#705: Dr. Willoughby Britton — The Hidden Risks of Meditation, Overlaps with Psychedelic Risks, Harm Reduction Strategies, How to Choose a Retreat, Near-Death Experiences, and More

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4:10 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And then also. Now it is time. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endocellant. S

4:33 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, and it is my pleasure today to have Will be Britton PhD on the podcast. She is a clinical psychologist and associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University Medical School, and the director of Brown's Clinical and Effective Neuroscience Laboratory. And that is Affective with an A. Her clinical neuroscience research investigates the effects of contemplative practices. i.e. meditation, or certainly one example being meditation, on the brain and body in the treatment of mood disorders, trauma, and other conditions. She is especially interested in which practices are best or worst suited for which types of people or conditions and why. She is probably best known for her research on adverse effects. why they happen and how to mitigate them. And we'll be doing a very deep dive on this, certainly. Dr. Britton is the founder of Cheetah House, as in the large and very fast Cat Cheetah, a nonprofit organization that provides evidence based information and support for meditators in distress as well as meditation safety trainings to providers and organizations. You can find Cheetah House on Twitter at Cheetah HouseOr, Facebook you can find at CheetahHouse.org and on Instagram at cheetah.house.

5:51 Doctor Britton. Thank you for making the time today. Nice to see you. Thank you so much for having me. There are many reasons that I wanted to have a conversation with you and one certainly was due to my own experience at a silent retreat and having a flooding of traumatic memories and everything that that led to. It was

6:11 overwhelming to an extent that I could not have imagined. secondly is a mutual acquaintance. I won't mention his name because he's one of the more private people in the world, so I would always want to double check. had suggested that we talk because there might be some mapping. Or some similarities at least between meditation related adverse

6:33 events and how symptoms present, some of the dissociation, et cetera, that you can observe in some people and some of the adverse effects that you can see some persistent effects after psychedelic use. So Eventually we'll get to that, but let's start at the beginning, or at least with the Genesis story of sorts. How did you first become interested in meditation?

6:58 So I think like many people, I had a life crisis that Precipitated the need for something really different in my life. Она в май чалхуд френс. committed suicide when I was in college. The

7:12 Summer between my junior and senior year. And It was devastating and completely Disregulating to see a person just disappear from the world. Like it wasn't in my repertoire of possibilities that somebody could just not

7:29 be there anymore. So I ha you know Probably diagnosable PTSD at that point. And I really didn't wanna Take medication. I was only twenty.

7:39 My dad sent me a path with heart. By Jack Hornfield. And That became my Bible for the next probably decade. And so for those of you who don't know

7:50 Uh, Jack Hornfield's a very famous meditation teacher, and he's written many books, and this particular one. like many of them start off with just what the mind can do and how to work with it. And it just, you know, it was very practical way to manage all of the emotions that were happening. And it was great because it was allowing them to be there too. It wasn't suppressing them. Ironically that

8:14 particular book that he wrote. I only got about halfway through it because the whole second half I just like could not relate to because it was like the spiritual roller coaster and like Kundalini Awakenings. And I was like, I don't know what that is. So I'll just put that down. Just take what you need, whatever. And then That came back. Fast forward fifteen years, I was like, Oh, right. That second half of that book. Let me go back and read that. Yeah.

8:39 But I'm getting ahead of myself. So Going into graduate school, I was also very, very interested in consciousness always. And always interested in Just what are we doing here? What's going on? What's looking out of my eyes and like just

8:55 Very curious. And so that was already happening, and then I had this This experience and I it kind of culminated in my graduate career looking at Alter states of consciousness.

9:08 And a clinical psychology program at the University of Arizona, which happens to be At the time the only place in the world that had a consciousness study center. So I was Doing that and actually

9:22 My sort of professional life. I actually studied near death experiences for my master's thesis and my own personal trauma and meditation. Practice was Something I was doing. А май першому партнер в моршип.

9:38 But I think at some point during graduate school, like those two lives were so divided that it I needed to combine them just to be like an integrated human being. And so for my dissertation, I did a study on the effects of mindfulness training. On sleep. I was working in a sleep lab and sleep is illegal, altered state of consciousness, and it's linked with every type of possible health

10:04 Issue. And so if you want to study altered states of consciousness, it's a good one to study because it's not like psychedelics that get banned. You know, it's everyone does it, happens every day. Hard to ban sleep. Yeah. So it was a good one. It was a good one to choose. And you know, at the time, this is two th around two thousand There really wasn't Great research. A lot of the meditation

10:27 Research was on self reports. There wasn't a lot of brain data. available and so I was going to be one of the first people to Record overnight sleep poly somnography, so this is brain based sleep. And prove that meditation was improving sleep, because of course it was. I mean, it's relaxing, you know, it's et cetera.

10:48 So that was my dissertation. And I spent like two hundred nights watching people sleep. And at the end of the day. The hypothesis was not at all what I expected. So we actually found

11:04 That no matter How you measured arousal, cortical arousal, brain arousal. Meditation was associated with increasing it, not decreasing it. So it was causing insomnia in people. And we looked at Percentage of slow wave sleep that went down. We went looked at

11:21 how fast the brainwaves those went up. And the correlation was With The amount of practice was. So like no matter where you went.

11:31 There it was. And this is my first confession is that I didn't publish the data. You know, I was like an evangelist for meditation, because I this is something that had really helped me. And I really wanted to like use my science and my position as a scientist to promote this thing. And so I didn't publish the data. At some point when I was coming I came to Brown to do my residency Couple years later I was on a meditation retreat and I mentioned

11:59 the data that I had found, which is basically that it was causing cortical arousal and Insomnia And the meditation teacher sort of chastised me and said I don't know why all you clinical psychologists are always trying to make meditation into a relaxation technique. Everyone knows that if you meditate enough, you stop sleeping. And I was like Bulletin.

12:20 You know, yeah. And so that was kind of like a wake up call, literally. And I thought okay, well What other assumptions are we making? I was definitely pretty emblematic of a lot of

12:34 people who go into meditation research or the average meditator, which is like I didn't really know my Buddhism. I didn't really know my history. I just kind of signed up for whatever was around and believed everything that people said and the way that it was marketed as a sort of health promotion. Tonic?

12:52 I believed all that. And I didn't do my homework, which is pretty terrible as A meditation researcher. And so I was like, Okay, it looks like I need to Do some history homework.

13:04 And really look at the background. of what kinds of assumptions we're making as health providers and like really look at the translation process of how these Practices, like where they came from. What kinds of changes they made, what was the journey like

13:19 To get here into the West. And really unpack that process. And then the second question was What other Little

13:28 nuggets of knowledge do these meditation teachers have? That They're not telling us. And there's a follow-on part of the story, which is when I came to Brown. To do my clinical residency, you have to do a a year of internship.

13:46 To see clients basically to get your license. I worked at an inpatient psychiatric hospital and during that one year there were two yogis who came off retreat Completely psychotic.

13:59 And I thought like wow, two in one year is Kind of a lot. Seemed like a lot to me. So I went back to the same teacher. And I said, Well, have you ever seen this before?

14:10 And I remember like distinctly that there was no actual verbal reaction. But there was a This look of like Oh shit. And I was like, Oh wow, like there is a story here. There is a knowledge that this can happen.

14:27 And meditation teachers are sitting on this Just a ton of information that needs to be mined. And as a meditation researcher, I was like, okay, we need to start asking these questions. So That Whole story is the beginning of The varieties of contemplative experience.

14:45 Study. Which was The simplest study that I've ever done, the hardest but simplest. And that it was basically just going to meditation centers and teachers and saying What types of challenges have you observed in your students?

15:00 How do you make sense of them? Like what are they? How do you interpret them? And then very practically, what do you do about them? Very straightforward. set of questions and

15:12 That took ten years. It's three thousand pages of qualitative data. And I I don't even know how many papers we've written. We're still writing papers. Based on that data. I think we're like over ten now. It's really Just

15:27 A wormhole. Which we're gonna go down together. Oh, we are gonna go arm in arm down the wormhole. So let me pause for a second. I wanna make a promise to folks and I'll give you a heads up also. We will come back to the near death experiences. I'm gonna leave that as a Scooby Snack at the end for people. So I do wanna talk about that. However I want to dig into the sleep for one second. If people stop sleeping Period, full stop. Eventually they die. So The restorative

15:56 functions of sleep as it is still poorly understood, but are critical to human functioning and survival. So how would you explain If it is indeed true that if people meditate enough, they kind of stop sleeping or they start sleeping very minimally. How would you explain that? Is it that the meditation practice itself Provokes.

16:16 A state that is restorative and therefore The sleep is less necessary. Or is there something else that you would put as the front runner for explaining that? We can point readers to various papers. There is a paper that was called

16:33 Awakening is not a metaphor. I had to fight hard to keep that title. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. But it's a it's a review of Different studies across different types of methodologies looking at how meditation affects The awake sleep system. It's not as straightforward as

16:52 You stop sleeping or you sleep less. It's going to be dependent on many factors. And I will say that. In the study that I was just talking about, my dissertation study We found A non monotonic, nonlinear relationship. So

17:08 People who are meditating less than half an hour. And less than every day. They actually had an increase in Sleep. Quality.

17:20 But people who are meditating more than that, that's when it sort of switched and turned into that they were prone to being more awake, more insomnia, more cortical arousals. So it's a sort of biphasic, nonlinear relationship. So Just a recap, it's not gonna give you insomnia. Probably.

17:39 Automatically. Yeah. Yeah. Because when we talk about meditation, it's like oh you do meditation. It's kinda like, oh you do sports or you do exercise. It's like well there are a million different parameters and types and I think you know, one of the other papers that I wrote which is called Can mindfulness be too much of a good thing? Introduces this idea of At a small amount or an optimal amount. Can do exactly what the hype and the promotions and the advertising says. Like there is a lot of truth in the advertising. And they're

18:07 Positive Reports. But there's also There's another side of the story which often comes with, you know, sort of higher doses. So One of the ways to understand

18:18 This particular finding and actually a a lot of the other ones that are on the hyper arousal Spectrum. would be if you think about meditation as A Attention enhancing

18:32 Product. It gets often compared with or sort of marketed alongside Ritalin and midaphanil and Coffee and caffeine and you know all these stimulants that help Attention.

