- The online survey will take approximately 2–3 hours to complete.
- You will need a computer and access to the internet. Using a phone or mobile device to complete the surveys is not recommended.
- You will need to provide an email address to receive the link to the survey, but you can use anonymous email forwarding using the following free third-party services to protect your identity:
- You may complete the questions in multiple sittings, and you will be given the opportunity to take a break after each section.
The survey contains 5 sections:
1. Demographics and meditation history (~30 questions)
- Includes your age, gender, etc.
- Types and amount of meditation you have practiced
- Approximate total lifetime hours of meditation
- Total number of retreats
2. Meditation-related experiences and their impact (~400 questions)
- Includes questions about a wide range of meditation-related experiences
- How long they lasted
- How they impacted your life
3. Influencing factors (~100 questions)
- Includes questions about your psychiatric and trauma history
- Your mindset and the setting or context when meditation-related difficulties first began
4. Responses and remedies (~150 questions)
- Includes questions about how you and others interpreted and responded to your meditation-related difficulties
- What was helpful or unhelpful
5. More about you (~200 questions)
- Includes questions about you and how you think, feel, and behave in different situations
- Your spiritual or religious beliefs and history
- This section also includes the option of submitting a written narrative of your story
Before you start, you may want to have the following information ready:
- Approximate total lifetime hours of meditation (you can use the meditation hours calculator)
- Total number of retreats
- Dates of important events
- Specific remedies or treatments for meditation-related difficulties that you tried, including medications, therapies, number of days in a hospital, books you read, etc.
The following questions involve written responses that you can write beforehand and paste into the survey
WHAT IS YOUR UNDERSTANDING
of why your meditation-related difficulties occurred or what caused them?
IN YOUR OWN WORDS
please describe what has been most helpful for you
IN YOUR OWN WORDS
please describe what has been most unhelpful or even harmful for you
PLEASE TELL US YOUR STORY
- In whatever form you choose, including whatever information you think is most important to include.
- There is no word limit, but we suggest keeping it under 3000 words.
- Submitting a story is optional.