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Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Twenty years ago, a meditation teacher and doctoral candidate in clinical psychology named Willoughby Britton set out to do a study showing that meditation improves sleep. She divided up the participants, sent them to a sleep lab to monitor their brain activity, and discovered that the results were the opposite of what she had hoped for: The more they meditated, the worse their quality of sleep got. Britton had already experienced benefits of meditation herself, which are well documented in medical literature: It soothes anxiety, chronic pain, and depression, and it lowers blood pressure, alleviates back pain, and has many other benefits, as well.<\/p>\n But as she continued to look into it, Britton kept discovering what seemed, at first, like exceptions: people who actually became more anxious or unmotivated after meditating. Then she began encountering people who experienced more serious mental-health side effects, such as paranoia, hallucinations, and dissociation. Britton became a researcher at Brown University and eventually developed a robust body of work showing that meditation\u2014for certain people and at certain intensities\u2014can be harmful.<\/p>\n On this episode of Radio Atlantic <\/em>is the staff writer Olga Khazan, who interviewed Britton about her research. We talk about how the meditation community responded, how Britton\u2019s life changed after it was released, and what her recommendations are for the average person interested in meditation.<\/p>\n The following is a transcript of the episode:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Hanna Rosin: <\/strong>Just a quick warning: This episode mentions suicide. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.<\/p>\n [Music<\/em>]<\/strong><\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>This is Radio Atlantic<\/em>. I\u2019m Hanna Rosin.<\/p>\n I meditate, now and again. Or, at least, I try. I was once at a yoga retreat where early-morning meditation was one of the things on the schedule. I woke up, sat down, and lasted about 12 minutes, which felt like 90.<\/p>\n I downloaded the Calm app a couple of years ago, and I have used it exactly zero times.<\/p>\n I have a doctor friend who assured me that meditation was one of a handful of nonmedicine treatments that had been thoroughly vetted by peer-reviewed science journals, so I never gave up trying. I just assumed that this was my fault and I needed to get better at it.<\/p>\n I have definitely absorbed the idea that there is a meditation ideal to strive towards, a master of serene who manages to both embody a Western principle of high-stress job and an Eastern principle of no stress at all.<\/p>\n Olga Khazan: <\/strong>\u200aSo I don\u2019t know exactly how it made the leap over from India to America. I think that happened in the 19th century.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Rosin: <\/strong>This is staff writer Olga Khazan.<\/p>\n Khazan: <\/strong>But this modern moment of meditation that we\u2019re living in started in Silicon Valley tech companies. So probably around 10 or 15 years ago, a lot of tech companies\u2014I was gonna say cling<\/em>, but you\u2019re not really supposed to cling in meditation\u2014they started glomming onto meditation as this solution for people being burned out and overworked. Arianna Huffington got really into it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Arianna Huffington: <\/em><\/strong>There is a deeper dimension to our lives, and we can tap into it.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Khazan: <\/strong>I think Oprah probably did it at one point.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Oprah Winfrey: <\/em><\/strong>9 o\u2019clock in the morning, 4:30 in the afternoon, no matter what\u2019s going on, we stop. We meditate.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Khazan: <\/strong>LeBron James was meditating.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Announcer 1: <\/em><\/strong>Look, LeBron meditating there on the bench.<\/em><\/p>\n Announcer 2: <\/em><\/strong>He\u2019s in that\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n Announcer 1: <\/em><\/strong>Becoming present.<\/em><\/p>\n Announcer 2: <\/em><\/strong>He\u2019s in that Calm app.<\/em><\/p>\n Announcer 1: <\/em><\/strong>Yep.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Khazan: <\/strong>Google had a meditation session for its employees. People in positions of power and authority and people who everyone thought was cool were kind of pushing this idea that meditation is this very benign sort of thing that you can do for yourself in order to make yourself more relaxed.<\/p>\n And I would say that there was a subtext there of, And it\u2019ll make you more productive because you won\u2019t be so obsessed with, like, dumb bullshit<\/em>. (Laughs<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n [Music<\/em>]<\/strong><\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>Today, meditation is a multibillion-dollar industry. According to one study, about half of all Americans have tried meditation. And about a fifth do it regularly.<\/p>\n At some point, Olga was one of them. She tried something called MBSR, or mindfulness-based stress reduction, although reluctantly.