18:47 And so if you think about Meditation as one of those. I mean think about what happens when you're virtual medafinyl. Which is an anti narcolepsy drug for people who don't recognize it. Yeah, if you think about any of the Consequences. And many of us have personal experience with a lot of these substances taking too many of them. Just drink too much coffee, what happens? You have a panic attack and you can't sleep. You take amphetamines or cocaine or, you know, whatever, whatever the stimulant is.

19:16 You take enough of it. And it's going to be On the fear spectrum. And some of them, if you take enough of that, it's gonna be on the psychosis spectrum, especially if you have sort of tendencies in that direction. So It doesn't seem like a huge leap.

19:31 To think that like here's another attention enhancing product that With certain people and certain types of doses it's gonna lead to a hyper arousal syndrome. And that's pretty much exactly what we're seeing. So that is one of the potential mechanisms. So what I might do for folks who just don't have the Personal context on me that I alluded to earlier is I'll tell

19:54 If it's okay with you. A bit of my story, which in some ways led to this conversation. And certainly it sounds like based on what we were discussing before recording that people have mentioned this to you. And it's been a match made for many reasons. So I wanna give folks sort of a contrast By giving present day and then the story of what happened to me at my silence retreat, which was a Vipassana retreat.

20:18 So if we look at for instance the last two weeks, I have meditated twice a day. twenty minutes a day, very straightforward, transcendental meditation. And there's lots of wacky weird stuff if you go deep enough and weird enough with TM. But if you're taking it for The off the shelf offering. and following the basic guidelines, I find it incredibly therapeutic. And I find also

20:42 Difficult to disambiguate. I haven't had any caffeine whatsoever in two weeks. So the combination of those two, for I suppose a lot of sensible reasons. Seems to really help. I've been getting some of the best sleep in the last ten years, probably in the last one or two weeks. I'm sure the abstinence from coffee and caffeine, no small part of that. And I've seen no adverse events whatsoever. And I've done a lot of TM over the years.

21:08 and other types of meditation. But T M I find to be the easiest Life raft of sorts. However, if we flashback, and this sort of alludes to the paracelsis, the dose makes the poison. I approached my meditation retreat and this was at Spirit Rock, which is a beautiful, beautiful facility. beautiful campus really run by excellent people. And ended up being very fortunate that the author of the book you mentioned, A Path with Heart, that Jack Cornfield was at Spirit Rock, he ended up being the person who

21:41 Effectively. triaged and helped address the situation I found myself in ultimately, but I approached the silent retreat with the wrong mindset and the wrong set of expectations. I thought to myself, I've done lots of meditation. If you add up all the time that I've meditated, it's quite a bit. I've spent time by myself, and I've also done A, B, C, D, and E. really not recognizing that They are too different, for me at least.

22:07 And for many people, two different species of experience. And since I had heard that it was the last time Jack would be leading a retreat, I'm not sure if that ended up being the case or not, I decided that I wanted to get absolutely as much out of it as possible. I'd seen benefits from fasting before, I'd seen benefits from lower doses of psychedelics before. So I thought to myself This is probably aggressive. But

22:33 Why don't they combine? All three. And uh that ended up being incredibly problematic, but not immediately. I'd done the fasting, so I fasted going into this week long retreat. And uh then after a few days of establishing my baseline, let's call it three days, I started adding increasing doses daily of Blended, like homogenized.

22:57 Dried Silossipe mushrooms. So people might know these better as magic mushrooms, starting at about a hundred milligrams and then slowly working up to About I wanna say it was six hundred or so milligrams, which is is reasonably high. It's far above what one would consider a microdose. Microdose, let's just call it fifty to a hundred milligrams. And

23:19 Simultaneously I'm having this first experience of being silent. For Effectively the entire day, maybe outside of asking a question or two at a Dharma talk. At night. This is brand new. And what ended up happening, just to jump to the punchline, is

23:37 I was having difficulty with the meditation to begin with. I was very physic uncomfortable. my mind began to accelerate in terms of just rumination, the velocity of thought and Velocity sort of implies a direction. It was more like a ping pong ball bouncing around or a pin ball bouncing around in a machine at increasing speed. sort of nonlinear. exponentially growing speed and it was very uncomfortable.

24:04 And then I want to say around day four. I had this flooding of memories of childhood abuse. And it wasn't just snapshots, it was like being stuck in a fully immersive

24:19 VR experience that was as convincing as this reality whenever I closed my eyes. So whenever I closed my eyes, that's what I saw. It was a re experiencing of this traumatic these traumatic experiences from age two to four. And if people go to Tim dot blog slash trauma, they can listen to a podcast about this and certain modalities that have helped me. But nonetheless, I did not expect this and I was utterly Of stopping it.

24:46 I could not stop it, and this went. Talk about not sleeping anytime I close my eyes. So I couldn't sleep. So now what do you have? You have compounding lack of sleep. And I had never heard of this before. I didn't think this was a possibility. I certainly thought it was A unique experience, unique to me. I should be able to figure this out.

25:08 But eventually got so desperate, I was like, I'm not gonna be able to function. I mean I I am able to navigate my day to day here right now with extreme pain. But I've no confidence I'll be able to go back to normal life and Make decisions, manage my business. Interact in all the ways that are necessary.

25:26 And that's when I set up meeting with Jack. And Thankfully. He had the experience, he has a lot of experience also as a clinical psychologist with cutters, with people who have been abused, with veterans who have lost limbs and have moral injuries and PTSD. He has a lot of mileage with many different patients and clients and meditators.

25:49 So he was able to thank God. Provide a safety net. And provide me with recommendations to clinicians and so on, therapists I could meet to try to address this, but if he had not been there. I shudder to think what would have happened. So That's the story, and ultimately was able to

26:09 sort of pull out of it and Manage life. But not everyone has access to Jack. And The contrast, and I'll shut up in a second, between my day to day over the last two weeks, all upside.

26:23 And that experience. are just black and white. I mean there's there's really no comparison. Interestingly, and I'll add one more thing. I recently spent A weak In isolation, in the wilderness.

26:39 fasting for that entire week. And It was not nearly as challenging, but I did see some similar symptoms, let's say, in terms of that increased speed of the pinball bouncing around in my head, as did another person I was with. So two for two. Without any attempt to meditate. Which raises all sorts of questions, right? So it's hard for me to parse what caused what I experienced.

27:04 But I know that it was terrible. And without Jack I would have been fucked for lack of a better Technical term. How common is that kind of experience, I guess? And certainly feel free to

27:16 Start wherever you'd like or pick that apart in any way that makes sense. But it was a disaster, unmitigated disaster. And I'm very fortunate I had someone like Jack because I had actually spoken With one other Junior teacher at the time.

27:31 And she was unequipped. She was not equipped. Two. handle what was happening. But Jack was.

27:37 Yeah, so many different T Thank you for coming to my TikTok. I mean one is just

27:46 Wow. Wow in so many ways. Like wow that That happened to you. And two that You're talking about it.

27:57 Publicly. That's amazing. So thank you because I think it's gonna be really helpful to a lot of people. Maybe a second Thought is You're definitely not alone.

28:09 You're definitely not the only one. There were probably other people on your retreat that this was happening to, and that In my Work at Cheetah House. I see someone like that. Every day.

28:24 I try to see at least one person every day. I'm seeing someone later today, actually. So This To me is like My bread and butter, I see it all the time, like

28:35 It's so common. But what are the actual percentages is That's where we get into the rabbit hole of research and frequency research, which is actually quite complicated because it's about like, well, what do you mean by this? You know, and like frequent among who. And so it it becomes more complicated. And I guess one other question Is

29:01 Given what I do, that I'm an expert on meditation related challenges and neurobiology. Is there anything that we can talk about that would be useful to you? Do you have any lingering questions that haven't been answered yet or I'll just put that out there. And then the another thing is let's create a public service announcement for People like you because let me tell ya.

29:23 Males eighteen to thirty who think that combining every possible powerful tool all at once to you know break on through to the other side Is a story that I see again over and over and over again. Doesn't always turn out, all you're saying. Uh no, it's more like a risk factor. And so at Cheetah House, we have a program called Letters to My Former Self, where people come on who did stuff like that, and then they're like Honey, let me tell you like what I wish I'd known when I was your age. You tell your former self advice. I would love you to do that.

29:58 Should also be a letter to your future self. So you don't do the same thing again. I do have a couple of questions. And well a few observations and a couple of questions. So Looking back at that experience separately prior to that experience and afterwards, I had a lot of experience with fasting, including extended fasts, and a lot of experience with psychedelics. And that was pre-meditation retreat and certainly post. Based on my last experience

30:25 Over the last three weeks where I was In isolation in the wilderness. Fasting and so on. I tend to weight in this particular case the fasting as a an exacerbating factor more than the microdosing of psychedelics, which is not to recommend to anyone that they combine things on their first meditation retreat. Look, there are lots of meditation retreats. Do it the plain vanilla way first would be my strong recommendation. It's gonna be hard enough, don't worry, would be

30:56 Recommendation number one. There are some people and this is gonna lead to my question, like you've all know Harari who wrote Sapiens, who I've had on the podcast, who does a silent meditation retreat for a month every year, as far as I can tell, and handles it like a champion. It is like a warm bath for his mind. I found it much harder. I'm sure there are people who find it harder. My question is this. What are the not necessarily exclusionary criteria, but what are some of the characteristics or profiles that makes someone more vulnerable or likely to have this type of experience. Because for instance, if you look at classical psychedelics, and we could spend a lot of time defining what that means, but broadly speaking, let's just say with the usual suspects that a lot of people would recognize, let's say LSD, Solocybin, et cetera. There's certainly others. Ayahuasca could be thrown into this for N N D M T.

31:46 that if you have a family history of schizophrenia It is likely a Bad idea. for you to engage with using these things simply because Not to say that it will make you schizophrenic.

31:59 in a lifetime where you would otherwise not become schizophrenic, but it could expedite the onset of symptoms. And there are many documented. So In a case that you have family has de schizophrenia, maybe you should not consume these things. And I'm wondering How you would paint the What the intake form.

32:17 Right, should look like. What does the intake look like for a meditation or treat? So that a facilitator could say You know what? I think maybe You should do twenty minutes a day. Or thirty minutes a day, but not do. Seven days silent because that would be like taking ayahuasca for schizophrenic.

32:34 How would you think about the the things that make it more likely? This is a very natural place to start, which is sort of You know, screening Out. People who shouldn't meditate.

