Today I am featuring a post written for my by me Substack friend Krspeace. I chose him to write for me because his posts are always insightful. I already have these book recommendations on my book list, as someone who has spent a lot of time reading and practicing all kind of spirituality this gives me new thoughts. I have already spent time learning about Radical Acceptance, so I am willing to delve into this first. Also, I do have a lot of crystals which I love, and I love the way they feel. But, I am now more aware of the cost of these crystals is not just monetary. I will continue to love my crystals but I won’t buy any more.
You sit on the cushion, do the breathwork, pay for the retreat and yet, something goes sideways. Straight off the rails in a way no one at the front of the room can address with full confidence.
You are one of the people the industry has been slow to talk about.
I have recommended the apps, booked the sessions, and nodded along when a teacher said the strange thing I was feeling was “just energy moving.” I have stopped many a routine because it made me feel worse and told no one. So please understand that this is not a takedown from the outside. I am attempting a correction from the inside.
The meditation and Reiki industries are not one thing. You need to bear in mind that they are a marketplace. Marketplaces have incentives that do not always line up with your nervous system.
Clinical psychologist Willoughby Britton spent years documenting what happens when meditation goes wrong. Her research found that roughly one in ten people who meditate experience adverse effects lasting more than a month. These include anxiety, insomnia, dissociation, and in rare cases psychotic breaks.
When she reported her own dissociative symptoms to teachers, she was told she had reached a new stage of enlightenment and should keep meditating. You may think that to be a fringe anecdote until you realize it is a systemic failure of supervision.
The industry has a name for the good version of this: the “dark night of the soul.” It sounds romantic when it really is not. For some people, intensive practice opens a door that does not close on its own. The teacher training pipelines that certify new guides rarely include a module on what to do when such a student is destabilized.
You need to experience Reiki to make a decision on it. I have felt heat in a practitioner’s hands. I have also read the Merck Manual’s summary. Systematic reviews of Reiki for pain and anxiety show some beneficial results, but high-quality trials are limited with mixed evidence. Other reviews found no benefit for depression or other clinical conditions.
Skeptics put it more bluntly. Dr. Stephen Barrett has said Reiki “has no substantiated health value and lacks a scientifically plausible rationale.” Dr. Steven Novella has noted that a century of research has failed to find any clue that the proposed life force exists. In blind tests, practitioners have performed at the level of a coin flip when asked to detect a human energy field.
Does that mean every session is worthless? No. It means the thing that helped you may not be the thing you think helped you. Relaxation, touch, attention, ritual, belief, and the simple luxury of being cared for are very real. They are just not the same as a scientifically validated energy medicine. You can enjoy the session and still ask what you are paying for.
The same question belongs in your shopping cart. The crystal industry is a supply chain before it is a spiritual practice. A significant share of crystals sold in New Age shops come from artisanal mining zones in the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, and China, where labor conditions and environmental impact are often dire.
The UK Advertising Standards Authority has ruled against crystal therapy businesses making misleading health claims, and placebo research has found that healing crystals do not exert therapeutic effects beyond belief. None of this makes your crystal ugly. It makes the story around it incomplete.
The leading industry apps deserve the same scrutiny. Calm and Headspace charge around $70 a year for access to guided audio, sleep stories, and streaks. The content can be lovely. The business model is a subscription. Those are not the same as a teacher who knows your history. Even the “streak” feature quietly converts a practice of attention into a performance metric.
At least books keep things interesting. The best ones do not flatter the industry. Ronald Purser’s McMindfulness is the sharpest short book on how a contemplative tradition became a corporate coping tool. Purser argues that mindfulness has been reduced to a self-help technique that fits neatly into consumer culture, teaching people to adjust to systems rather than question them.
I read it expecting a polemic and found something funnier and sadder. We have a portrait of an industry that would rather sell you calm than ask why you are not calm. If you have ever felt a little queasy after a “mindfulness at work” seminar, this book will explain why.
Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance is instead the counterweight. It is a warm, story-driven book about meeting fear and shame with attention rather than bypassing them. I recommend it to people who are about to quit meditation because they think they are doing it wrong. Brach avoids selling a shortcut. She is modelling a slower, more honest relationship with yourself. Read Purser for the critique and Brach for the repair. They belong on the same shelf.
Robert Augustus Masters’ Spiritual Bypassing names the move so many of us make without noticing. We use spiritual language to skip over grief, anger, or a conversation that needs to happen. I have done this. I have called avoidance “letting go.” The book is uncomfortable in the way a good mirror is uncomfortable.
So, what do you do with all this? You stop outsourcing your discernment. Ask a Reiki practitioner what “energy” means to them and listen for whether the answer is a metaphor or a mechanism. Ask a meditation teacher what their training included about adverse effects. Read the studies your app cites, if it cites any. Look at the supply chain of the object on your altar or around your neck. None of this requires you to become a cynic. In fact, it encourages and requires you to become a participant instead of a customer.
The industry will keep growing. The apps will keep renewing. The retreats will keep filling. The question is whether you will keep handing over your attention without asking what it is being used for.
I bet you already know how to sit with a question?
That is the practice.
