I learned to meditate in 2007 and developed CFS in 2011. In the three years in between, I participated in some 20 retreats of 2 to 14 days in length. Yes, meditation is addictive (in the best way possible). Yet since I became sick, I’ve mostly discarded meditation as just one more activity that requires more mental resources than I have available.
Research indicates meditation and mindfulness exercises have real health benefits and they can turn down the filight/fight response that appears activated in ME/CF and FM
I recently rediscovered meditation, though, and am excited to share with you the palpable and scientifically validated benefits of meditation, from improved concentration, better emotional health and reduced pain sensitivity to increased energy and more.
Meditation has been in vogue in the West since the mid-20th century, and the scientific research that has ramped up over that time has unearthed a wealth of tangible physical boons that rival even those of good diet and exercise. Meditators visit outpatient clinics just half as much, on average, as non-meditators do, and the effect increases with age: meditators over 40 visit outpatient clinics only 25% as much as non-meditators. Meditation alone has also been shown to reduce both blood pressure and cholesterol, which are implicated in heart attack and stroke (the #1 and #4 causes of death in America).
More pertinently, and most thrilling of all, is meditation’s impact at the genetic level. Researchers at Harvard found that meditating for just 8 weeks upregulates hundreds of genes conducive to health and downregulates hundreds of others conducive to illness. In long-term meditators, the effect was yet more pronounced.
So what does meditation offer for someone with CFS? I’m happy to report that even with my foggy brain, just 20 or so minutes of meditation a day makes my brain feel more efficient. My perception on both a literal and figurative level is clearer and I concentrate more easily. I’m less prone to repetitive or negative thoughts, and my mood feels smooth and elevated. You may be interested to know that meditation also aids sleep and reduces the size of the amygdala, the seat of fear in the brain, which may in turn help with the anxiety 50% of us grapple with.
On the research side, there is tentative evidence for the efficacy of meditation in CFS. Dr. Dawn Fleming Jackson completed a small 8-week meditation study on patients with both FM and CFS in 2009. The group of 10, who meditated 30 to 45 minutes daily, reported a significant increase in energy, improved sleep and a heightened ability to cope with pain at the end of the program. (See her presentation at OFFER here.)
Finding her ‘spot’ allows Linn to experience more clarity, feel happier and concentrate better.
If you’re wondering just how much mental ability you need to start meditating, my advice is to do some experimenting. I’ve often felt too tired to meditate only to find that once I start, I rapidly find my center and can sharpen my focus. Of course, I can’t meditate as long or as deeply as I could before, but meditation is still a sweet retreat from the usual.
Overcoming reservations and just starting – and keeping to – your meditation practice is a challenge all meditators encounter, particularly in the beginning. That said, I’m curious to hear whether or not meditation benefits those with more severe fatigue. Please do comment below!
The word meditation is somewhat vague in English, but it implies holding awareness in the present moment by bringing one’s attention to an object, such as one’s breath, a word, or a candle flame. Many forms of meditation are completely secular, such as my favorite, shamatha, which is purely what I defined as meditation above.
An Introduction to Shamatha Meditation
Here is a gentle introduction to shamatha meditation by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the current head of the Shambhala school of Tibetan Buddhism.
Other forms of meditation align with particular religions; Centering Prayer, for example, is Christian, though it can easily be adapted to any faith. There are abundant and often free resources on meditation online; start on Youtube to find a technique you like. For the slightly more ambitious, try an at-home challenge like Deepak Chopra’s 21-Day Meditation Challenge or Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg’s once-yearly monthlong meditation challenge.
Linn Cole came down with ME/CFS in 2011.
Besides the perks for the bodies, minds and emotional health of CFSers, you can enjoy meditation’s accessibility as well. No pricey classes or materials are required, and you don’t have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to reach it. You don’t even need to exert yourself, as with exercise. If you have a chair or bed and a few minutes of quiet each day, you can support your health by training your mind. I hope you may benefit from meditation as much as I have, or more.
Other Blogs by Linn Cole
- To Live Longer and Better the Science is Clear – Just Meditate
- Heartmath Techniques for Managing Stress and Stress Reduction
- How to Meditate with the Power of Now – An exploration into Eckhardt Tolle’s teachings
- How to Relieve Stress with the Power of Now – more Eckhard Tolle
Meditation has been helpful in small doses for me, as well, so I appreciate this article. However, I didn’t find anything about Shamatha Meditation under the heading for “An Introduction to…” Did I miss it?