32:45 And now I'm gonna unpack why that's a very difficult thing to do. I conducted a epidemiological study with Vichy Davidson and Simon Goldberg looking at Meditation related adverse effects, how often they happen and risk factors. And so Statistically speaking, there is an increased risk factor. For

33:06 A large range of variables that would be considered Stressors, adversity, so trauma history, psych history. Being a some kind of minority group. You know, whether it's racial minority or sexual orientation minority, something like that.

33:22 is gonna be a chronic stress or And that's going to be You know, heightened The risk For adverse effects.

33:30 And so it's very easy to just sort of well, but those people shouldn't meditate. You know, it's very easy to to kind of do that. Well, first of all. More than ninety percent of people have Exposure to a criterion A stressor, so that would be like almost everyone gets ruled out. Except for the extremely sheltered and privileged, which would be not what we're trying to do with, you know, meditation is just limit it to those people.

33:52 And then in our the varieties of contemplative experience study. We found that a lot of the risk factors that were The most obvious ones to Consider like psych and trauma history. They w didn't know what they were doing, incorrect practice, that kind of thing.

34:11 That none of those actually panned out. To be true. And so in our study Sixty percent of the people who had meditation related challenges Were themselves meditation teachers.

34:24 So they were getting correct. practice instructions, they were meditating correctly, they had good supervision, they had good knowledge about what To do And There were a number of people that did not have psychiatric or trauma.

34:39 Histories. And so While those are risk factors, it doesn't mean that if you Don't have them. that you're safe.

34:48 So The sort of take home message from me is I'm not a big fan of screening people out. The other side of this is that There are a lot of people

35:00 And this might be not as true for psychedelics as it is for meditation, but meditation is being marketed for schizophrenia. For psychosis, for bipolar disorder, for all the things that you might as a retreat manager wanna Red flag.

35:17 It would be just a strange thing to start saying, Oh, you can't Those people can't have access to this technology. And I've gotten letters from people that say like please don't just rule us out. People with what would be considered serious mental illness. So please don't just rule us out because We seem like It would be a bad idea for us. Well let me pause for one second and just say.

35:41 It seems to depend on the type of Meditation we're talking about. Right. For meditating Twenty minutes in the morning. There might be one intake. But for doing a seven day silent.

35:56 retreat there might be a different intake. Mm-hmm. So I don't know if you're able to speak to that. Because those two things had about as much in common for me as like Play with a Hot Wheels car on the top of your kitchen table and like driving an F one car around a hairpin. Right. Like they they there were about they're like, yeah, they both involve cars. Okay. Right. I guess my point is is that I think that

36:20 The action item here is not screening people out as much as being much more informed about how to monitor them closely and how to Have more off ramps. As part of the retreat. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.

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37:48 I wanna give people just so not everyone is like, Oh my god, the next time I meditate is my am I gonna have a psychic implosion and end up in a strait jacket, just to put some numbers to things. I want to read something here and just have you fact check this so people have some numbers on prevalence and also just a a comparative sort of parallel of sorts that we'll spend a little bit of time on. Then I want to talk about Safety training.

38:17 Montering. and off ramps and things like that. So this is from mindfulness exercises dot com, which is pulling from an interview with you with a more clear definition of adverse effects in hand. Willby and her team set out to research the true prevalence of life impacting adverse effects following meditation. The first surprising result was that their epidemiological sample indicated nearly half the US population has meditated at least once. I'm sure that's higher now. Of these people, six to fourteen percent had lasting negative effects. So that's what I wanted to bring up. A number that closely mirrors the adverse effects of psychotherapy, five to thirteen percent.

38:52 Is that Roughly accurate, would you say? Frequency research is very challenging. And so I do think that the epidemiological study is probably the most Valid.

39:03 Research but Somehow that the the data that they're citing is actually from Combining two different studies. So the epidemiological study, the denominator was anyone who's ever meditated even once. So that's like kind of the lowest common denominator. So like

39:19 The lowest possible chance. And within that study, we found that People who had tried meditation even once, half of them would have at least one Negative effect. And it could be extremely brief.

39:33 No big deal. More concerning is that Ten percent so one in ten people who had tried meditation even once. would have a meditation related adverse effect that was re associated with impairment in functioning. And so We can go down the rabbit hole of definitions if you want, but I think that for me, like

39:55 having a negative experience during meditation, which I call negative valence. I don't consider that an adverse effect. I think that if you don't have n some kind of negative experience in your meditation at some point, you're probably sleeping. Because it's not a warm bath for the mind. It can be challenging. So I'm not worried about that part. But I'm more worried about if it has a negative impact on your life and functioning off the cushion, then I'm like, okay, that's when we need to start.

40:21 Talking about whether there's maybe alternatives. And so one in ten is really the number. That Is jumping out of that paper. The other paper, which was a clinical trial that I did, much smaller trial, very selected sample of people who have kind of

40:39 Clinical to subclinical anxiety and depression. That came up with the five to fifteen percent. Which is still, you know, they correlate with each other. What are some things that we can do to risk mitigate in terms of and you can pick whichever makes sense to start with, but training for instructors or

40:59 monitoring. I'm actually pretty interested in the monitoring. I'm interested in all of it. And then Off ramps. What to do if somebody does have a break, I suppose, like I did. I I wouldn't necessarily describe it as a psychotic break, but I felt out of control, right? I felt like I was not able to

41:16 I would not be able to function normally. had I returned to normal life without Some intervention. What can we do to make things safer, I suppose. I think it helps to start with We created a taxonomy of fifty nine categories of meditation related challenges.

41:33 And it wasn't until many years later that That I went through the somatic experiencing trauma training. That I started to actually see a lot of those. Fifty nine categories in terms of trauma symptoms. And in terms of

41:49 Symptoms of the way that the body tends to react to extreme stress. And these are not necessarily So altered states, but things that might be somewhat recognizable to people. So

42:04 One of the ways that I think is the most efficient way because we can train meditation teachers and like I have you know online courses where you're like they have quizzes on the fifty nine categories and you, you know, you there's all this content that they need to learn. But I actually think that the best way to do it is to Train each individual person It'd be like

42:27 Tim, how do you know when you're getting outside of your window of tolerance? How do you know when you're feeling quote unquote out of control? Like what is your indicator for that? When I seem incapable or maybe when I am incapable of stopping very high speed negative rumination. I suppose. It would be like perseverating on

42:49 Either a a real event. Like a memory. Or a perceived threat, like a hypothetical worst case scenario, and I just loop and loop and loop and loop. And I'm furthermore Aware of the looping.

43:05 There's part of me that as the observer that's like Holy shit, I can't believe I seem incapable of stopping this. I know it's not productive. I know it's not helping me. And yet it just goes and goes and goes. That would be My Canary in the coal mine.

43:21 Or maybe a f yeah, flock of canaries in the coal mine. So is there anything that Is an earlier indicator than that before you get there. You know, I would say it's more I've realized which factors can contribute to that. It's something for me that comes on. So this may be a dissatisfying answer, but it's something that Can come on really suddenly.

43:43 But I would say that Over caffeination, lack of sleep. Fasting. There are a handful of things that seem more

43:52 likely to precipitate this type of experience and other things. And it doesn't happen all the time. But I would say Probably if I were to try to back into what I described. I'm sure that it starts With

44:07 And I'm sure it started, I have to imagine, at my Vipassana retreat. With having bouts of this come up and then trying to suppress it. I'm sure that it took some form. Like that.

44:20 I would have to imagine it was something like that. So You know, just Que Pro quo mean I have lots of them, but

44:27 I think my mouth gets dry. It's like an indication of sympathetic activation. Interesting. Yeah. I get really hot. A strong stressor for me is when My visual field starts to get wonky and

44:41 That's when the sort of dissociation sets in. Things get a little spacey and like you're you know, that So If this was a meditation class I would have everyone go around and talk about their own personal indicators. Because

44:56 No matter how much research we do, those indicators are there's gonna be a lot of overlap, but there're also gonna be some individual differences. And really what matters is that the person knows what their indicators are. They're like, My system is stressed. Don't keep doing what you're doing that's making this happen. Let's dial it back. And unfortunately, the response is often like, Well, just keep going, just keep meditating, keep doing whatever you're doing, at some point there's gonna be a breakthrough, but instead

45:25 It's just Gets worse. That is more of the angle that I'm taking is like teaching everybody what their indicator lights are. You don't get in a car and drive until you know like The gas meters here, like this is the tire pressure, like you know, you have these indicator lights and we have them.

45:43 We have indicator lights and we all need to be sort of trained on what they are. Individually. And that will keep you a lot safer when you know where your indicator lights are. I think one of the things that undermines that. is this sort of fascination and romanticization of altered states. And you can think of altered states.

46:04 as a deviation from baseline, a deviation from homeostasis, which is in trauma speak, that is Disregulation. An altered state is not necessarily a good idea for someone who's trying to stay stable. And so just having people be able to track that and okay, like that thing, my indicator light is on. What

46:28 Typically helps that. And go do that. I need to go lift some weights. I need to go. dial batten I'd skip the coffee this afternoon, or like maybe eat something. By the way, the The fasting thing is really interesting.

46:42 We had a lot of information in the varieties project about diet, but we really hadn't done anything with it. And actually, one of my students this year. has just started to delve into the diet. Data. And is finding that It's really making a difference that a lot of people

46:59 have reported that When you go on meditation retreats, because they tend to be vegetarian and they tend to feed you Very light food, sometimes not even there's sometimes there's no dinner. And so You know, it's not fasting so much, but it's definitely like you're going off of your like my personal high fat, high protein diet. Like I I get very unregulated and floaty and and sort of ungrounded when I go on retreats and I really wanna have like

47:27 heavy food. And so A lot of people found that to be a factor. and found that actually eating really high fat Protein meat is A remedy.

47:37 For problems and this is also, you know, recommended within Tibetan medicine and like an old Buddhist text. Textual reports will also report eating meat and heavy foods, oils. Can also be something that can help

47:52 sort of bring people down and more grounded. And When we interviewed the teachers as teachers, which was a second part of the study. There was really not a lot of consensus about like what was a problem, what wasn't a problem, what was a risk factor, what wasn't. But there were two things and one was

48:10 when the person stops sleeping and when the person stops eating. That's when you intervene. So those are the two things that people all teachers mentioned as being something that they worry about. Let me hop in for a second just to mention something that I found in the process of

48:28 Doing homework for this. This was actually in a Harper's piece. About you and your team. And it discussed something that I've also seen Which does not really get discussed, so I'm bringing it up very deliberately.

