Can you meditate too much

I have now started meditating twice a day with Headspace. I do a 30 or 60 minute guided meditation in the morning and one of the Headspace Pro sessions in the evening. The other day, I felt I could do even more then someone told me that too much meditation can be bad for you, which I find hard to believe. What are your thoughts on this and on how much daily meditation it is ok for me to do? It sounds as though you are really committed to the journey and have put aside a good amount of time each day to meditate, which is brilliant.

According to the study, meditation can also lead to you losing interest in activities that you previously enjoyed, akin to the effects of depression.

This lack of interest could come as a result of non-attachment , a common skill many meditators strive for, according to Psychology Today.

Meditation brings up emotions and memories you may have suppressed in the past, and that can lead to a deluge of negative feelings that can be hard to handle.

Those who participated in the study reported feeling panic , anxiety, fear, paranoia, depression, and grief. On top of that, subjects in the study reported re-living traumatic experiences in the form of flashbacks. Although some view it as a mental and emotional tool, meditation has proven physical effects on the body.

Subjects in the study say they felt negative changes all throughout their systems, including pain , pressure, involuntary movements, headaches, fatigue, weakness, gastrointestinal problems, and dizziness. It sounds cliche, but your most important relationship in life is the one you have with yourself — because it affects all your other relationships.

So the fact that meditation has the potential to negatively impact your sense of self is a very troubling prospect. A study conducted by Deane H. Shapiro, Jr. Participants in the study reported feeling a loss of agency, a loss of sense of basic self, and a loss of ownership.

Plus, many indicated that they felt the boundaries blurring between themselves and the rest of the world. But it's also possible that you have developed a dependence for meditating. Excessive meditation may be pleasurable, but there exists the possibility of very real dangers to emotional, mental, and physical health with over meditation.

How can you tell if you are experiencing ecstatic rapture, or have developed an addiction to meditation? Here are five signs and stages outlining symptoms that you may be overzealous in your meditation and actually meditating too much.

Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. She notes that most of the studies have only looked at the effects over relatively short time periods, whereas some of the adverse effects may not emerge until much later — which is important to understand, since she points out that the standard advice is to continue meditating every day for the rest of your life.

What can we do if our own mindfulness practice is no longer working as anticipated? In which case, the simplest option may be to switch to another activity that is also known to boost your overall wellbeing. For those who still like the idea of contemplation, it may be time to consider a broader range of techniques. Certain religious traditions encourage practitioners to focus on things outside your body, for instance — such as a bunch of flowers on your desk or even a passage from a poem.

These may be better at calming overwhelming feelings of anxiety, or coaxing yourself out of those feelings of dissociation than observing your body or your breathing, says Britton. At the moment, some people may feel like they have to stick with one particular strategy — like mindful breathing or the body scan — without considering the alternatives.

But this is a mistake, says Britton. Ultimately, Britton thinks that these issues should be incorporated into all mindfulness courses — in much the same way that the visitors to a gym are taught about the potential for injury. And as I discovered myself with my own ill-fated attempts to gain mindfulness, this may sometimes include the decision that enough is enough.