Is meditation harmful in any way? Recently I came across an article on this subject: Could meditation do more harm than good? And the answer was that some experts do think that meditation can harm people. Yes, it can be harmful if you take meditation very seriously. And some people do so. They read articles about some famous people like Madonna and Katy Perry who do meditation and happen to be really successful. The readers think that by regular practice of meditation they can achieve success and wealth. They become over zealous and start meditating for long hours. Some people force themselves to sit in meditation for as long as eight to 10 hours daily. This becomes an overkill. Such practitioners could go neurotic even with right kind of meditation, like vipassana and mindfulness. Vipassana is a wonderful meditation, but it is not for the beginners who think they can sit for eight hours. The beginners should not do it for more than 40 minutes. The beginners should approach meditation with a light attitude.
There should be some kind of physical exercise, something of yoga and breathing to energise oneself, or some kind of dancing to make the energy flow; sitting then will not make you twitch or fiddle. You can descend into a deep relaxation and remain watchful of the incoming and outgoing breath, which Gautam Buddha calls Anapaansati Yoga.
Meditation should not be treated as a fashion embraced by movie stars. One should remember that meditation is not just scientific, it is sacred also. Sacred because it transforms and uplifts you from the mundane to the divine, from the lowest rung to the highest rung of super-consciousness, from misery to bliss. It is an inner process of transforming. But one needs to have a playful and creative attitude towards it, as Osho suggests: Meditation can happen only in playfulness, when you are not searching and seeking for anything, when you are simply dancing or singing or chanting; when you are not asking, when the activity is all and all in itself, no future is provoked, no future is involved in it... then it happens.