<\/p>\n Khazan: \u200a<\/strong>This was one of the most annoying things about it for me, is that it was very loosey-goosey. But then whenever I asked if I could modify it in some way, it was like, No, that\u2019s the wrong way to do it<\/em>. (Laughs<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Rosin: <\/strong>But Olga says it did help relieve some of her anxiety.<\/p>\n Khazan: <\/strong>\u200aSo even though I wasn\u2019t very good at meditation, I did buy this idea that it\u2019s basically harmless. \u200aIt seems like, oh, the worst thing that could happen is it just doesn\u2019t work, because you\u2019re not good at it. Honestly, I\u2019ve taken a whole meditation class, where I meditated for 45 minutes a day, and I don\u2019t think anyone ever said, This could be risky<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Rosin: <\/strong>That\u2019s what I always thought, too, and why I at least liked the idea<\/em> of meditation. It has a low barrier to entry\u2014no fancy, expensive equipment or services required\u2014and seemingly zero side effects.<\/p>\n But then one day, as Olga was browsing online, she came across a researcher at Brown University named Willoughby Britton.<\/p>\n Khazan: <\/strong>\u200aSo Willoughby Britton started out as a very avid meditator, pretty much as avid as they get.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Willoughby Britton: <\/em><\/strong>It was like a lifeline. It was like,<\/em> I don\u2019t know what I would do without this.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Khazan: <\/strong>So she is a psychologist. She was trained as a psychologist, but as she\u2019s going on her psychology journey, she\u2019s also becoming a really hard-core meditator.<\/p>\n She does other things to kind of show her commitment to this cause. So she\u2019s constantly reading these dharma books, which are books about the Buddhist teachings. She\u2019s teaching meditation through the same meditation class that I took, called MBSR. And she also meditates herself for hours and hours a day.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Britton: \u200a<\/em><\/strong>I became a meditation teacher. So I had to count my meditation hours, so I know I\u2019m well above 10,000 hours, and I\u2019m probably close to 20,000 hours. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Rosin: <\/strong>Olga ended up talking and meeting up with Willoughby in person. She learned that Willoughby had grown up on a farm in Massachusetts and spent a lot of time by herself as a kid.<\/p>\n Britton: <\/strong>My parents told me that I asked really strange questions like, What is looking out of my eyes?<\/em> Or, Is today tomorrow? <\/em>Or things like that. So I was a very curious, weird child.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n [Music<\/em>]<\/strong><\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>Willoughby had always been interested in consciousness and interiority and big existential questions. So in college, she decided to major in neuroscience at Colgate University.<\/p>\n In 1995, during the summer between her junior and senior year, Willoughby\u2019s best friend, Sarah, died by suicide. She\u2019d been overwhelmed by the pressure of being an elite college athlete. According to a New York Times article<\/em> about her death, Sarah was an \u201cAll-Ivy selection in field hockey, ice hockey and lacrosse.\u201d The article states that she was, quote, \u201cfound on Monday afternoon by a friend.\u201d<\/p>\n That friend was Willoughby, who found her at her house next to a hunting rifle. After that, Willoughby could not stop thinking about death.<\/p>\n Khazan: <\/strong>\u200aI think ultimately, like, what it was is PTSD, is she would think a lot about death and dwell on death and be worried about stepping into an elevator or something \u2019cause she thought she would find a dead body.<\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>So that\u2019s an experience of maybe losing control of your thoughts. It\u2019s a your-brain-is-running-away-from-you kind of feeling.<\/p>\n Khazan: <\/strong>Yeah. So she\u2019s like, I can\u2019t stop thinking about death<\/em>. So she\u2019s working in labs and stuff \u2019cause she\u2019s training to be a scientist. And she talks about\u2014they kill the rats after the experiments are over.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Britton: \u200a<\/em><\/strong>And rats are white with red eyes. And when they die, their eyes turn gold. \u200aThe blood runs out of them. And so I put them all under a little blanket of paper towels, and I was watching their eyes and being like,<\/em> Holy shit, this is it. \u200aThis is the moment that their spirit is departing or whatever.<\/em><\/p>\n And so I\u2019m so fascinated by these rats dying, and I asked my colleague, <\/em>Where does it go? And she was like, <\/em>Oh, they go in the freezer in 215. And I was like, <\/em>Okay, I gotta leave. I cannot do this anymore.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Khazan: <\/strong>She\u2019s just getting overly obsessed with death. And she doesn\u2019t wanna take SSRIs. So her father gives her this book called A Path With Heart<\/em>, by Jack Kornfield. And that book basically is just a very influential meditation book of that time. Kornfield is aiming to bridge the gap between hard-core meditators, who have studied in Tibet and stuff and meditate all the time, and people who are just going through a hard time. So he\u2019s trying to show everyday people how meditation can be helpful to them. And it was really helpful for her. She loved reading the book. She really took it to heart, and that kind of launched her meditation journey.