Will Meditation Heal Me?
Question:
I suffer from chronic fatigue, and meditation has been recommended, as was your blog. I went through your posts and though it was very interesting, I didn’t find anything specifically dealing with meditation as healing force. So I’m wondering what your view on this might be.
Reply:
This is a difficult question to reply to, largely because, as much as I have used meditation and mindfulness methods as agents of healing in my own life, I would never make claims about it. However, with specific regard to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, there has been some research into how meditation and mindfulness can help.
I’ll briefly refer to recent studies here, and you can make up your own mind:
- First up, a study held in Norway about a decade ago, where they ran a number of four-day retreats which combined intensive meditation and mindfulness with regular physical activity. After following the results of 305 participants over a year they found that 80% of participants experienced significant improvements in fatigue levels and physical functioning. Whether this was the meditation, or the physical activity, or the combination of both is unclear.
- A 2016 randomized controlled trial that was published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques improved energy levels and reduced psychological distress in patients with chronic fatigue.
- A 2018 study in ‘Psychoneuroendocrinology’, which publishes papers dealing with the interrelated disciplines of psychology, neurobiology, endocrinology, immunology, neurology, and psychiatry, showed that mindfulness meditation reduced inflammatory markers and improved fatigue symptoms in individuals with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.
- A 2019 meta-analysis in ‘Frontiers in Psychology’ found that meditation and relaxation techniques helped improve fatigue in various chronic conditions, including Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis.
- A systematic review was published in ‘BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies’, an open access journal publishing peer-reviewed research articles, in 2020 found that mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) significantly improved fatigue, stress, and psychological distress in individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome.
Thing is though, as much as meditation/mindfulness practice is cited as having a curative effect on CFS, a key word that should be emphasized here is ‘practice.’
As I’ve said in so many posts and in my books, meditation and mindfulness are not an end in themselves. By that I mean, whatever experience you may have as you meditate, is totally insignificant as a function of whatever benefits arise from it – no matter what dysfunctional syndrome you may suffer from, whether it’s CFS, chronic depression, anxiety, or whatever.
Meditation and mindfulness are simply instruments we’re using to change dysfunctional mental habits. In this, they’re similar to our use of free-weights and machines in a gym to work on our body. So whether you have a relaxing experience or an uncomfortable experience as you meditate is not as important as the practice itself – and the consistency of that practice over a lengthy period of time.
Meditation and mindfulness are not like taking a pill. As natural modalities they are subtle and slow in the changes they make to the mind and body. And this particularly applies to changes they make to the internal network of psycho-physical habits that make us sick.
Habits like:
- Instinctive reactions to stress, emotions, or thoughts.
Meditation and mindfulness create an ability to notice emergent reactions and choose whether to allow or disallow their expression. - Constant daydreaming, ruminating about the past, or worrying about the future, which adds needless internally-created stress to the body.
Meditation and mindfulness re-orient the mind to become more grounded in what’s happening here and now. - Excessive self-criticism and harsh inner dialogue and judgment, all of which add hormonal stresses to the body.
Meditation and mindfulness create the ability to truncate those thoughts, and reveal a kinder, more understanding inner voice. - Fear of unpleasant thoughts, doubts, feelings, or sensations, leading to a harshly oppressive inner environment.
Meditation and mindfulness create the ability to know these darker aspects of our self and accommodate their presence without needing to resist them or feel the need to change. - Excessive self-identification with emotions, such that ‘I am angry’ or ‘I am anxious’ take us over and govern the way we act. Meditation and mindfulness practice creates a space between noticing how we feel as passing mental events, and how we act in the face of them.
- A noisy cluttered mind.
Meditation and mindfulness practice streamlines our mental processes, creating more space in the mind, such that inspiration and intuitive sense are more noticeable.
So if you’re choosing meditation and mindfulness as a strategy for dealing with CFS, or any other dysfunctional syndrome for that matter, it’s essential that you practice it every day. And as you practice, you must ignore the impatience and frustrations you will surely feel as you do it – and focus on the routine of doing it. Because as I said, mental habits don’t change overnight. Research has shown that when it comes to the emergent benefits of meditation and mindfulness, 2–3 months of daily practice are the minimum, with ongoing supportive practice after that.
Which is why I emphasize practice in everything I write about meditation and mindfulness.
For me it’s a bit like gardening. You plant the seeds, then fertilize and water and tend to it each day for months to come. And though the waiting for the plants to appear can be annoyingly slow, you do it because that’s what you’ve decided to do.
And the months pass, and each day you just do the business of tending to the garden – and eventually, there it is. And once the garden has grown, all the effort you put in, and the frustration with how slowly it grew is forgotten – because the garden is here now, and it is so very beautiful.
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Roger’s book, ‘BEING STILL – MEDITATION THAT MAKES SENSE’ is available now. Just click on the links below:
AUDIOBOOK (including ebook & MP3 exercises) – AUD $25.00
