We need to rethink meditation-related challenging and adverse experiences.
It’s easy to assume that challenging experiences in meditation fit a simple binary: they are either spiritually transformative altered states or the emergence of underlying psychopathology or trauma.
But this binary, I believe, misunderstands the kind of phenomenon we are trying to explain, and that we ultimately hope to support in practitioners.
In our just-preprinted qualitative study, Processes of embodied sense-making and integration in challenging experiences of advanced meditation – A reflexive thematic analysis of destabilization, rigidification, and social negotiation, first author Oliver Hugemark @OliverHugemark, along with Terje Sparby @terjesparby, Andrea Grabovac @meditationmama3, and myself, follow the data.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with advanced meditators from around the world, we suggest that some meditation-related challenges may emerge through dynamic interactions between intense and non-ordinary experiential states and transformations and the embodied, relational, interpretative, and socioculturally scaffolded processes of sense-making and integration through which practitioners interpret, inhabit, negotiate, regulate, and integrate these experiences. Specifically, we identify and present three candidate processes through which challenges can arise: destabilization, rigidification, and negotiation of social intelligibility.
The implications of these findings extend well beyond contemplative science. They suggest that distress and difficulty in advanced meditation may be a dynamic and context-sensitive process, rather than ‘self-interpreting,’ and that whether the non-ordinary states and stages characteristic of advanced meditation become destabilizing, difficult, distressing, integrative, or transformative depends heavily on the quality of interpretive, interpersonal, and contextual resources available to practitioners.
While we highlight the risks of adopting rigid interpretations of meditative experiences, and do not claim that all challenges are difficult albeit necessary stages of contemplative development, we argue that purely reductive psychopathology models are often insufficient, and even deeply problematic. Clinical practice and meditation instruction alike may thus benefit from increasingly person-centered, contemplatively informed, and collaborative approaches.
Importantly, our findings align with established and emerging directions within phenomenological, transcultural, and enactive psychiatry and psychology. We hope this study will help support future research that resists simplified, single-level explanations and instead investigates and integrates the physiological, experiential, existential, and sociocultural dimensions of challenges in meditation through transdisciplinary and phenomenologically grounded approaches.
We’d be grateful to hear whether these findings resonate with others’ experiences of practicing, teaching, or researching meditation!
Find the full manuscript PDF below ⤵️
We need to rethink meditation-related challenging and adverse experiences.
It’s easy to assume that challenging experiences in meditation fit a simple binary: they are either spiritually transformative altered states or the emergence of underlying psychopathology or trauma.
But this binary, I believe, misunderstands the kind of phenomenon we are trying to explain, and that we ultimately hope to support in practitioners.
In our just-preprinted qualitative study, Processes of embodied sense-making and integration in challenging experiences of advanced meditation – A reflexive thematic analysis of destabilization, rigidification, and social negotiation, first author Oliver Hugemark @OliverHugemark, along with Terje Sparby @terjesparby, Andrea Grabovac @meditationmama3, and myself, follow the data.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with advanced meditators from around the world, we suggest that some meditation-related challenges may emerge through dynamic interactions between intense and non-ordinary experiential states and transformations and the embodied, relational, interpretative, and socioculturally scaffolded processes of sense-making and integration through which practitioners interpret, inhabit, negotiate, regulate, and integrate these experiences. Specifically, we identify and present three candidate processes through which challenges can arise: destabilization, rigidification, and negotiation of social intelligibility.
The implications of these findings extend well beyond contemplative science. They suggest that distress and difficulty in advanced meditation may be a dynamic and context-sensitive process, rather than ‘self-interpreting,’ and that whether the non-ordinary states and stages characteristic of advanced meditation become destabilizing, difficult, distressing, integrative, or transformative depends heavily on the quality of interpretive, interpersonal, and contextual resources available to practitioners.
While we highlight the risks of adopting rigid interpretations of meditative experiences, and do not claim that all challenges are difficult albeit necessary stages of contemplative development, we argue that purely reductive psychopathology models are often insufficient, and even deeply problematic. Clinical practice and meditation instruction alike may thus benefit from increasingly person-centered, contemplatively informed, and collaborative approaches.
Importantly, our findings align with established and emerging directions within phenomenological, transcultural, and enactive psychiatry and psychology. We hope this study will help support future research that resists simplified, single-level explanations and instead investigates and integrates the physiological, experiential, existential, and sociocultural dimensions of challenges in meditation through transdisciplinary and phenomenologically grounded approaches.
We’d be grateful to hear whether these findings resonate with others’ experiences of practicing, teaching, or researching meditation!
Find the full manuscript PDF below ⤵️