You Need to Empty Your Mind Completely
This is probably the biggest myth stopping people from trying meditation. Meditating isn’t about clearing your mind. It is the process of acknowledging when you get distracted, and simply bringing your mind back to your point of focus, like a mantra, your breath, or the voice of the person guiding you. Think of meditation like training a puppy – you don’t expect it to sit perfectly still for hours on day one. This might happen 20 time in 1 minute and in another session it may only be once. What’s important is to not get frustrated or annoyed at yourself, or feel like you’re failing. It’s completely normal to get sidetracked, so instead create a friendly relationship with distractions when they come. Research from Harvard Medical School shows that the scans still detected changes in the subjects’ brain activation patterns from the beginning to the end of the study, the first time such a change — in a part of the brain called the amygdala — had been detected. Your wandering mind isn’t a bug – it’s a feature of being human.
Meditation Is Just About Breathing
If you’ve ever tried to focus on your breath and found it mind-numbingly boring, you’re not alone. Many people think that meditation is focusing on your breath. As I explain to my students on my 200 hours yoga teacher training course, this is actually quite an advanced form of meditation, and not one I recommend for beginners. Breathing is such a natural and automatic process that most beginners find it ‘boring’ and ‘hard’ to meditate on their breath. There’s a whole buffet of meditation techniques out there. Instead, find a type of meditation with more stimulus, for example using meditation beads, your fingers, a mantra, metta meditation, a visualization or body scan. Recent research from Mount Sinai shows that participants were self-reported novice meditators prior to the study and completed a five-minute audio-guided instruction (baseline) followed by 10 minutes of audio-guided “loving kindness” meditation. Loving kindness meditation is a specific type of meditative practice that involves focusing attention on thoughts of well-being for oneself and others. Different strokes for different folks, as they say.
Meditation Will Instantly Make You Feel Calm and Happy
Here’s a reality check that might surprise you. Meditation practiced regularly can help you feel better long term. But during meditation and right after, you may not actually feel happy. Sometimes, during meditation, you finally face the thoughts and feelings that you have been avoiding. It’s like cleaning out your garage – things get messier before they get organized. And those can be difficult. But, this is actually a good thing! You can learn to work with these thoughts and feelings through meditation. Over time, this will help you find relief from your troubles. A 2020 review examining 83 studies found that about 8 percent of participants had a negative effect from practicing meditation, which is similar to the percentage reported for psychological therapies. The most commonly reported negative effects were anxiety and depression. So if you don’t feel like a zen master after your first session, that’s completely normal.
You Must Sit in Lotus Position for Hours
Pop culture has done meditation dirty with all those images of people sitting cross-legged on mountaintops. When popular media shows people meditating they make it seem like you have to sit on the floor for hours to meditate. But, that’s not true. Actually, you can start small. Take 30 seconds a day and devote it to meditation. You can meditate in a chair, lying down, or even walking. Recent research shows that just 10 minutes of daily mindfulness via a free app can improve mental well-being, reduce depression and anxiety, and motivate healthier lifestyle habits, with benefits lasting beyond the initial 30-day practice period. The key is consistency, not marathon sessions. Once you get into the routine, you can increase it and meditate longer if that feels good to you. Think of it like exercise – a 10-minute walk is infinitely better than planning a 2-hour gym session that never happens.
Only Spiritual or Religious People Can Meditate
This myth keeps a lot of practical, down-to-earth people away from meditation. However, mindfulness is not a religious practice. While meditation has roots in various spiritual traditions, modern research focuses on its secular benefits. Researchers using intracranial electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings from deep within the brain found that meditation led to changes in activity in the amygdala and hippocampus, key brain regions involved in emotional regulation and memory. The study, conducted by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published Tuesday, February 4, in PNAS, may help explain the positive impact these practices have and could contribute to the development of meditation-based approaches for improving memory and emotional regulation. Major corporations like Google, Apple, and Goldman Sachs now offer meditation programs to their employees. According to the National Health Interview Survey, an annual nationally representative survey, the percentage of U.S. adults who practiced meditation more than doubled between 2002 and 2022, from 7.5 to 17.3 percent. You don’t need to burn incense or chant Sanskrit – you just need five minutes and an open mind.
Meditation Is Always Safe and Harmless
This is a dangerous myth that the meditation industry doesn’t want you to know about. 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 depersonalisation, and fear or terror. A 2024 NPR investigation found disturbing cases where Psychosis is really common. So [are] hallucinations, physical pain, like electrical zaps going up and down their bodies. A 2022 study, using a sample of 953 people in the US who meditated regularly, showed that over 10% of participants experienced adverse effects which had a significant negative impact on their everyday life and lasted for at least one month. Research also found that adverse effects can happen to people without previous mental health problems, to those who have only had a moderate exposure to meditation and they can lead to long-lasting symptoms. This doesn’t mean meditation is bad, but it means informed consent matters.
