In this study, they interviewed more than 90 meditation practitioners and were able to identify some predictors or risk factors for meditation-related adverse effects.

One of the things that was sort of surprising to us was when we got all the data back and we looked at the people, 75% of them had graduate degrees.

And like JDs, MDs, PhDs, like, you know, were CEOs of major companies.

And so...

The opposite of what you might have thought, like, oh, this happens to people who are already kind of broken or weak or deficient in some way.

It was like the complete opposite.

It was like the overachievers.

and increasing awareness of the issue is a big motivation for both Willoughby and Nicholas to do the work that they do.

Then they all came into the lab, and Willoughby and her team recorded their brainwaves while they slept.

And when the data came in, it was like, the complete opposite of what I expected.

The meditation group had less deep sleep, faster brainwaves.

Pretty much every measure you could have of cortical arousal, so like, being more awake, the meditation group had more, and even worse, or even more convincing that that was, that it was the meditation was that the more you meditated, the more each of those markers of arousal went up.There was really no way around it.

It was a very clear finding, but because it was sort of the wrong answer, I just, I didn't publish it.

I just sat on the data.

(laughs) Um, so that's my first confession.

Mm-hmm.