48:43 Post certain Potent psychedelic experiences. So this is something that I've seen in both well, actually I should say now, I've seen described here. as a adverse effect of Meditation, possibly for some folks. And also I've seen this post psychedelic and this is I'll just read quote Practicing Letting Go of Concepts, one meditator told Britain was sabotaging my mind's ability to lay down new memories and reinforce old memories of simple things like what words mean and colours mean.

49:13 What I'm gonna underline is what's coming next. Meditators also reported diminished emotions, both negative and positive. Quote I had two young children Another meditator said, I couldn't feel anything about them. I went through all the routines, you know, the bedtime routine, getting them ready, and kissing them and all that stuff, but there was no emotional connection. It was like I was dead. This An hedonia, let's call it, which interestingly can also be for some people addressed with psychedelics, but what's less talked about is that it can be initiated.

49:43 in some people by psychedelics, where they come out and they're sort of numb to the world. And people think of the amygdala as this fear center, but it's not exactly a fear center. So maybe you could just speak to this particular manifestation of issue because I've seen it in both camps. There's kind of two different ways that this can happen with meditation and

50:06 And psychedelics with meditation If you look at The Neuroscience and meditation, and there's lots of different kinds, but like we'll just say like concentration practice, you tend to see You know, a down regulation of the limbic system, the amygdala.

50:23 And you know, activation of the prefrontal cortex. So attention system goes up. Don regulates. the limic system. And again, this can be great. Good things. You regulate all your anxiety and depression.

50:36 But if you keep going. then you're gonna see A down regulation of Not just negative emotions, but also positive ones. People forget that like the amygdala's You know, a salien detector for all sorts of things.

50:50 Positive and negative. And you're gonna see if you continue to downregulate your limbic system with meditation. You take it far enough. then you will see a decrease.

51:01 In the intensity of of all emotions. Otherwise known as Anidonia. According to, you know, Obusekari, that could also be something that's could be equanimity, so Depends on what you want. Tomato, tomato. Yeah. Obviously the person who didn't feel anything for her children, that was not her goal. But

51:20 I actually that particular quote that you're reading I read that quote in a conference and a Buddhist scholar like jumped up at the end and said Cutting attachments with, you know, affection with your families is exactly what you're supposed to be doing. And so I was like, Okay, well we need to talk about what your goals are. So thou dost protest too much. With meditation, like there is overlap. So what's interesting about

51:46 That model Prefrontal cortex control over the limbic system. Is that that's also the neuroscience of dissociation. So there are certain forms of meditation that mimic.

51:58 the exact neurobiology of dissociation. So That's one way to end up in this place. The other way, so I call that the low road, because you're just basically just Taking everything down. Getting calmer and calmer and calmer.

52:12 The high road is the one we were talking about earlier where You're training your attention and everything's upregulating and you're getting more and more and more like if thoughts are racing and you're having flooding of traumatic experiences and you're you know everything's getting heightened. And at some point your system's like Wow, this is too much, and you have this.

52:31 beautiful, adaptive, natural Breaker switch. Called dissociation. It'll basically shut down the the limbic system again. And you'll basically end up in that state, the first state that I just talked about, where you have like a strong activation of the prefrontal cortex and a down regulation of the limbic system.

52:50 It's two different roads to the same place. And so what's interesting and sort of the overlap with psychedelics is that. That Too much kind of response that can lead to dissociation, it doesn't always have to be negative. People can have like a euphoric unitive experience where they merge with the universe, or they have just something just ecstatic kind of experience. But their organism is like, that was too intense. That was too much for me. I'm turning on the breaker. And they wake up in the morning and they're like,

53:25 They feel dead. And they spend years trying to recreate. That awesome experience. But you know, they're not really listening to their organism's messages, which is saying, like, that was too intense. Are you listening? There is a very interesting overlap at Cheetah House with people come for help. We see

53:43 The combination of psychedelics and meditation very often A lot of times in this scenario where They go on a meditation retreat. have an ecstatic experience or just a very intense experience, wake up feeling Dead and anodonic.

53:59 And they think I gotta sort of shock the system back into action and they go take a psychedelic. And that just makes things worse because the system's like, I've been trying to tell you that this is too much, and now you're just really pushing the envelope. And we also see the opposite.

54:17 People who have the initial experience on psychedelics. And then they decide, well I'm very dysregulated. And they get told. Bye. Various.

54:27 Authorities. You should go on a meditation retreat or you should meditate. Either way. At least the people who show up at Cheetah House, the combination was not The answer for them. Let me hop in for a second just to

54:39 Ask. A few follow up questions on Retreat specifically. Are there any Intensive retreats.

54:48 That You recommend or extended retreats. And I suppose the broader question is how Can one know. Where to practice.

55:00 And vet properly. Right. If if someone wants to do a meditation or a street. And the reason I ask is for instance with psychedelics, which are still largely underground at this point, even though At some point hopefully there will be entire framework for administering them reasonably safely to people who fit certain criteria.

55:19 If someone finds a facilitator who says, No one under my care has ever had a bad trip, that is a huge red flag. Cause it means they're either deluding themselves, they're lying. Or they're really inexperienced. Those are kind of the only options on the table because you're effectively using nuclear power. Two Change.

55:41 the plasticity of the mind. Of course there are going to be adverse events. Of course there are going to be outliers. And so you want someone who has actually handled those cases. to push my F one analogy. If you go to a racetrack, let's just say, and you're going to a track day. And the track owner says we've never had any accident of any type on our track. That's a bad thing because someone's going to have an accident. You want to make sure they have protocols in place, they have experience, they have the presence of mind to handle it calmly, et cetera, et cetera.

56:12 So I could see that applying also to Vetting Meditation retreats, but putting myself in the position of someone listening to this, I might say, Holy shit. Of the people who've tried meditation once, X percentage have these persistent problems like this seems really, really dangerous. Maybe I just shouldn't meditate.

56:30 To maybe offset that a little bit. Are there retreats that you ever recommend and how can someone vet? If they're considering doing. A retreat.

56:41 A lot of it has to do with matching the goals. To the person, so I don't want to necessarily rule out or recommend any particular retreat across the board. I think that There are certain retreats that are pretty repeat offenders.

57:01 And those are ones that have like high dose, you know. Fifteen hours of meditation a day, no movement practice. Of you see an alternation between walking And sitting and sometimes there's even yoga added. So

57:18 More intense practices. With No movement and also not necessarily Tailored. Feedback from teachers.

57:29 So I would be very careful before going on one of those. And I think just in general there are m So many different options for retreats these days. You can do like an afternoon retreat where it's only a couple hours. Start there. Titrate Up.

57:44 And you can do this at home. You don't even have to necessarily spend the money. You can just Download an app and do that for a day and see how you do, you know, like titrate up and and add a day at a time, rather than signing up for a ten day retreat. This is something I have not mentioned before.

58:00 is that I've done shorter meditation retreats, like two or three days with no issues whatsoever. So I just wanna point that out. The other fine detail that I want to mention, because I think Spirit Rock runs a very Good ship. And I think they're very well formatted and they do have safeguards in place that They

58:18 Explicitly Advise against fasting. Mm-hmm. And I violated that rule. I overrode that.

58:27 Right. And Also added. the psychedelics, which certainly I had not mentioned to anyone until I had already sort of capsized. Yeah.

58:37 This never used to be an issue. But I know that people are doing that. That people are bringing psychedelics on retreats and I think a lot of the retreats They have to manage a lot of people.

58:50 People are already having like challenging experiences. The regular kind of challenging experiences. With meditation. And so to have to manage people who are also taking psychedelics is that's a lot. It's not really fair to a meditation retreat.

59:07 No, it's gonna be invisible to them for the most part. Yeah. I'm sure. Right, it's not gonna be reported. Just like people lie on their medical intakes about the psychiatric medications they're taking if they are wedded to Taking psychedelics with a facilitator. This happens all the time. people sort of misrepresent their health status.

59:26 Because they're so vested in this last Hail Mary Obi-Wan Kenobi or our final hope solution panacea that they see in psychedelics, and I have to imagine that also happens. With Meditation retreats. I should also say I'd love for you to say a bit more about repeat offenders. Are there any other

59:46 Characteristics or format issues that you see producing more problems than others outside of what you already mentioned? So in terms of the retreat or meditation type or in terms of personal risk factors? The retreater meditation type that seemed to produce a higher volume. Of

1:00:05 People with these issues. I would say retreats that recruit or are attracting a certain type of meditator, which by the way, like You fit the bill, like pretty exactly. When I heard the story, I was like, Wow, that's pretty emblematic of Textbook. Yeah.

1:00:24 Young male. Pretty educated. combining all sorts of tools, you know, fairly aggressive We used to joke that one of the risk factors was Delotry. A kind of zealotry, a zeal. So something like that. And so there's a certain kind of almost like military

1:00:44 This is gonna be a really, really hard retreat. Those types of retreats are A little bit more high risk. And I think there's also the combination of the person and the Teacher slash format. One of the things that we found that was really shocking in the varieties of contemplative experience study.

1:01:03 Is that On one hand, we expected to see people who ran into problems as people who Had lots of problems in their lives. But when we actually like looked at the data.

1:01:12 Seventy five percent had graduate degrees, MD, PhDs, JDs. These were like CEOs of major companies. These are like super high achieving people. And we're like, This is so interesting. How do we make sense of that? And we're like, Oh right, being a high achiever is a risk factor. I was just about to say, like the drug addiction in the medical profession is off the charts. Like suicide's off the charts. So It's because these are the kinds of people that you're like, okay, you're gonna sit and follow your breath, and they're like, Okay, like They're the ones that show up early for the meditation and they are the last ones to leave. They follow instructions exactly. They would never modify the instructions for their own. benefit. That would not even occur to them.

1:01:57 Unless they make it more intense. You know, the kinds of people that and this is kind of where trauma comes in. If you've been trained to Scan What are the expectations here? What are the sort of unspoken social rules that I need to

1:02:13 Ace in order to not be punished. If that's like kind of your MO running in the background. Then we have all these people like following instructions exactly, not modifying them, basically listening to an external authority rather than their own internal compass. That's the recipe for disaster. And so if you can interface with really any type of meditation

1:02:37 spiritual system. with maintaining your inner compass That's gonna be a recipe for a much better outcome. Not everybody can do that, and not all systems are tolerant of that. And so

1:02:50 I would also encourage and we've had lots of trainings with meditation centers trying to be able to be able to be more flexible. And so if somebody knows like I need to be able to leave the meditation In the middle, so that I'm not continuing to meditate.

