Meditation and Mindfulness

Since mindfulness is something, you can practice at home for free, it often sounds like the perfect tonic for stress and mental health issues.

Mindfulness is a type of Buddhist-based meditation in which you focus on being aware of what you're sensing, thinking, and feeling in the present moment.


The first recorded evidence for this, found in India, is over 1,500 years old. The Dharmatrāta Meditation Scripture, written by a community of Buddhists, describes various practices and includes reports of symptoms of depression and anxiety that can occur after meditation.


It also details cognitive anomalies associated with episodes of psychosis, dissociation, and depersonalisation (when people feel the world is "unreal").


In the past eight years there has been a surge of scientific research in this area. These studies show that adverse effects are not rare.


A 2022 study, using a sample of 953 people in the US who meditated regularly, showed that over 10 percent of participants experienced adverse effects which had a significant negative impact on their everyday life and lasted for at least one month.


According to a review of over 40 years of research that was published in 2020, the most common adverse effects are anxiety and depression. These are followed by psychotic or delusional symptoms, dissociation or depersonalization, and fear or terror.      READ MORE...

Altered States of Consciousness

Recent research has uncovered that altered states of consciousness are much more common
among those who practice meditation and mindfulness than previously thought. While many individuals report positive and even transformational outcomes, a significant minority experience negative effects that can range from moderate to severe. The findings have been published in the journal Mindfulness.

The popularity of meditation, mindfulness, yoga, and similar practices has surged due to their potential health benefits. However, the experiences and effects of these practices, particularly the altered states of consciousness they can induce, remain underexplored. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital sought to investigate how common these altered states are and their impact on well-being, given the rising number of people engaging in these practices.

To achieve this, they developed a detailed questionnaire in collaboration with a team of experts in psychiatry, neuroscience, meditation, and survey design. The survey was designed to capture the diverse range of experiences associated with these practices and their impact on well-being.     READ MORE...

Reducing Prosocial Reparative Behaviors

A series of studies have uncovered a causal relationship between mindfulness meditation and decreased feelings of guilt. The findings have been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Several studies have found that mindfulness meditation draws people’s focus inward and reduces negative emotions. But some negative emotions provide useful social feedback. For example, feelings of guilt help to push individuals to atone for their transgressions against others. The new study provides evidence that mindfulness can lead to undesirable outcomes by dampening feelings of guilt.

“I was interested in doing this research because, after I started studying meditation and meditating myself, I noticed that I was using it as almost a default way of reacting to stressors,” said study author Andrew C. Hafenbrack, an assistant professor at the University of Washington. “This was great when I was overly ruminating or overreacting to some minor problem, and is a powerful sleep aid. Sometimes, however, this meant that I would meditate or focus on my breath in situations that there was actually a significant problem and it would have been better if I had faced it directly and immediately.”

“I had some confidence that I was not alone in this when I read a Harvard Business Review article by medical doctor and executive coach David Brendel in 2015, where he described that he ‘worked with clients who, instead of rationally thinking through a career challenge or ethical dilemma, prefer to disconnect from their challenges and retreat into a meditative mindset. The issue here is that some problems require more thinking, not less.'”

“I also know several people who are into mind-body practices, including but not limited to mindfulness meditation, but who are unusually flaky or otherwise don’t treat other people particularly well. So I wondered what was going on. It seemed to go against the essence of what I thought mindfulness and meditation were supposed to do, which is largely due to the associations I had based on the traditional or religious forms.”

The researchers conducted eight separate experiments, which included more than 1,400 participants. In the studies, the participants were randomly assigned to either listen to an 8-minute guided meditation recording created by a professional mindfulness meditation instructor or an 8-minute recording by the same speaker in which they were instructed to think of whatever came to mind.  READ MORE...

A Meditation Paradise

It has long since been believed by many that spending time on the beach of any large body of water and providing the the outside temperatures are warm enough to get into that water that this is the MOST RELAXING time that anyone can have...  and, while I suppose that this is true...  it is not as easy to get there...  at least by many of us who want to go...  because we simply do not have the excess money to spend on a trip like this....

Many of go to public swimming pools in the warm summer months and many of us travel to nearby recreational lakes where there is camping, cooking, fishing, swimming, and hiking...  and, there are still many of us that travel a little farther to public beaches all along the coastlines of our country...  but none of those are really anything like what it might be like to travel to Hawaii...  although, it is possible if you are living on our eastern side to get to the Caribbean fairly easily or even past our Gulf Coast down to Cancun.

But, if you want to travel to destinations in Europe, along the Mediterranean, or to Indonesia, Asia, India, China, Japan, or Australia...  you will either need to save your money for a while...  borrow the money using a credit card to pay off at a later date...  or be one of those fortunate ones THAT ARE WEALTHY...

Let There Be Rain

This is my ultimate relaxation scenario... as long as the humidity is low...  otherwise, I would be inside listening to the melodious tones on the rain falling in the trees, on the ground, on the roof tops, and on a nearby flowing stream or river.  The hammock is not necessary but some sort of reclining chair only enhances the situation for me.  This is meditative serenity that could go on forever...