Meditation can damage your health

IT IS meant to leave you calm, confident and content, but it turns out that meditation may actually be bad for some people.

During research into so-called meditation sickness, scientists found it could cause insomnia, anxiety and hypersensitivity to light and sound. While some experienced bliss from having to concentrate on their breathing and striving to achieve “loving kindness”, others were left in pain or struggled with normal life.

Explaining the symptoms, the US researchers said meditation could cause problems by mimicking sensory deprivation. People who spend a long time with their eyes closed and keep very still in a silent environment can then find that the noise and light of normal life are too much for them.

Co-author Willoughby Britton, assistant professor in the psychiatry department at Brown University, Rhode Island, said: “There is a phenomenon called relaxation-induced panic.”

In a report, the scientists said meditating also caused activity in the brain that could make it difficult to sleep and eat.

The study, in the journal Plos One, claims people could suffer ill-effects from doing less than an hour of meditation.

They interviewed 32 Buddhist meditation teachers and 60 meditators who had difficult or distressing experiences, with 82% feeling fear, anxiety, panic or paranoia, 42% reporting hallucinations, visions or illusions, and 28% becoming hypersensitive to light and sound.