Yoga, mindfulness, meditation, breathwork, and other practices are gaining in popularity due to their potential to improve health and well-being. The effects of these practices are mostly positive and occasionally transformational, yet they are known to sometimes be associated with challenging altered states of consciousness. New research by a team including investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, reveals that altered states of consciousness associated with meditation practice are far more common than expected.
Although many people reported positive outcomes, that were sometimes even considered transformational, from these experiences, for a substantial minority the experiences were negative. The results are published in the journal Mindfulness . With more people engaging in mindfulness, meditation, and other contemplative and mind-body practices, we thought that altered states and their effects might be common among the general population.
We conducted a series of international surveys to investigate and indeed found that such experiences were widespread." Matthew D. Sacchet, PhD, senior author, director of the Meditation Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School "Altered states were most often followed by positive, and sometimes even transformational effects on wellbeing," Sacchet adds.
" With that said negative effects on we.