Frontiers in Psychology
October 24, 2025
Elizaveta Solomonova, Jared R. Lindahl, Ian Gold et al.
1 citation
Delusional ideation is characteristic of psychopathology (e.g., psychosis, bipolar disorder) and is also found among the general population. Contemporary case studies have documented delusional ideation as a feature of meditation-induced psychosis, and Buddhist literature on the side effects and adverse effects of meditation also includes discussion of transient experiences that could be...
Journal of Contemplative Studies
July 23, 2025
Roman Palitsky, David J. Cooper, Jared R. Lindahl et al.
10 citations
Contemporary Buddhist meditators in the West are likely to find themselves engaged in practices with rich associations with both religious and scientific worldviews. Meditation-related challenges can provoke existential concerns that make unexplored relationships between religious and scientific worldviews more important and explicit for Western Buddhist meditators, who may turn to both...
Journal of Contemplative Studies
July 23, 2025
Jared R. Lindahl
Nan Shepherd (1893–1981) was a Scottish novelist, poet, educator, and mountaineer. Her primary work of nonfiction, The Living Mountain, concerns the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. More than a work of natural and cultural history, in this book Shepherd also recounts engaging in intentional practices for cultivating attention and sense perception. These practices culminate in states of...
Contemporary Buddhism
April 22, 2025
Nicholas K. Canby, Jared R. Lindahl, David J. Cooper et al.
1 citation
Although meditation is often treated as an individual practice, meditation teachers can play an important role. Drawing on the mixed-methods dataset of the Varieties of Contemplative Experience project, this paper examines the role of meditation teachers and their impacts on Western practitioners who are navigating meditation-related challenges. Quantitative and qualitative results from 68...
PLoS One
2025
Nicholas K. Canby, Elizabeth A Cosby, Roman Palitsky et al.
10 citations
Within mindfulness-based programs (MBPs), mixed results have been found for the role of childhood trauma as a moderator of depression outcomes. Furthermore, childhood trauma and PTSD symptoms have been identified as possible risk factors for the occurrence of meditation-related adverse effects (MRAE). The present research examined multiple forms of childhood trauma and PTSD symptoms as...
Consciousness and Cognition
March 1, 2024
Nicholas K. Canby, Jared R. Lindahl, Willoughby B. Britton et al.
11 citations
Mystical experience, non-dual awareness, selflessness, self-transcendent experience, and ego-dissolution have become increasingly prominent constructs in meditation and psychedelic research. However, these constructs and their measures tend to be highly overlapping, imprecise, and poorly integrated with similar pathological experiences. The present study seeks to clarify the common factors...
Transcultural Psychiatry
August 1, 2023
Jared R. Lindahl, Roman Palitsky, David J Cooper et al.
Previous research has shown that worldviews can serve as a coping response to periods of difficulty or struggle, and worldviews can also change on account of difficulty. This paper investigates the impacts worldviews have on the nature and trajectory of meditation-related challenges, as well as how worldviews change or are impacted by such challenges. The context of meditation-related...
Religions
November 24, 2021
David J. Cooper, Jared R. Lindahl, Roman Palitsky et al.
20 citations
There are numerous historical and textual references to energy-like somatic experiences (ELSEs) from religious traditions, and even a few psychological studies that have documented related phenomena. However, ELSEs remain an understudied effect of meditation in contemporary research. Based upon narratives from a large qualitative sample of Buddhist meditators in the West reporting...
Frontiers in Psychology
November 22, 2021
Willoughby B. Britton, Gaelle Desbordes, Rebecca L. Acabchuk et al.
77 citations
Self-related processes (SRPs) have been theorized as key mechanisms of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), but the evidence supporting these theories is currently unclear. This evidence map introduces a comprehensive framework for different types of SRPs, and how they are theorized to function as mechanisms of MBIs (target identification). The evidence map then assesses SRP target...
Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science
May 18, 2021
Willoughby B. Britton, Jared R. Lindahl, David J. C. Cooper et al.
Research on the adverse effects of mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) has been sparse and hindered by methodological imprecision. The 44-item Meditation Experiences Interview (MedEx-I) was used by an independent assessor to measure meditation-related side effects (MRSEs) following three variants of an 8-week program of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (n = 96). Each item was queried for...
Frontiers in Psychology
July 29, 2020
Jared R. Lindahl, D. James Cooper, Nathan E. Fisher et al.
2 citations
Studies in the psychology and phenomenology of religious experience have long acknowledged similarities with various forms of psychopathology. Consequently, it has been important for religious practitioners and mental health professionals to establish criteria by which religious, spiritual, or mystical experiences can be differentiated from psychopathological experiences. Many previous attempts...
August 18, 2017
Jared R. Lindahl
A qualitative study of Western practitioners of Buddhist meditation investigated unexpected, challenging, difficult, and distressing experiences. This paper reports on a subset of 12 practitioners within Tibetan Vajrayāna lineages who described energy flowing through their body, knots of pain, pressure or tension, and/or concurrent emotional changes. In some cases, somatic changes were...
PLoS One
May 24, 2017
Jared R. Lindahl, Nathan E. Fisher, David J. Cooper et al.
468 citations
Buddhist-derived meditation practices are currently being employed as a popular form of health promotion. While meditation programs draw inspiration from Buddhist textual sources for the benefits of meditation, these sources also acknowledge a wide range of other effects beyond health-related outcomes. The Varieties of Contemplative Experience study investigates meditation-related experiences...
Frontiers in Psychology
2014
Jared R. Lindahl, Christopher T. Kaplan, Evan M. Winget et al.
123 citations
The scientific study of Buddhist meditation has proceeded without much attention to Buddhist literature that details the range of psychological and physiological changes thought to occur during meditation. This paper presents reports of various meditation-induced light experiences derived from American Buddhist practitioners. The reports of light experiences are classified into two main types:...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
2014
Willoughby B. Britton, Jared R. Lindahl, B Rael Cahn et al.
Buddhist meditation practices have become a topic of widespread interest in both science and medicine. Traditional Buddhist formulations describe meditation as a state of relaxed alertness that must guard against both excessive hyperarousal (restlessness) and excessive hypoarousal (drowsiness, sleep). Modern applications of meditation have emphasized the hypoarousing and relaxing effects...
Tibetan Ritual
December 8, 2009
Jared R Lindahl
Abstract Despite the obvious influence of Tibetan Buddhism upon the religious landscape of Mongolia, Mongolian Buddhism is not simply Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia, just as Tibetan Buddhism is not simply Indian Buddhism in Tibet. Previous scholarship on the ritual manuals that engage Mongolia’s local deities has tended to consider these rituals as instances of the corruption of Buddhism by...