The Dark Side of Mindfulness - The Atlantic

A prominent psychologist and meditation teacher set out to research the benefits of the practice. What she found alarmed her.

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. In 2004, Willoughby Britton, then a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the University of Arizona, began recruiting participants for a study that, she felt sure, would show meditation improves sleep. Britton, a meditation teacher, was so devoted to the practice that she saw herself as a “double agent,” someone who uses science to promote meditation. Although she had grown up in a nonpracticing Episcopalian home, she’d become deeply invested in Buddhist teachings. She read meditation books in…

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