"Many Westerners, when they come to dharma practice, come looking for psychological healing—but this is not what meditation was designed to do. As meditation has become mainstream, it has been marketed as a way to address physical and emotional ailments as well as a way to improve performance at work, reduce stress, and rewire the brain. I’ve been a psychotherapist for nearly twenty-five years, working with meditators and non-meditators alike; I have also taught meditation in the Theravada tradition to students who could clearly benefit from therapy. I’ve seen firsthand the benefit of combining the two. I’ve also seen the pitfalls of thinking that meditation can resolve early psychological wounds—as powerful as meditation is, that kind of healing is not its purview. For that, we have psychotherapy. And when psychotherapy is undertaken in tandem with a meditation practice, it can be a powerful mix."
What Meditation Can't Cure
Last edited by Monica Bhagwan
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