The FitMind Podcast
Brown neuroscientist Dr. Willoughby Britton talks about the potential mental health problems and disorders that may result from meditation practice and how to cope with them.
Dr. Willoughby Britton is currently the Director of Brown's Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, studying the neurocognitive effects of mindfulness-based interventions for mood and anxiety disorders. She has research service awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
As a clinician, Dr. Britton has been trained as an instructor in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and has taught mindfulness to both clinical and non-clinical populations, as well as in federally-funded clinical trials. She also runs an organization called Cheetah House, a non-profit that supports meditators in distress.
In this episode, we discuss the potential dark sides of meditation practice. In a western world where meditation has been taken out of eastern traditions and spread widely in a secular context, we need to be pragmatic and aware of the risks. Dr. Britton's research has demonstrated that some meditators experience adverse side effects as a result of their practice, and she helps us understand how to avoid such pitfalls. For example, she talks about the specific meditation techniques one should employ and also avoid if they have a history of trauma.
Dr. Britton's work is important because it challenges dogma and seeks to help a minority group of meditators who are experiencing some life-threatening adverse phenomena. And while she admits that there's much more research to be done, her early findings are both fascinating and essential knowledge for any meditator.
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