1:03:06 And the meditation retreat manager is like, no, that won't be allowed. You have to stay, if you come, you have to stay for the whole thing. That's not really allowing flexibility. So are there ways that people can titrate the amount of practice that they're getting within a retreat. Is there a way to like Hey, on on Wednesday we'll have burger night for people who need to like increase the like fat intake, you know, that is actually happening now.

1:03:31 The vegetarian diet piece is super interesting. I mean I I don't know if the A cuity is is sufficient as a factor, but it makes me think also With for instance. Some of these conditions that are Let's just say contraindicated for most psychedelic use, schizophrenia.

1:03:47 borderline personality disorder, understanding these are all kind of like word salad things taken from the DSM, which is kind of a big question mark for a lot of reasons. But some of these more for lack of a better term sort of chaotic conditions or contraindicated respond really well to something called metabolic psychiatry, with and Chris Palmer has spoken about this out of Harvard. using high fat, effectively ketogenic diet, but like high fat, moderate protein. Some of these people respond incredibly well. So if you look though at the food served at these meditation retreats, uniformly effectively the exact polar opposite, right, which is kinda interesting. Do you meditate? Do you meditate now, or is that not a practice for you? Ooh, that's a long, long story. All right. Let's do it. Depends on what you mean by meditate. Okay.

1:04:33 So meditation when I first undertook it, you know, with Jack's sort of meditation came from a specific Traditional. And it had a whole bunch of implicit Goals and values that

1:04:48 weren't really clear to me'cause I was just like suffering. And so I thought I'm just gonna do this so I won't feel so much panic and anxiety and Et cetera. And so, you know, I've done

1:05:01 Tens of thousands of hours of meditation. I've been, you know, the expert meditator in many brain imaging studies. Like I've done my time as a Buddhist meditator. But I've started to understand that there's a whole set of implicit values that like I didn't Necessarily choose.

1:05:19 What would be an example? If you don't mind. That The ideal affect or the goal emotion state is more on the calm end of things.

1:05:31 And as a direct descendant of General George S Patton, it's not really in my blood to be calm. So More of a border collie, less of a great day. Yeah. Anyway, there's lots of people who their ideal state is not Calm.

1:05:48 And so There's lots of implicit values and I think that This is just something. as meditation is moving into the West and kind of mixing

1:05:58 We've A lot of different cultures and subcultures and goals and values. Like can these contemplative practices be used? For many different types of goals rather than ones that

1:06:12 We're pre set. As part of a religious practice. And I think that is happening. But For myself.

1:06:19 In particular I have, you know, specific practices that I do that Ага, перміш на фрон. to modify practice

1:06:29 To Not just follow the rules. The way that I did before. and end up somewhere that I didn't want to go, but rather to modify things and make sure that I'm going where I want to go, but that also requires me to like actually sit down with myself and be like, where do you want to go?

1:06:46 Which is another thing that I recommend for people. Amy Mann has a song. Write down what you need before you sign away the deed. Make sure you know like what you want because You're gonna get on a highway and it's gonna be kind of fast tracking you to somewhere. Making sure that you are actually going where you want to go.

1:07:04 I wanna know what practices that you follow, not to imply that anyone should just copy paste, right? You gotta know your own needs, but I am curious like where you've landed personally. You tell me, where would you like to start? I wanna go to The varieties of contemplative experience. This was the study that took us ten years. And we came up with fifty nine categories of meditation related Challenges.

1:07:26 and adverse effects and we categorize them into seven different domains. Cognitive, perceptual, affective, which is emotional, somatic, connitive, which is motivational. Sense of self and social. So I'm not gonna go through all fifty nine. People can look them up. They're on the Cheetah House website under symptoms. But just to give you a sort of

1:07:48 Basic overview of what is in each category. So cognitive Types of experiences are increase in thought frequency, which you talked about. You know, trouble with executive functioning, so making decisions, paying attention.

1:08:03 loss of conceptual meaning structures, which you also mentioned, probably the most famous example is the woman who on the way back from retreat, stopped at a red light. Saw though. Red colour.

1:08:16 But didn't register what it meant. But it meant stop. You can see how that would be. Sometimes you need you need your you need your concepts. Executive function. You need your concepts. So that's the cognitive domain. Perceptual, you see perceptual hypersensitivity, you can also see hallucinations. visions, changes in perception, also changes in derivalization. So feeling like you're in a dream or Things feel flat or cartoon like. Emotions can go in either direction, which we've already kind of touched on. So increases in

1:08:47 Fear and panic and re experiencing of trauma, but also affect of blunting, so loss of emotions altogether. You can also see In the somatic domain. We can see Else's energy like somatic experiences. We have an entire paper on that. Say that again? What does that stand for?

1:09:05 Energy like somatic experiences. So experiences of sort of electricity or voltage or going through the body. We talked about insomnia already. And lots of different kinds of pain syndromes, headaches, different kinds of Hands. In terms of cognition or motivational

1:09:25 Again. Insane Just m enlightenment or bust kind of Changes in motivation.

1:09:33 Sorry, honey, like I'm gone. I'm gonna go shave my head and become a monk. Like we see that all the time. And then the opposite complete loss of motivation. Why would I do anything? No goals whatsoever. The sense of self domain is my personal favorite. I teach an entire class on it called Me, Myself, and I, but there's lots of changes in senses of self. And that can range from the narrative self, the story of me.

1:09:59 Your identity self, all the way down to your sense of ownership over your own body, over body sensations, emotions. Thoughts. And then also down to your sense of self. Other self. world boundaries can dissolve.

1:10:17 We have a whole paper on that as well. And obviously there's a lot of overlap with psychedelics. With that particular category, so we can unpack that. If you want. And then within the social domain, not surprisingly. If you're having these experiences, it can be

1:10:32 related to some social Consequences people don't like hearing about this. They have all sorts of reactions. Wait till you get your responses to this episode. I want to talk about the Dalai Lama too before we don't like to hear about that. So you get so a lot of people get shunned by their communities. Sometimes, you know, their teachers get irritated with them. And then there's also trying to go to work and trying to explain

1:10:58 Why you can't function. So there's all sorts of social dynamics that go with that. That was kind of the quick and dirty overview of the 59 categories. And I will say that within that particular study, the varieties of contemplative experience study. We looked at duration of symptoms and duration of impairment. And duration of impairment the average was one to three years. So it was quite a bit of time and it ranged from a few days to

1:11:26 More than a decade. So this can be And I think, you know, your experience, you can kind of understand why. It could be a quite a long time before you recover. If you don't happen upon Jack Hornfield for a while.

1:11:41 Yeah, I was I won the lottery on that ladder. part of things. And you know, the duration you're describing I just want to draw a couple of parallels. I mean you already alluded to this, but You could take

1:11:55 Almost everything you just mentioned, if not everything. And map it to adverse events related to psychedelic experiences. Pretty much everything. I think everything that you mentioned. And in terms of duration, there's something that doesn't get talked about very much, also because it is viewed as perhaps

1:12:14 risking the cause and the momentum of the psychedelic renaissance, but there's something it's a bit of a mouthful. I wish it had a better name, but HPP D Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder. And I know people who've experienced this where they are effectively hallucinating on some level for years. I have a family member who experienced this by marriage. I have a very close friend who experienced this for the second half of his undergrad and for several years afterwards. And people can find more on this online. But

1:12:50 I suppose we could move into scaffolding, but I'd like to ask you, are there any particular distinctions, clear differences between meditation related adverse events and psychedelic related adverse events? Well, we don't really know. That's actually a study that were in the middle of Collecting data on. So

1:13:11 I'm glad that you mentioned that there's a lot of overlaps because I'm also seeing them and a lot of people that have had both experiences. are mentioning that there is a lot of overlap. So The study that We're conducting is basically looking at Basically seeing how much they overlap.

1:13:29 And whether there are systematic differences. If I had to guess, I would Say that The perceptual changes the HPPD like changes. would be more common in the psychedelic world. I do think there's something neurological going on there that might be not happening in all forms of meditation, but we definitely see like visual snow.

1:13:52 And there can be some perceptual changes that are enduring, visual changes. that are enduring. But if you look at the HPPD Literatur It's actually a lot more than just visual changes. There's a whole lot of different things going on. So yeah, I think that's a really interesting question.

1:14:12 How they compare but also with whether somebody's a dual user and whether it's changing that way. Users, yeah, it's very hard to disambiguate. The resource I want to recommend, and I can't voucher for it personally because fortunately I I do not have HPPD, but The more people use these compounds, meaning psychedelics of various types, the more this is going to become prevalent and really need proper addressing. There is a website. It's perception.foundation, and that's the Perception Restoration Foundation. And they have resources They have frequently asked questions about HPPD. They have a documentary trailer. They also have a specialist directory. I cannot vouch for the capabilities of any of the

1:14:57 specialists, but a lot of people who experience this feel the way I did. In the midst of my Silent retreat, which is I am Broken.

1:15:08 I don't know how to fix this. Everyone else seems fine. I don't even know what to call this. And there's a real sense of futility or hopelessness that can come with that. So Suffice to say. the Perception Restoration Foundation may be a place to start. I can't vouch for it, but Perception Dot Foundation for folks who may want to look that up. What is scaffolding?

1:15:31 For people who come to Cheetahs, and let me just back up a little bit about The Cheetah House sort of origin story. I mean the actual Cheetah House started as A halfway house for Brown students who wanted to become monastics because of our contemplative studies. program. S

1:15:49 Kids will get meditation training. In school as part of college, they get so inspired by it that they want to go to India and ordain as monks. And Going there and coming back and living in dorms As a celibate.