My mistake Beth, I embedded the video but for some reason WordPress deleted it – you can find it here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0NR1qcTGrY
Thanks for this article about the sweetness of meditation, Linn.
For me, meditation is also a sweet healing activity. I started out in 2008, a couple of years after coming down with ME/CFS. I’ve encountered some challenges along the way, but now love it so much that I meditate about every 2-3h. Might sound like a chore, but I’ve found ways to now LOVE it.
Let me share the two main challenges I experienced when meditating and what helped me to overcome them:
1) Lack of focus due to fatigue–I’ve found that listening to a guided meditation audio really helps. If I have symptoms, focusing on the symptoms instead of the breath, is a beautiful point of focus. It can be a bit uncomfortable for the first few minutes, but then the mind usually makes peace with the symptoms and I no longer experience them as negative. If the symptoms seem too difficult to focus on, try focusing just on the edge of the symptom sensation or alternating your focus occasionally between the unpleasant symptom sensation and a part of your body that feels more pleasant. Don’t forget to smile–smiling adds a lot of sweetness to any meditation and has proven health benefits. I’ve created a recording of one of the meditation techniques that work best for me. You can download it here for free if you like:
http://cfsrecoveryproject.com/melt-away-tensions-and-experience-peace-audio/
2) Lack of motivation due to fatigue–I’ve written about a way to work around a ME/CFS or FM-related lack of motivation in the following two articles (the first article is particularly about getting motivated to meditate, the second is about getting motivated with ME/CFS or FM in general):
http://cfsrecoveryproject.com/why-pacing-is-hard-and-simple-technique-to-make-easy/
http://www.cortjohnson.org/blog/2014/06/30/combating-overwhelm-fibromyalgia-chronic-fatigue-syndrome/
3) Too much discomfort–If there is too much discomfort, creating positive sensations and emotions through guided imagery can help. I already do this a lot with my coaching clients, but haven’t written about it yet. Dr. Martin Rossman already has some great resources on guided imagery. I recommend his short audio-book, “Self-Healing with Guided Imagery.”
Learning how to meditate happily and effectively has been one of the biggest blessings on my recovery journey.
I’d love to hear what works for everybody else, too!
We’ve also found that guided meditation can help take some of the “effort” out of meditation. The Monroe Institute has some excellent CDs in many categories. They have several designed to boost the immune system, which could be a problem in CFS patients with autoimmune problems. Further evaluation needs to be done on their current immunity offerings. Maybe we could encourage TMI to do some more specific ones for CFS?
Kim & Kelly Derrick
Thankyou so much for your views and resources mentioned.
Angela
Meditation has worked wonders for me. My doctor, Dr. Bested, recommends 10-15 minutes of meditation, lying down, before or after an activity. I meditate about 4 times a day and after meditation my heart rate has gone down and I am more energized. Over the years I have slowly gained more energy and the ability to do much more which can also be attributed to my improved diet.
I have lost track of how many things I’ve tried since developing ME/CFS 10 years ago, but nothing has been better than meditation. I was warned that it would take at least 6 weeks of daily practice before I’d notice a significant difference, and I found that to be quite true.
While some (a few) other interventions are helpful, the best they can do is to pull me back from a higher degree of sickness toward a lesser degree of sickness, if only for a nanosecond. Maybe they keep me from sinking even lower on the negative side. (My motto: It can always get worse!)
Meditation provides a sense of making progress beyond neutral and into the positive side. I’ve never ended a meditation session without feeling better – much better than if I’d simply taken a nap. It feels like my feverish little brain took a shower.
Hello, I am new-ish here; this is my first post, yet I have been reading for a few months. I’ve experienced slow-onset CFS/Migraine/Insomnia beginning about 15 years ago. Meditation has been very helpful over the years. Many years ago I practiced my own version of meditation when my kids napped during the day and also when I had insomnia at night. My goal was to rest my body and mind as much as a could since I couldn’t sleep. It was very helpful and gave me a way to cope with my body when it was feeling so miserable.
I’ve played around with different versions of formal meditation, some made me crash, some gave me more insomnia, and others were very helpful. The beginning formal meditation practices that I have found the most helpful are outlined in Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I really enjoyed listening to the audio book which I was able to check out from my local library online and download…I didn’t even have to leave my house! I modify meditations to fit me and my health issues. Most days now I meditate lying down, but in a different position than how I sleep so my body isn’t confused between when it’s time to meditate and when it’s time to sleep.