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Rosin: <\/strong>From then on, Willoughby began to devote her life to ancient Buddhist principles. But she also had her degree in neuroscience. So she wanted to use her scientific background to advance the cause of meditation.<\/p>\n Khazan: <\/strong>She does one study in particular that shows that people who meditate more sleep worse.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Britton: \u200a<\/em><\/strong>They had more fast-wave brain activity. They had more microarousals, awakenings. It was just like every possible metric of cortical arousal was increased.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Khazan: <\/strong>These are not the results she expected. She wanted it to show that people who meditate more sleep better, but they had a worse quality of sleep. They were waking up more, and they spent more time in this phase of sleep that\u2019s associated with restlessness. It really surprised her.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Britton: \u200a<\/em><\/strong>I was just like,<\/em> Ah, this is the wrong answer, and maybe I did something wrong. It was the second study I\u2019d ever done. So I was not sure, and I was gonna ruin everything for the field that I was trying to promote. So I just sat on the data.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Khazan: <\/strong>\u200aSo she shelved that study. She did not publish it. She thought that publishing it would make Buddhism seem bad or make meditation seem bad. \u200aSo she just was like, Well, maybe this is a one-off. It\u2019s just one study. Who knows? Maybe I did the data wrong or something<\/em>, and she didn\u2019t publish it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Rosin: <\/strong>Now, to be clear, meditation has a robust body of research behind it that shows it can<\/em> improve lots of things: anxiety, chronic pain, depression. There are reputable studies linking it to lower blood pressure, better attention spans, and greater levels of compassion. It can help alleviate back pain, decrease loneliness in older adults, improve memory\u2014which is why Willoughby was so confused by her own <\/em>results that showed meditation could have any<\/em> kind of negative effect.<\/p>\n But that was just the first crack.<\/p>\n \u200aKhazan: <\/strong>The next thing that happens is that she moves to Rhode Island for her residency. And she\u2019s working at a psychiatric hospital. And she notices that people are coming into the hospital in a state of psychosis, and they\u2019re coming in from meditation retreats.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n [Bell tolling<\/em>]<\/strong><\/p>\n \u200aKhazan: <\/strong>So the first one, she\u2019s like, What\u2019s up with that person?<\/em> And they\u2019re like, Oh, they\u2019re coming off a meditation retreat<\/em>. And she\u2019s like, Oh, that\u2019s weird. It can happen<\/em>. And then the next one, she was like, Wait, what\u2019s up with that person?<\/em> And they\u2019re like, They\u2019re also coming off a meditation retreat<\/em>.<\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>Wow.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Britton: \u200a<\/em><\/strong>They were, like, completely psychotic.<\/em><\/p>\n Khazan: <\/em><\/strong>Wow.<\/em><\/p>\n Britton: <\/em><\/strong>And so I was like,<\/em> That\u2019s kind of a lot. That seemed like a lot for one year. Like, here\u2019s my little snapshot of a residency.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Khazan: <\/strong>And so that made her think, Okay, maybe it\u2019s just something about that retreat<\/em>. And then meditation started to take kind of a dark turn for herself personally.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n [Music<\/em>]<\/strong><\/p>\n Khazan: <\/strong>What happened to her is that she started experiencing this thing called dissociation. It kind of sounds good at first. And it can be good in really traumatic moments. Dissociating can be a positive thing because it can help you persevere through if your house is on fire and you just need to grab all your stuff and your kids and get out. It\u2019s okay if you\u2019re not totally in the present moment in that time.<\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n Khazan: <\/strong>But basically what dissociation involved for her is feeling like she wasn\u2019t really herself, like she was watching a movie of her life and she was a character in it. And this could be really strange feeling. She would feel like her house is not her own.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Britton: <\/em><\/strong>It had a feeling of, <\/em>Oh, I\u2019m in Willoughby\u2019s house, like this other person.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Khazan: <\/strong>If she saw a picture of herself with several friends, she would feel like it was three people she happened to know instead of herself with two other people.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n
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