Meditation Apps Are Just as Good as In-Person Instruction
The booming meditation app industry wants you to believe their product is all you need. It’s also big business: in 2015, this growing industry made nearly USD 1 billion. The money comes from speaking engagements, workshops, books, as well as apps meant to guide you through the process. The popular Headspace app claims 70 million downloads; the #1 meditation app, Calm, over 150 million! But here’s the reality check: When deployed in the context of a study, a quarter of participants abandon them during the study itself. (This number is similar to what is seen with mental health apps in general.) The dropout can be partly avoided by paying the participant, but it’s unlikely that Headspace will start paying its customers to continue using the app. Even worse, Outside of research projects in which people are told to use a meditation app, the numbers are even worse. Thousands of people who chose to get a one-year membership to the Calm app were followed in time, and over half of them had abandoned the app within a year. Apps can be a great starting point, but they’re like learning to drive from a YouTube video – you might pick up the basics, but you’ll miss the nuances that matter.
More Meditation Is Always Better
If some meditation is good, then more must be better, right? Wrong. So we’ve interviewed several experts about what meditation does to the brain and one of the foremost experts we spoke to said it’s a bit like a stimulant. So having lots of coffee or too much of any stimulants can end up having the opposite effect where instead of doing something good for you, it starts doing something bad, and it can begin to feel a little bit addictive. But there are limits to what the scientific community knows about the human brain and how and why it works in certain ways. Research shows that Meditators with high levels of repetitive negative thinking and those who only engage in deconstructive meditation were more likely to report unpleasant side effects. Adverse effects were less frequently reported in women and religious meditators. Meditation also has an addictive potential as it both offers biochemical rewards and socially acceptable avenues for escapism (like internet use, social media, substance abuse). Like chocolate cake, moderation is key.
Scientific Evidence Overwhelmingly Supports All Meditation Claims
The meditation hype machine has been working overtime, but the science is more nuanced than the headlines suggest. In an article released in Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15 prominent psychologists and cognitive scientists caution that despite its popularity and supposed benefits, scientific data on mindfulness are woefully lacking. Many of the studies on mindfulness and meditation, the authors wrote, are poorly designed—compromised by inconsistent definitions of what mindfulness actually is, and often void of a control group to rule out the placebo effect. The new paper cites a 2015 review published in American Psychologist reporting that only around 9 percent of research into mindfulness-based interventions has been tested in clinical trials that included a control group. Even Jon Kabat-Zinn, the father of mindfulness in the West, admitted that “90% of the research [into the positive impacts] is subpar”. Harvard researcher Gaëlle Desbordes puts it bluntly: “But the effects are by no means earth-shattering,” Desbordes said. “We’re talking about moderate effect size, on par with other treatments, not better.”
Meditation Works the Same Way for Everyone
One size fits all? Not when it comes to meditation. Given this universalist framework, it is perhaps not surprising that mindfulness researchers have generally turned a blind eye to the fact that individuals react differently to meditation techniques – and that these reactions may not always be positive. Research reveals that The early studies showed that, when compared with a treatment-as-usual (TAU) group, mindfulness led to lower relapse rates for those with three or more episodes of depression. However, it increased the likelihood of relapse in individuals with two or fewer depressive episodes. A massive study of over 8,000 children found that mindfulness failed to improve the mental wellbeing of children compared to a control group, and may even have had detrimental effects on those who were at risk of mental health problems. There also seems to be a critical moderation of the effects of meditation according to individual differences. In one meta-analysis from 2022, involving a total of 7782 participants, the researchers found that a higher baseline level of What works for your yoga-loving friend might not work for you, and that’s perfectly okay.
You’re Failing If Your Mind Wanders
Here’s the plot twist that changes everything: mind-wandering isn’t meditation failure – it’s meditation success. Whether it’s thoughts that come into your head, a sound or bodily sensation, we are cognitively programed to notice distractions and thoughts. Meditating isn’t about clearing your mind. Every time you notice your mind has wandered and gently bring it back, you’re actually strengthening your attention muscle. I tell my students to smile each time it happens:-) The process of acknowledging distractions and bringing your attention back each time, is what’s going to make meditation easier as you keep practicing it. Ultimately, meditation is a practice that takes time to learn. You can’t expect to be good at it right away. It’s a new skill and takes. Just like playing the piano, you can’t expect to be an expert at mediation on your first try. So, manage your expectations and accept that it may be challenging at first. Think of it like going to the gym – you don’t judge your workout by how many times you had to rest between sets; you celebrate the fact that you showed up and did the work.
The truth about meditation is messier and more human than the perfectly curated Instagram posts would have you believe. It’s not a magic bullet, it’s not always pleasant, and it definitely doesn’t work the same way for everyone. But maybe that’s exactly why it’s worth exploring – not as a quick fix, but as a practice that meets you where you are, wandering mind and all. What would you have guessed about your own meditation journey now that you know the real story?
