Meditation and PTSD

In 1993, when my 'Christian phase' was over, I began an earnest engagement with Zen Buddhism. Over the years, in Germany and in France, I had gleaned information about meditation, mostly from books. By the time I returned to Stuttgart from Paris, I had obtained the name of Fumon Shōju Nakagawa, who was at the time official representative of the Soto Zen school in Europe. This was the school of Zen practice of my father and his family that I had grown up with. I also attended sesshins (retreats) with Roshis (masters) from the Rinzai school. But I found the insights I gained with the Soto Roshi most convincing, and so I remained with him. (In 2005 he performed our wedding ceremony.)

During the sesshins, we kept silence for several days: For as long as the sesshin lasted we ate, worked, and meditated in silence with the exception of daily lectures and/or Q&A sessions with Roshi. Around this time I suffered acute temporary hearing loss due to professional stress and had begun seeing a new therapist team. From them I heard for the first time about something called PTSD. We were delving deep into my past, and more and more episodes that I recounted were labeled as possible traumas: divorce of parents, constant bullying at school, the 'special' relationship with my father, his death, and so on.

I went to the sesshins and sat on my meditation pillow facing the wall in the heat of the Zendo in deepest Bavaria. My wounds from the past lay open, and silently the tears flowed down my cheeks, down my chin, down my neck, mixing with the sweat and the mosquitoes. I tried to explain this to Roshi (the Zen master). He seemed perplexed. He said, you are having a strange reaction to meditation. Maybe you should take a break. Indeed, for much of the more than 10 years I meditated under his guidance, he gave  me a ban on Zazen (sitting meditation). I was not to meditate for more than 10 minutes a day. And then, only when I was not exhausted, burned out or depressed, because "Zazen is highest mental exertion".

It wasn't until much later that I learned from my therapists the following: Meditation is capable of clearing the mind of distracting day-to-day thought flow, thereby creating direct access to old traumas. But the cleared mind is also a vacuum into which trauma flashbacks (reliving) can intrude--which they did with a vengeance, in my case. Lots of insight, lots of uncontrolled pain.

For this reason, trauma patients are often advised to do another kind of mediation aside from silent sitting because of the potential for self-retraumatization during silent, unaccompanied meditation. (There are many other kinds of meditation: walking mneditation, tea ceremony, yoga meditation, even cooking meditation).

It took years before I became aware of this. It is important for me to share this information with any trauma patient who may be interested in meditation, especially at the time they are in trauma therapy.

Be careful!