1:16:03 non intoxicant taking College students doesn't really work. So They lived at Cheetah House. That was the sort of The original function of Cheetah House was to support sort of semi monastic

1:16:16 Brown students. And is it true Chitta is a play on words? Chita is a play on words. It's a play on the Sanskrit term chitta, which means Loosely mine. When we started doing the varieties of contability of experience study We were interviewing a number of people who were having meditation related challenges, and some of them

1:16:35 had just gotten out of the hospital and you know they're like I'm twenty seven and I'm living with my parents like Can I live with you? And so the I live at Cheetah House. So this is like m you know, my house. It's a big Victorian house. With lots of floors. And so there was an entire floor where meditators could live and kind of recover from Whatever was happening. So that was

1:16:56 The Beginning of Cheetah House, it is now entirely online. And Is helping people recover from meditation related challenges. And a number of them

1:17:08 They are not able to meditate at all. They're not able to engage in anything that looks like meditation. All the trauma cues and associations are around everything meditation. So Sitting with your eyes closed sitting on a floor with your Legs crossed. Using a soft voice and guidance like

1:17:30 All of that. Trigg the response. Trigger City. Basically, half of the like mental health world just becomes inaccessible to these people because you know, they go to a therapist and the therapist is like, Oh, you need to do mindfulness. And they're like, No, not mindfulness, please, anything but mindfulness. So we have to figure out a way to like help people. you know, build their own practice. And I think the other piece that I wanted to

1:17:55 Unpack with you z you know after I heard your podcast. Was the term idéологіка power. And so ideological power is the power to control meaning, language. And which concepts are available and how they're used. The power to interpret

1:18:12 Your own or other's experiences, behavior, or feelings. In the paradox. To silence or undermine. The important thing here is that Trauma.

1:18:21 Is Associated with powerlessness. And a lack of options and a lack of agency. And so For people who have been traumatized by meditation or meditation systems.

1:18:35 Any kind of system is also A form of ideological power over them. Even like CBT is a system, any kind of therapy or model is a system. And so that also becomes something that they're not able to work with because it feels controlling. It feels like it's some kind of value system or model that's being imposed on them. So how do you work with that?

1:19:02 And so we have to start with so this is called person centered approach. So if you were my pretend client, I would ask you like before you started meditating Or just outside of your meditation life. What is something That is a resource for you.

1:19:19 Just for general well being. Are we talking about psychological well being as a resource? I mean what I typically do is actually ask you to look around where you are right now and pick something. Like a tangible object. That's in your immediate vicinity, that's something that's meaningful to you.

1:19:36 But unrelated to medicine. Right, I was gonna say intense exercise. I mean, like I've I've told every girlfriend I've ever had, if you see me trying to sit down and think my way through a problem for more than like a half hour, Just tell me to go lift some heavy stuff for an hour. Just like tell me to get out of the house and go exercise and chances are it'll resolve itself. But if I'm looking for something meaningful That is near me right now. There's quite a bit here around me at the moment. I could say there's a

1:20:09 artists sketchbook for working with Mostly graphite and ink, where I do some drawing. There's a copy of The Prophet by Khalil Jabron, which I read when I Hop in the sauna. I'll just read a couple of pages. Frequently and then put it down.

1:20:24 I could keep going, but those are two. So as you're scanning the environment. When I ask you like notice something that's meaningful, there's a salience. Gloming on to different objects, skipping over certain areas, but gloming onto certain objects. But it's not that the salien has a different flavor for each one.

1:20:41 So if you were gonna think about I'm gonna take my nervous system in that direction. Gonna take it in that direction, you could actually start to chart. where you could go, different option just by looking at these different objects. They're kind of telling you. Oh, this will be activating, this will be energizing, this will be calming, this will be strength inducing. So

1:21:01 Pick a direction. Where would you want your nervous system to go? And then pick an object that goes with that. I'll choose the Sketchbook. Yeah. Because that's where I I'm totally immersed.

1:21:15 And Something. Present tense. I can get lost in Artwork.

1:21:22 I don't think about whatever's Mistake I made in the conversation yesterday. I don't think about whatever bullshit I have to handle tomorrow. I find that very nourishing in a calming way. So I'll choose that. And so as I'm watching you, I can see your eyes are kind of going somewhere that's not anywhere in particular, which means you have like s some images that are in your in your mind. Oh, maybe. I'm also looking at the the sketchbook that's directly past the laptop.

1:21:47 Okay, so maybe more generally But we can work with that. Yeah, so maybe more generally When you look at the sketchbook. And you're talking about it and you're thinking about what it can do for you, like what are you noticing that goes with that? I would say my sympathetic nervous system seems to downregulate. Breathing seems to slow a little bit.

1:22:06 If I'm being totally honest, I have like a small amount of anxiety because I was really consistent with my art for a while and I've lapsed for the last two months and I feel badly about it. Some like level of guilt. But that's not what I'm going for. Yeah. So let me just pause there. So Some kind of drop in your Sympathetic nervous system. So how is that manifesting? You said your breathing's starting to calm down. What else is going with that? What are other ways that you're noticing

1:22:33 Some muscular relaxation. Mm, any particular area? Yeah, back. Back, neck. Mm.

1:22:41 Most obvious I would say. Less fidgety, less bouncing of the foot. And so As you're looking at this object

1:22:50 This sketchbook. And Talking about it, you're noticing That you're having Sympathetic.

1:22:57 activation is decreasing, it's changing your breathing. There's something happening in your back that's easing. And as I'm feeding this back to you, what are you noticing that goes with that? I think it's Reinforces it. It's like a Not exactly positive reinforcement. It sounds like positive reinforcement for the relaxation, so I'm able to

1:23:15 Settle into it. Mm-hmm. I suppose. Mm-hmm. This is kind of like the beginning of scaffolding. This is what it's like. Okay. Because if I try to

1:23:24 Say like okay, you're gonna focus on your breathing, or I'm gonna give you an object to focus on. Fifty percent of people who are given the breath as an object of meditation find that it It's not a safe Object? And it can actually induce anxiety. So if I have you pick the object.

1:23:40 I couldn't have picked that in a million years if I got to wander around your house and be like, which thing should I pick? I wouldn't have been able to pick something. You know immediately you have so much going on. And as a meditator, You're able to like feel into your environment. And there's like oh wow, these have different flavors of how they're they're actually impacting me. And so I would spend an hour with you

1:24:03 Unpacking one particular Object. And I would be watching how your hands are moving and You might be like, oh, and there is a story that goes with the sketchbook. And like you might end up on who gave you the sketchbook. And like it's really about that. We kind of like go down this rabbit hole together, and I'm tracking your physiology with mine.

1:24:24 And if you're very, very dysregulated and dissociated, and you're one of those people who can't feel anything anymore. I can notice very small changes in your physiology and be like, Hey, you remember that? One thing that you just said because I saw your eyes brighten up a little. I'll be able to like amplify specifically amplify certain things. But I'm following your lead, and so as somebody who's been very traumatized about power dynamics and

1:24:51 Following any kind of instructions feels like oppression. And feeling trapped in sort of some system. If I'm following you and just reflecting back to you what I'm seeing. That Can be a little bit more

1:25:06 Palatable. That's kind of what scaffolding is. And That's what we offer to meditators who have basically developed. a trauma response to meditation itself, which

1:25:18 Can really rule out a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah, that's an elegant. Work around slash approach. And I I would say that I'm very fortunate that I don't personally, despite the childhood experience with the abuse, have that aversion to systems or coaches or teachers. I think in part because I'm such a Problem student. Uh

1:25:42 In the sense that I I just will constantly stop things and question things and I don't feel Like I need to take anything that is just off the rack, so to speak. So I feel very fortunate. about that. Let me return, since I made a promise to my listeners and to myself that I would to your personal Practices.

1:26:02 What does your self care look like in that department? What are those practices? Wherever he landed. So I've been doing this resourcing for a long time. The s scaffolding. And where it landed me, so I started to realize that I

1:26:17 This is in some ways not super surprising, but I have a very strong reaction to like living things like animals and plants and so I started to realize like how powerfully impacted my gardening, I started getting really obsessed with like rare plants and growing them in a grow light. What kind of rare plants? Just could you name one? I'm so curious. Oh, just like yeah, I don't know, weird tomatoes.

1:26:43 Things that you can't buy in the grocery store. Just things that you can't find otherwise. But Basically where I ended up was my husband and I bought Ninety acres in an undisclosed Mountain area. In Vermont.

1:26:57 And we built an off grid cabin there. And it is so awesome. That I think I'm gonna move to Vermont.

1:27:07 Oh whoops I just did it on like the the Tim Ferris podcast. But yeah, like this exercise that we just did, if that becomes the practice replacing the hours a day that I did with Vapassana with a practice like that. actually amplifying My positive engagement with the world.

1:27:29 And what's in it. that that grew into something so beautiful and magnificent as this Place. And The mountains and so

1:27:41 It's not just a technique that you do at your house to in order to Perform better. It's just completely taken over my life. So that's Right into that. So it sounds almost Epicurean in a way.

1:27:56 Right, like tending the garden, engaging with nature. Sure. Not to add a label to it. I'm just saying that do you find that you derive The benefits you hope to derive from meditation through these new this new engagement that you're referring to?

1:28:14 Or have your goals just changed? If you wanted to paint a picture of like what my daily practice looks like. Imagine I'm wearing actually my plaid shirt. Like sort of in in commemoration of my Vermont self, but Imagine me putting on like

1:28:29 Some Carhart overalls. And like getting A weed whacker chainsaw and going out and like doing trail work. And even for like the basic idea of coming back and having to do you know, writing a paper or you know, running statistics or something. Meditation never really

1:28:48 Improved my Cognition. I always found that I I was sort of a one of those sleepy meditators. I would just get really, really, really calm and kind of like my brain just kind of got Doll. But if I go out there and just like use power tools outside in the cold, then I'm like

1:29:06 My blood's moving, my brain's working. That's doing more of what I was hoping meditation would do. And I'm I'm also just like ecstatically happy, which meditation never did that for me. Humans are built for movement. You gotta move. The meditation's great, but it's for me very valuable. So I will say that small dose, high frequency High meaning twice a day. is very

1:29:32 Strengthening. to my life and my experiences. And I spend Four to five times minimum as much time moving.

1:29:42 Every day. Right. Like the movement. The movement is a critical piece of things. Where can people find more information with respect to a class or training? related to the meditation related adverse effects. Preventing them, mitigating them. recovering from them, whether it's as a an individual or a facilitator slash trainer. The public facing sort of service

1:30:07 Branch info branch of my lab is at Cheetah House. So that's cheetah. Like the animal house like a house dot org. And There's

1:30:18 Tons of information on the website. Lots of videos and Links to different kinds of symptom specific resources. But if you're interested in training specifically on the Cheetah House website, there's a tab called online courses.

