Does Commercialized Meditation Do More Harm Than Good?
Taking on the meditation industry is like complaining about recycling or sunscreen. Everyone loves it! Or at least it seems that way.
Even if you’re not a daily meditator, you probably don’t think anything’s wrong with it.
But if recycling, at least on a personal level, is largely about assuaging guilt instead of saving the planet, maybe it’s not such a bad comparison after all.
Let’s start with defining meditation. You might know it as a timeless spiritual practice, often rooted in Buddhism and also present in other traditions. This practice, or many variations of it to be more precise, has been passed down for centuries.
That’s one way of looking at it. Another way, given the methods that millions of people experience meditation now, is that it’s in the same category as Netflix, Candy Crush, or PornHub.
Big Meditation—or McMindfulness, as someone once called it—is commercialized. It’s rooted in profits by companies that make millions of dollars from their headquarters in affluent California cities.
These companies exist for the purpose of making money. They measure success by the same metrics used by any “growth hacking” startup: monthly recurring revenue, subscriber churn rate, and overall user growth.
They make it difficult to get a refund even if you never use your subscription, because refunds negatively affect every one of those metrics.
But you might think—well, okay, but lots of people like these apps. (True.) Lot of people believe that these apps make their lives better. (True, with the emphasis on believe).
Finally, these apps can’t hurt, right? The worst thing that happens is that they’re ineffective. (FALSE.)
And this brings us to the real problem. It’s not just that the tradition of meditation has been reworked to become a cash cow for startups.
It’s that the kind of meditation these startups offer can be contraindicative for lots of people.
This means they should be advised not to do it. This means it can make their life worse, not better.
Do No Harm? Not So Fast.
In 2017, a neuroscientist named Willoughby Britton published the results of a much more scientific study. The peer-reviewed results reported that many of the subjects in her study experienced an incredible range of issues not normally associated with the healing powers of mediation.
These affects included “anxiety and panic, traumatic flashbacks, visual and auditory hallucinations, loss of conceptual meaning structures, non-referential fear, affective flattening, involuntary movements, and distressing changes in feelings of self.”
The subjects in the study were not new to meditation. Nearly half of them had logged more than ten thousand hours representing an array of traditions and styles.
Before diving into the research, Britton was an avid meditator herself and almost didn’t want to believe the results she was seeing. When she replicated the study, however—and when other researchers did as well—the pattern was consistent.
There was at least one more striking observation: individuals who regularly meditated more than thirty minutes a day reported sleeping better than those in the control group, but this self-reporting was erroneous.
When measured at a sleep lab, they actually slept worse than those who didn’t meditate. “Meditate for ten minutes a day and be less rested” isn’t a headline you’ll see on a subway ad for an app. But that’s the reality for many people who swear by these common tools.
Britton’s study wasn’t exclusive to the world of meditation apps. I found it because there are very few other studies about the effects of meditation at all.
The limited studies cited by Meditation, Inc. are rarely published in peer-reviewed journals. In some cases, the researchers are employed by the companies that then distribute the favorable results. It’s a lot like tobacco companies sponsoring studies that demonstrate how nicotine actually isn’t that bad for you.
So should you blindly trust these companies? Should you give them access to your personal data, on top of your daily attention and monthly subscription fee?
Hey, if commercialized meditation works for you, that’s awesome. But …
- Don’t expect an app to change your life
- Do expect any positive effects to be placebo outcomes
- If you have existing mental or physical health issues, be very careful about using these apps
- Understand that the companies that run Meditation, Inc. are for-profit corporations with the goal of rewarding their investors, not changing the world (at least not for anyone other than those investors)
So if that doesn’t sound great, maybe you should take another look before diving in. Or maybe you could just not go down this road in the first place.
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