I’m not a doctor, but it is my understanding that meditation, drugs and sleep deprivation all make psychosis more likely.
There’s this idea that long hours of meditation can trigger a psychotic episode but that short sessions don’t. While it is true that longer hours carry higher risk, I rarely meditated even one full hour in a single day. I have meditated three hours in one day only once, and that was long after the events in this narrative. For me, psychosis happened because I entered wild territory before I had cultivated the wisdom to navigate it safely. I think what really matters is altered states of consciousness + insight, relative to wisdom. How long it takes to cultivate concentration, insight and wisdom varies wildly from person to person.
The most surefire way to avoid meditation-induced psychosis is to not meditate at all. If you do meditate, I’ve heard doing more metta and samatha relative to vipassana and kasina reduces the risk of frying yourself. So does going slow, taking it easy, and integrating the insights gradually. Joining a healthy non-culty well-established community of traditional practitioners probably helps too. If you do notice you’re going off the rails, then stop meditating and do something mindless instead, like going for a run or playing addictive videogames.
Finally, if none of that works and you notice yourself continue losing your grip on reality, don’t do anything drastic. Just act normal until you re-stabilize. You can integrate the insights after you’ve re-grounded yourself.
I’m not a doctor, but it is my understanding that meditation, drugs and sleep deprivation all make psychosis more likely.
There’s this idea that long hours of meditation can trigger a psychotic episode but that short sessions don’t. While it is true that longer hours carry higher risk, I rarely meditated even one full hour in a single day. I have meditated three hours in one day only once, and that was long after the events in this narrative. For me, psychosis happened because I entered wild territory before I had cultivated the wisdom to navigate it safely. I think what really matters is altered states of consciousness + insight, relative to wisdom. How long it takes to cultivate concentration, insight and wisdom varies wildly from person to person.
The most surefire way to avoid meditation-induced psychosis is to not meditate at all. If you do meditate, I’ve heard doing more metta and samatha relative to vipassana and kasina reduces the risk of frying yourself. So does going slow, taking it easy, and integrating the insights gradually. Joining a healthy non-culty well-established community of traditional practitioners probably helps too. If you do notice you’re going off the rails, then stop meditating and do something mindless instead, like going for a run or playing addictive videogames.
Finally, if none of that works and you notice yourself continue losing your grip on reality, don’t do anything drastic. Just act normal until you re-stabilize. You can integrate the insights after you’ve re-grounded yourself.