1:30:35 you're a meditation teacher or a clinician, you can actually take the courses And there's a quiz and it will give you, you know, you can make sure that you know the content. So there's More information there. You can also just sign up for the Cheetah House. newsletter and that will alert you to any of the kind of public lectures That we have. We have one a month, and actually we have one today that's on CERT, which is spiritual, existential, religious.

1:31:02 And theological Issues in psychedelic assisted therapies by Roman Pilitzki. So that's a good one to see. Today He just published an article in Jama about that topic and he'll be unpacking it. For people. So we do

1:31:17 Meditation related challenges, meditation related issues, but also psychedelics are becoming much more of a Topic. It's unavoidable. And that those

1:31:28 The meditation and psychedelics are combining Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I wanna zoom out for just a quick second and say that Well actually let me volunteer something I don't think I've said publicly, which is We've been talking about Among other things.

1:31:43 These Adverse events. Adverse effects. That's can be associated with meditation.

1:31:50 Yeah. And psychedelics. However, I I don't want to lose what I mentioned earlier. I may have gotten the the boundaries, the upper and lower bounds wrong on the numbers, but adverse events in psychotherapy. After my experience at Spirit Rock, I went to one of the most famous

1:32:09 psychotherapists who work with trauma. In the world. And if I mentioned his book, everyone would recognize it who's in the trade per se. And this guy was one of the most narcissistic unbelievably unempathetic people I'd ever met in my life. And he did a tremendous amount of damage. I met with him twice for two

1:32:30 individual sessions and His ego is so out of control and his sort of recommendations so intense and so flippant. That it did a tremendous amount of damage and that took This was related to the childhood sexual abuse and it Took a long time to un

1:32:47 do the damage inflicted by a famous psychotherapist. And I guess I wanted to bring this up. When you engage with these mind altering

1:33:00 Modalities. weather or consciousness altering modalities. Assume that you're dealing with power tools and you need people who will admit that yes, you can cut fingers off if you use power tools incorrectly. And furthermore Who have Lots of time.

1:33:16 not just working with clients, but handling adverse events. And handling them is not just an issue of capability. It's also an issue of empathy and will. So Danny Meyer, who's famous for Shake Shack and hospitality in many different restaurants, Grammarcy Tavern and others. Has this sort of matrix. on the wall for employees and it's the will can matrix, right? So just because someone is a skilled psychotherapist does not mean they are going to be willing to provide aftercare or safety net. If you have

1:33:48 and unraveling. It's to me really important that you uh sort of assess practitioners in advance to ensure that they have, in fact, handled these cases and feel very capable. And have demonstrated. Competency. in handling these things calmly. So I just want to say that because there's so many fly by night rent a shamans running around and people who have done like one yoga retreat and

1:34:10 Had one or two psychedelic experiences that were suddenly acting as on the road messiahs trying to proselytize everyone. And this also goes for meditation, right? Like I know people who have basically had What I would call psychotic breaks. pursuing Kundalini awakening and then there are suddenly traveling salespeople for endorsing this and they haven't yet even achieved stability for themselves. This is really common. So Just make sure you're dealing with people who have handled

1:34:36 red line case and have a a clear demonstrated track record regardless of the Modality. you'd like to add, not necessarily along those lines, but any comments you'd like to make. I have more questions I do want to ask about NDs. Oh, I forgot about that. Part of my life.

1:34:55 Oh, I know. I I take notes so I don't forget. One of the things that we've learned at Cheetah House is that Exactly that scenario that you're describing is that

1:35:06 The Helper professions can Also be the source of harm and trauma. This is called institutional betrayal when The people who are supposed to be helping you are actually the cause of harm. What happens when you when you have not only trauma to meditation, but trauma to all helping professions and help helping professionals? It like really restricts your your options.

1:35:28 Yeah. And so, you know, we and there's other groups that do this too. You know, we run a peer support model. Because a lot of people get to the point where they don't trust anyone. Until they can sort of prove that I was completely undone by this.

1:35:45 I understand what it's like to be leveled. by this scenario and Then you're like okay, you get it. Now I can talk to you. Because that empathy when you've been leveled that much, this is like one of the the silver linings. Is that

1:36:02 You have so much compassion and empathy. When you've been leveled. you really understand what that's like to be. In that place to be a puddle. On the ground.

1:36:14 So that's one of the models that we have at Cheetah House, and I think it it really works. It works in two ways. One is that people feel heard and validated. And not alone because they're being able to talk to someone that this happened to. as well, who's also recovered. So they're like, oh my God, I can actually recover from this. And then for the people who are offering care. You know, they're like, Wow, I had this

1:36:37 five year hole in my life that was just This thing that Is not good for anything. And now I can actually it's something that's actually A gift I can give to somebody else.

1:36:48 And so every moment that they spend with someone else is actually sort of being fueled by that trauma. So it's nice to be able to have that trauma mean something and be useful. in some way and not just be a drain on your life. So that's another piece That I think is a is a nice model that's out there. But yeah, I I hear you with the

1:37:07 Trouble finding a good therapist. Boy. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of clowns running around all over the place. And just to to underscore the peer support,'cause you you reminded me of something. I'll put out a plea. to the psychedelic communities. Which is If you have not this is also related to your getting leveled. Comment if you have not had at least

1:37:28 Thirty to fifty. High dose psychedelic experiences. You should not be serving. Psychedelics to anyone. That'll be statement number one. That would be a minimum. And uh not recommending people do anything illegal, but I'm simply saying people are gonna do what people are gonna do. If you have not been tumbled and humbled in a way that has left you

1:37:49 questioning whether you should ever touch these compounds again. You are not in a position. To administer to other people. And The equivalent would be if you go skiing once on the bunny slope and you happen not to fall and all of a sudden you're taking people on hell skiing trips without any type of guides or airbags because skiing is fun.

1:38:09 and helpful. That is what I see all over the place. So step number one is thirty to fifty. Minimum. Because that'll give you a chance to go skiing fifty times, and not only will you fall, you will have some bad falls and you'll have different types of falls, and then you'll be more informed on a subjective level about the risks involved. And then I would say secondly, you should, and this connects to your peer support comment, volunteer with an organization like Zendo.

1:38:39 At festivals where the age range skews younger like lightning in a bottle in other places. Zendo is Pure driven harm reduction related to psychedelic, but really drug consumption. And you get

1:38:54 A decent amount of training. It's pretty nominal. It's non directive. Support, so you're not trying to therapize people. But Here's what I would suggest. Is you volunteer for the roughest shift.

1:39:08 Which is generally gonna be after midnight. And if you're capable and you should Determine if you're capable, volunteer what they sometimes call the crisis tent, which is when they have red line cases when people are really freaking the fuck out and losing their minds, often for hours at a time. And see how well you handle those. If you don't handle those really well. You should not be serving psychedelics to anyone.

1:39:31 So that's my public service announcement. Anyway. ND E's. How did you become interested in near death experiences? Wow. This was not an question that I'm deeply interested in this. I was like, I wonder what part of it my website he's gonna find and discover. I totally forgot about this. I mean I think wow, this is a really long time ago, but

1:39:54 I was really interested in Temporal lobe epilepsy? And how people have religious experiences As a result.

1:40:04 They call it the sacred disease, and there's been speculation that there have been a number of saints that had temporal lobe epilepsy, and so I was really interested to know Whether near death experiences. Well, I was just really interested in the question of whether religious experiences and temporal lobe epilepsy, if there was an overlap. But near death experiences are actually One of the few types of spiritual experiences that are actually

1:40:30 Kinda similar. There's a typography, like there's a tunnel, there's a light, there's a life review. They're kinda similar, and so That's kind of an ideal thing to study. And so that's

1:40:42 But I did and I happened to work in a sleep lab and Sleep is a natural activator of Hypersynchrony, so basically apopleptform brain activity. Cause you as you go to sleep, your brain synchronizes. And so if you tend to have epilepsy, it will show up in your sleep. You can also use strobe lights.

1:41:01 To induce epilepsy? Yeah. Do you mean hence the warnings on all the video games. From you know, an institutional review board, human subjects. You know, like I'm gonna induce seizures in people. So but like, hey, I'm not doing any induction. I'm just let they're just sleeping. I don't have to tell them that that they're it so anyway, they slept in the lab and we we s looked at their brains to see whether they had any kind of hypersynchrony. And they did.

1:41:28 That was the shocker. Wait, when you say they, these are people with diagnosed epilepsy or you're talking about people who had NDEs? I taught a class on death and loss in graduate school. And as part of that class, one of the people I kind of inherited a lot of the Guest speakers from like other people that taught the class. And one of them was a woman who had had a near-death experience and ran a near-death experience support group. And I was like, Amazing. So I went started going to the support group and I was like, there's so many of them. And then I was like, Hey, you guys wanna come sleep in the lab and we'll scan your brains and see.

1:42:00 what's going on there. And so I kind of made friends with the near death support group. And that's how that study happened. So the group was I forget how many there were, but I don't know, like twenty or something like People who had had near death experiences, and then we had people who Had Some type of non near death experience control group, I forget.

1:42:22 If they were trauma survivors. I can't even remember. Far death experience. Yeah. Anyway, we had a control group and they did not have any kind of epileptiform activity in their brains. How do you explain that? That's so fascinating. I'm pretty agnostic as to what that means.

1:42:39 Yeah, but just if you're like two drinks in and speculating. There's Two possibilities. One is that They did not have epileptiform activity, and it's a scar. It's like a residue of the experience.

1:42:51 Chances are when you have a near death experience, and these are people that all had their heart stop. So they definitely had some anoxia oxygen deprivation, which can cause hypersynchrony and epileptiform activity. So that's one possibility. The other possibility is that They had a sort of tendency towards hyper synchrony, and that was what. Cause the experience. But you know

1:43:14 I was very agnostic about not choosing a position or having an interpretation. I just said This group has a sort of distinct brain activity compared to non-experiencers, and I just left it at that. But what was so interesting was the response that I got from both. Complete sceptics and from the Near death experience.

1:43:36 Community so I got The total opposite. From no interpretation on my part. And this has been actually like a kind of thing that's followed me for my whole life. The universe We're a shock test. Let's see how people take it. Thank you so much for verifying and proving scientifically with neuroscience because neuroscience can prove anything, right? That heaven exists. You know? And I'm like, Well I don't think I really did that, but thanks. I'm not sure that was in my summary.