Thank you to everyone who writes and contributes to this website! I finally feel like I’m not all alone in this.
Good to hear from you Erika and thanks for passing your experience along. For those who don’t know of him, John Kabat Zinn developed a course called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for people in chronic pain who couldn’t tolerate or get help from drugs. The course is taught all over the U.S. now. It will be featured in our blog series on Donna Jackson Nakasawa as she embraces meditation and mindfulness techniques to help her with a severe autoimmune disorder.
Linn
Thanks for this positive reminder of the benefits of a medical prescription that costs us nothing & benefits us greatly!
Hi there,
Well… I meditated for three years about 15 years ago, and at the time I found it helped me quite a lot. I was almost able to stop breathing, that’s how deep I could go. I have fibromyalgia since forever, but I do feel I was more receptive to the benefits earlier on in my life. At the time, I had problems with fatigue, depression and some pain, but not with insomnia, palpitations, medical intolerance and other symptoms that have increased over time. I gave up the meditation because I got too caught up in some very stressful life events and then just never could bring myself to getting back to it.
In January this year I decided I had to try again just in case it might benefit me in some ways – after all it’s free, and my insomnia was just getting more and more difficult to live with so I had to take some steps… my husband was helpfully joining me so we found a routine after dinner in the evening – 30 minutes seemed reasonable. I do feel I ought to do more per day but I find it very difficult to fit in amongst all the things that need doing or I want to achieve. I also know a Qigong exercise which I keep wanting to go back to in the day time – this is not quite the same yet similar enough with slightly different benefits, so the two obviously go well together.
Now about the benefits… in the beginning I was quite enthusiastic and there seemed to be a lot of healing energies about. I focused mostly on healing myself but after a while the meditations settled in to being quite “ordinary” and so I stopped focusing on anything other than being in the present moment. It could be that it just got more subtle. I personally don’t like visualisations and complicated techniques.
Nowadays I do find it very hard to reach a level of deep peace and expect this could be due to the negative programming of the nervous system, however you just have to keep at it even though it may seem unsatisfactory compared to experiences in the past.
Unfortunately the meditation has done nothing to improve my insomnia but I since I got into Chinese medicine I’m taking the view that things may very well be changing, only quite slowly. Meditation and any other alternative approaches are never instant, and you just never quite know what areas of your body and energy field need to be balanced up before you can reap the benefits you most desire. In meditation, you allow your body a break from habitual behaviour and so it may very well be doing some rebalancing during this time. I think meditation is a very welcome break to remind the nervous system that it’s all right to wind down… I expect the negative programming of the nervous system could take quite a while to rectify though. I think in the meantime I’m probably feeling a bit more level generally speaking.
I also don’t think that meditation is enough for most people who have been chronically ill for a long time, just as acupuncture is usually not enough either. I take the view that it’s about synergy so to me, meditation is just a complement to other things such as diet, exercise and Chinese herbs.
It is interesting to read of other’s experiences with anything they have tried to help with a life changing disease. That is something that I value about Cort’s posts besides the content supplied.
I had been a meditator much earlier in my life and then had let it lapse.
I was diagnosed with me/cfs 10 years ago but had unknowingly been wrestling with it for many years previously. During these last years I had dabbled with various guided meditations, some borrowed from the library, some found on line and a few purchased. The routine helped I think, often giving me something to do that was relatively untaxing and I didn’t have to make a decision which I often find is the most difficult. I always listened to them laying down to give me the most rest and often fell asleep which didn’t hurt either so I often use them to make myself take a real break rather than reading which was my go to break previously.
For the last 6 months I have been using Tara Brach’s website. She has numerous guided meditations available for free downloading. Her teaching style seems to suit me best of all I have tried to date. I can definitely say I have noticed changes in my thought patterns – less anxious and I am sleeping better although some of that may be the L-tryptophan that my naturopath suggested. Still I have had panic attacks for most of my adult life and I have found I can actually sit through a meditation and calm myself if I am at home and have no outside stimulus which is something I have never been able to do previously.
One thing I have found is that guided meditations work much better for me. It is focusing and maybe comforting to have a voice guiding me.
So I can definitely say that meditation has helped me and I would also say it is worth a try to find something that works.
