Before starting meditation, reflect on your motivations, goals, and understanding of well-being, happiness, and suffering, then choose a practice, teacher, tradition, and program that aligns with these personal goals to optimize results.
Individuals starting meditation should have a basic awareness of the potential range of challenging experiences that can occur, understanding that meditation is not always benign or a ‘warm bath’.
Practitioners should be aware that their personal history (medical, psychiatric, traumatic) can influence their meditation experiences and may require support beyond what a meditation teacher can provide.
Cultivate and utilize supportive communities and relationships when engaging in meditation practice, as these provide crucial support for appraising and responding to experiences, especially challenging ones.
If you experience distressing or unusual effects from meditation, understand that you are not alone, it’s not your fault, and these are well-documented experiences, which can counteract feelings of shame and isolation.
If experiencing meditation difficulties, seek out support groups or communities where you can share your story with others who understand, finding comfort and support in shared experiences.
During meditation, consider taking a stance of distancing or de-identifying with transient thoughts, emotions, and body sensations, as this can be helpful for those overly identifying with certain things and experiencing distress.
When difficulties arise, understand the meditator’s framework (e.g., spiritual, psychological) and let that guide where help is sought, to ensure appropriate support and avoid misdiagnosis or ineffective treatment.
Do not assume meditation difficulties only affect specific groups or blame individuals; instead, recognize that experiences are unique, complex, and result from an interaction between practice and individual factors.
Meditation teachers should be very familiar with the 59 categories of challenging experiences described in the study’s codebook and be able to identify them to adequately manage or respond to student difficulties.
Meditation apps and teachers should implement mechanisms to track difficulties, ask specific, targeted questions (not open-ended ones), and not rely on meditators to voluntarily report negative effects.
Meditation coaches and teachers should be aware that their personal experience may not cover the full range of potential difficulties, especially those related to individual differences like trauma history, to ensure comprehensive support.