1:44:04 And then the skeptics would write me and be like, Thank you for finally proving that these people are all nuts. You know? And I was like, Okay, I didn't either of those things, but that's interesting. And so wow, I mean that's a whole other like conversation is Be a researcher or just talk about Charged. Topics and see what kind of responses you get.

1:44:25 Fascinating. I could keep going on the NDAs. I have a lot of questions about that. A lot of the descriptions seem to be incredibly similar to the mystical experiences reported by Users of

1:44:41 Higher dose. Psychelics. Mm-hmm. the descriptions are very, very similar. Which is interesting because you have this sort of fear extinguishing related to death in both camps frequently, it seems to be.

1:44:54 The case. And I'll ask you a question. We can cut it out of the audio if you want, but I'm curious. So there seem to be And I don't think there's anything in any peer reviewed studies or anything, but

1:45:08 Many case studies Uh Supposedly, reports of people who observe things while their hearts are stopped or they are technically brain dead. So conversations that are happening.

1:45:21 Things that are moving around, the tools that are used. They take the dentures out of someone and put them on a specific tray. These types of things. Is that Just complete nonsense, or do you think that's something that's worth Investigating. Piques my curiosity. It's funny because I have the reputation for being the grumpest skeptic ever, and now I'm gonna tell you some mind blowing stories from my near death experience research. What are you trying to do to my reputation here, Tim?

1:45:48 We don't have to keep it, but I think I know people will be interested and I'm interested. I have to follow my own. This is true and it happened like the the sort of end of the story happened recently. I'll tell you the end of the story first. So We wanna move to Vermont and we're building another off grid cabinet. So we're like interviewing Builders. And so we went walking around, we met this builder and we were walking around this other house that he built.

1:46:14 And he's just showing you know he's showing us all the features of this house. And one of the features was a double pane glass that you can just like flip the switch and there's an opaque Gas. Maybe you have one of those. No, I don't have one, but I know the windows you're talking about. And I was like, That's so awesome. suddenly this window goes, you know, opaque and it's like kind of Foggy.

1:46:35 And Matt reminded me of This experience that this woman had in my study, she was actually a survivor of. A World War Two bombing. in London, so it was a very long time ago. First of all, she came back speaking another language from her near death experience.

1:46:55 So that was the first weird thing. So I was like, you know. all of these stories, and I was like a graduate student, and all of these stories were very far fetched to me. And this was a language she had not been exposed to? I don't know. Okay. She came back speaking other language. Yeah, I wasn't paying that much attention. Their stories were kind of

1:47:13 We did we never publish their stories, but I happen to go Okay Kathy. Yeah, I was like Okay, let's see what your going on in your brain. But she told me this story about some near death experiencers have A lot of them have life reviews where they go through their lives and they kind of experience the consequences of their actions from The perspective of Who they impacted, which can be very hellish depending on what kind of person you've been.

1:47:37 But then if people are sort of dead long enough, they also have flash forwards. Where they actually not only see the past but also the future. So this was one of the ones that was a flash forward. And so she told me that she basically saw this. City.

1:47:55 And all the buildings were basically made of this glass that had And this is a woman, she's probably like eighty at this time. She's not super like Technologically sophisticated. And she's describing this glass That

1:48:11 When you flip a switch, you can turn it. It has some kind of gas in between it. that you can switch the switch and it turns into opaque and that the future will be This class. And I was like, whatever. Okay, that's so crazy sounding. And then maybe like four years later, she called me and she was like, the glass exists. And she sent me to like a scientific American or like Discover magazine. And it was like Smart Glass, I think it's called.

1:48:36 She's like, this isn't the exact company, so don't like invest in it or anything, but like this is this is the precursor to what it's Going to be. She's like, This is the future of what things are gonna be made out of. So again, completely sealed off that part of my life for like, I don't know. twenty five years, twenty three years, and now

1:48:58 I just saw the glass myself. In Vermont. So I don't know People think I'm super grumpy and skeptical, but like I'm just agnostic. I don't know. I think just letting the mystery be there is

1:49:12 is fine. Just doesn't need to be solved. I have heard crazy stories like that. I don't know what to make of it. Will I be investing in smart glass? Maybe. I mean can't hurt, right? I mean it could hurt depending on how much you invest. But a little bit a little bit a little bit might go a long way if they're gonna build cities out of it. That's amazing. You know, there's part of me that with no defensible foundation, well I'll But

1:49:43 Feels like Some of these NDEs, the hydos or uh they don't even need to be hydos, but let's just say higher dose, psychedelic experiences. and many other things, some of these meditative states are kind of touching parts of the same thing. It's like the five blind men holding onto different parts of the elephant, that whole parable.

1:50:04 But anyway, working pet theory with without a whole hell of a lot. to back it up that would stand up to the capital S kind of sceptic societies and so on. But still Something that sticks in my mind. Well Doctor Britton, this has been great. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I think it will be helpful to people.

1:50:24 And to many who are listening probably who have had some of these adverse events or effects who have felt very much alone. And certainly I could have used that feeling when I was going through what I went through. Yeah, at my meditation retreat. Is there anything else that you would like to add? People can find Cheetah on Twitter at Cheetah House Org, on Facebook, Cheetah House.org, and Instagram Cheetah.house. Anything that you'd like to add before we wind to a close? I mean, I think that I'd like to end just by thanking you for being as Open and

1:51:03 Forthcoming as You have been. I don't know if you've gotten any pushback, but a number of people who share their negative experiences Any kind of negative experience, but particularly ones with meditation, get a lot of kickback and it's not an easy thing to do. So I'm very appreciative that

1:51:21 You've done that. And you didn't have to. So and I think it's gonna be really helpful for people and You know, especially this kind of group of people that emulate you and these sort of young male eighteen to thirty demographic.

1:51:35 So You know, you're really In in my world, you're, you know, really a hero and doing something that's hard and Just so I just want to say thank you.

1:51:46 Thank you. I really appreciate you saying that. And it's my pleasure to do it because by offering my story, I'm not saying meditation bad. I actually find Meditation in small doses to be incredibly, incredibly helpful. in my life. And

1:52:03 That is not mutually exclusive with also saying, Hey In different formats and different doses. things can go off the rails and you need to being a good boy or girl scout be prepared for that, and institutions and groups and facilitators and centers need to be prepared for that. And hope is not a strategy.

1:52:25 It's like you get in your car and drive with the seatbelt off. It's like that's just stupid. It's like maybe you haven't had a head on collision, but they happen every day, so wear a seatbelt. I mean, they're basic precautions and I hope that will help people to think about this in a sort of risk informed. Way. Not so that they can say, I'm never gonna meditate, but simply

1:52:46 to know this is a possibility and to ensure that they have support structures around. to help them in case they run into turbulence or something even more extreme as I did, and that's true for so many things in life. And I really appreciate you doing the research you do. I'm sure you get a hell of a lot of flack for it. And It's important to have this be part of the conversation.

1:53:10 And it's going to increasingly be part of the conversation. I mean, you have startups and companies that are worth billions of dollars promoting mindfulness and meditation. You have The same thing happening in psychedelics lots of profit motives. Which is not automatically Something that begets evil, but it does beget incentives. And that means we will most certainly have

1:53:34 Tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands and millions of people. engaging with things that historically were pretty limited to a fine slice of the population. And we are going to see. Adverse events. You know what? I promised one other thing that I have to ask about.

1:53:54 So how did the Dalai Lama receive? Your description of your research. Oh boy. Did you see did you watch the video? No, I didn't see the video. I saw some text about it. Okay, so there is there is a video of me presenting to the Dalai Lama as part of the Mind and Life dialogues.

1:54:12 I will let viewers make their own decisions about What they think. I will tell you some feedback that I got. I mean, you'll see me there if you want to watch Willoughby. in sympathetic overload it was pretty a pretty terrifying experience In general. So I don't really remember the feedback as it was happening because I was a little bit like out of my my body probably, but there were a lot of people there. The entire like mind and life board was there.

1:54:38 And so they gave me some feedback. A lot of people found his response fairly dismissive and also A bit Not

1:54:49 Particularly compassionate. Like he was laughing half the time. And I was like, Well, did I tell you that the duration of impairment was three years? And Also the people that it happened to Were some of our Best and brightest meditation. Teachers. Name any meditation teacher that you can name who's written Dharma books.

1:55:09 He was probably in our study and he probably had a meditation related challenge. And the Dalai Lama was basically saying that this happened to people because they didn't have enough. Buddhist Training. So I don't know, you're not really supposed to talk shit about the Dalai Lama, so you might want to cut this one out, but

1:55:27 Uh people need to grow out of the world. I wasn't particularly impressed. If you're allowed to say that. Yeah. No, it's fine. Like I just think people need to grow up. It's like if you have externalized your agency into someone you view you view as a God, you're setting yourself up to trouble. And I think It's like I'm not a Dalai Lama expert. I'm sure that he has and demonstrably has offered a lot to the world, but it doesn't mean he's infallible. This is also my my husband was like he's the Dalai Lama. He was brought up from like age zero until however old he is now, like

1:56:00 to defend Buddhism. What do you expect? So I think that's a pretty good answer. And also It's very emblematic of It's possible that

1:56:10 Certain teachers have never Hard. Of any problems because why would you tell them that? You never want to be the one that's like failing. The practice that they're giving you.

1:56:22 Or telling them that the practice that they gave you is harming you. Like that would is that's just not even like a possibility. So Yeah, it is what it is. I left it up there as sort of a historical marker, but I didn't refer you to it because it's it's kind of a mixed bag. All right. So Boys and girls out there.

1:56:40 Be safe. Measure twice, cut once. And thank you, Willoughby, so much for the time. I really have enjoyed this. I think it will be valuable for people. And at the very least it's gonna spark conversation. So I'm gonna get a ton of shit. I'm fine with it because I think this is important. And

1:56:59 For people listening. You'll find links to everything, the resources. We've mentioned any books, et cetera. People. And so on in the show notes as per usual at Tim.blog slash podcast. And until next time, be a little kinder than is necessary.

1:57:15 Not just to others, but to yourself. I'll co check Cornfield actually, which and I'm gonna paraphrase here, but if your compassion does not include yourself, then it is incomplete. And part of being compassionate. Now this is my voice. Is making sure You account for risks. and not live in fear, but certainly live informed.

1:57:35 So until next time, everyone, thank you for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. albums perhaps gadgets gizmas all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun again it's very short a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash.

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