Thanks Linn for giving me the prompt on a positive change for me. That is always helpful 🙂
Thank you so much, Linn, for sharing on this topic. I meditated for a dozen years every day no matter how I felt. My teacher, Eknath Easwaran, has a center within three hours of me and I spent many weeks there on retreat including with my children. I wrote Toni Bernhard about my difficulty meditating and I thought some of you might want to see her response to me:
“I don’t know what to advise you about mediating. I think this is a decision that we have to come to ourselves, based on what’s best for us.
As you know from How to Be Sick, I gave up a ten year meditation practice when I initially got sick. I had been meditating twice a day for 45 minutes at a time. Then, not at all. Now I try to meditate while lying down for 15-20 minutes a day, but I don’t do it everyday. In my opinion, meditation is not essential to a spiritual practice. I rely on books as much as I do on meditation because it’s so hard for me to meditate.
All warm wishes to you,
Toni”
Revisiting the subject today, it occurred to me that perhaps my neurological abilities have declined since I’ve been ill for so long. And that I don’t have to be a perfectionist and can live in the present. What works best for me now is to use an audio recording which does help me focus and allays my feelings of isolation if I’ve had to be home alone too much. And since I used to do passage meditation, I could make recordings of the spiritual passages I used to meditate on (read by me or someone else) and sit listening to them. Thanks for everybody’s input. Hope you’re all AWAP!
Hi Cort! I hope you’re doing ok too. Thanks so much for your help. Could you please add a link to this for people to learn about and donate to Dr. Ian Lipkin’s crowd-resourced research on the gut microbiome in people with ME/CFS. My experience with Xifaxan certainly points to the gut as one of the sources of our problems. All the best to all, Esther
For me this is the prove that the ANS especially the PNS is down like a broken arm. With meditation you calm down the system. ME patiënts never feel calm energy.
I have practiced meditation over 40 years and off and on sin e illness 18 years ago. I recently listened to Dr. Miles Neale on youtube and found that meditation very halpful. So etimes, I listen to meditation music, sometimes to the various chants and singing bowls. I like jonathan goldman cd’s and some of the japanese and chinese music for relaxation. The variety is helpful for me. Before illness a conducted support groups for cancer patients and used Guided Imagery which is so helpful, different peoples voices may be important to find what is soothing and nurturing and safe for you. All of the various forms are beneficial.
There is a Qi Gong in China Head Massage that also includes ear massage. I fou d a beautiful Shen Zhen Qi Gong on youtube that is lovely. KUAN Yin Standing Qigong Sheng Zhen. So, we have many choices. Namaste.
Also on youtube, Jack Kornfield meditations and beautiful training for self care. His books are also beautiful.
Funny, I had to give up meditation because it made me more stressed. I had made a bio-feedback gadget long before that enabled me very quickly to get super-relaxed. It was this device that originally showed me I had a problem, however: it worked by a counter which went down as I relaxed, but I was suddenly finding that no matter how long I tried, the numbers just went up and up, and I derived no benefit. I think now that it was the adrenalin kicking in as a substitute for cortisol, so I was trying to meditate in a fight-or-flight situation. That’s certainly how I felt.
Thanks for this article I will read your others. Ive started using the calm app and it is very helpful. Only on day 5 of a guided meditation Series for stress and anxiety and already finding improvements in mood and reduction in urges to comfort eat which has been a big problem for me. I’ve also started doing yoga nidra for PTSD which is a powerful body scan type meditation. Feeling hopeful I’ll be able to manage my CFS and fibro better now. ?
I have been doing Vipassana-style meditation, but it has given me severe insomnia and every day that I do it I feel worse. Apparently being unable to sleep is normal with Vipassana. Anyone else experience this? Also I am concerned that the intense focus required is physically depleting me in an unhealthy way.
If this has gone on for a while I wonder if there’s a style of meditation that might work better for you. On the other hand could it be a temporary thing? Something that you’re just going through right now?
I loved this article, and came upon it years after it was written. I’m a meditator, and like many people I don’t feel I meditate enough as I “should”. My top tips for meditating with ME/CFS is to really practice loving kindness to yourself. If you can’t make it to the cushion, do it in bed. If you can’t manage 30 minutes, do 5 or 10. If you usually do chanting and incense, but are too fatigued, remember that it doesn’t really matter. I find metta meditations really helpful, developing loving kindness to yourself first of all.