process: it can sharpen attention, quiet thoughts and angst, increase positive emotions towards ourselves and others and, in the extreme, it can lead to a deep alteration of our identity ……. But with the wrong kind of motivation and without clear ethical rules, that very spiritual selflessness can serve all kinds of ill purposes…… To start with, you need to have a healthy ego; what kind of self are you surrendering if you don’t have a stable sense of who you are?……. Perhaps meditation was never supposed to be more than a tool to help with self-knowledge; one that could never be divorced from: a strong ethical grounding, who we are and the world we live in.”
It is probably self evident that people come to meditation from all walks of life and with different goals, life stories, traumas, personalities, expectations, support systems, beliefs, interests, ambitions and political ideologies. The authors argue that a positive ethical framework is required to ensure that the changes that meditation can contribute to at a personal and collective level are not damaging either for the person or others, and that this framework is often missing.
“An ashram in a prison cell……..”
In the first chapter the writers introduce the notion that a prison cell can be conceived of as an ashram or a monastic cell, even if it is not of one’s choosing. They speculate how prisoners might have an increased opportunity for self-reflection, personal growth and even moral development. They note that the notion that incarceration could be reconceived of as an ‘opportunity’ to develop the self, through the use of meditation, requires a shift in thinking and was espoused by Nelson Mandela, who was forced to remain in prison for 27 years..
Farias and Wikholm considered how yoga could facilitate transformation and rehabilitation of inmates, considering that these interventions may be appropriate and effective with a population that might be more defensive and less willing to engage with more intrusive or verbal approaches. In addition, yoga sessions are more cost effective compared to other modalities and inmates can also practice on their own. While examining the available research they found that most of this research had serious shortcomings. For example, sample sizes were usually very small or / and there was no control group, or the research drew evidence only from questionnaire measures. They realized that if they were to draw any realistic conclusions about whether or not yoga is effective in bringing about measureable psychological changes in incarcerated criminals, there was a need for better research evidence. And so the seeds were sown for their own study.
They claim that their study that looked at the effects of yoga, in seven UK prisons,, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research (2013), was simple: “we wanted to randomly allocate prisoners to either a yoga or a control group for ten weeks… we first needed to check that yoga worked better than doing nothing.” They add that despite its limitations, it provided the first robust scientific evidence that yoga has a positive effect on wellbeing, mental health and self control in prison populations when compared to the waiting list group. Additionally, they found that although yoga did improve attentional control and inhibition, statistically, it didn’t make a difference when it came to levels of aggression or how prisoners behaved towards others. So, despite the other positive results, there were no real changes in how aggressive prisoners felt. They speculate that prisoners learning these new techniques might require additional emotional support and guidance as they begin this new journey of self-exploration. They also found that the more yoga classes prisoners attended, the greater their psychological wellbeing, and that the likelihood is also that continued benefit would require continuing practice.
I will end with how the book owes its title to an analogy. Farias and Wikholm argue that meditation is similar to a pill. It cannot always cure an ailment, it doesn’t work for everyone and it can have side effects. They write: “like medication, meditation can produce changes in us both physiologically and psychologically, and it can affect all of us differently. Like swallowing a pill it can bring about unwanted or unexpected side effects…” They discuss how we’ve been increasingly buying into exotic ideas of personal change, and because meditation has been marketed to us very well, “greater numbers of people are jumping on this fashionable, money-making bandwagon, with companies finding ever-more ways to create something modern out of something ancient, to seize the imagination of the self-improvement generation.” However, they continue although “meditation and yoga are not a panacea; nevertheless, they can be powerful techniques for exploring the self. Probably more important than the type of practice is the choice of teacher and knowing why you want to put time aside to meditate.”