Practitioner perspectives on meditation-based preparation for psychedelic experiences

The abstract of this very interesting pre-print reads: "The potential of meditation as a preparatory tool for psychedelic experiences lacks empirical investigation. We surveyed experienced practitioners (N=123) with substantial histories in both meditation and psychedelic use to examine meditation’s role in psychedelic preparation. Respondents expected meditation training to primarily enhance acceptance and present-moment focus during psychedelic experiences, while also increasing oceanic boundlessness and reducing anxious ego-dissolution. For practitioners with limited meditation experience (1-3 years) and fewer psychedelic sessions (1-20), those adhering to specific meditation traditions reported significantly higher PBMPP scores (Perceived Benefits of Meditation for Psychedelic Preparation) compared to non-adherents. However, among highly experienced meditators (10+ years) with limited psychedelic experience (1-20 sessions), this pattern reversed, with non-adherents reporting significantly higher PBMPP scores than adherents to specific tradition. When evaluating specific meditation approaches, Loving-Kindness Meditation emerged as the most beneficial preparatory practice, significantly outrating other approaches such as Focused Attention. Exploratory factor analysis of meditative elements identified three distinct components: Positive Emotional States (PES), Mindful Awareness and Insight (MAI), and Concentration Techniques (CT), with PES receiving the strongest endorsement for psychedelic preparation. For practical implementation, participants recommended approximately three weeks of preparation with 30-minute daily sessions, strongly favouring online and asynchronous delivery methods. These results provide empirical groundwork for developing effective evidence-based meditation protocols for psychedelic preparation. They also highlight the importance of considering psychedelic users’ level of previous meditation experience in optimising such interventions. Future research directions should include controlled trials examining specific meditation practices’ effects on psychedelic experiences and outcomes across different populations and contexts."

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My friend & colleague, Michael Barry, has written quite an extensive piece on this paper:

In this 2025 pre-print article, the authors aimed to explore the perspectives of individuals
experienced in both meditation and psychedelic use, with the goal of shaping evidence-based
meditation protocols for psychedelic preparation. I’ve written a reflexive summary of the methods
used and results, before sharing a few of my personal takeaways and a few questions that you
could use to reflect on your own meditation practice.
Methods
The authors - psychology researchers mainly in London, but also the USA - recruited 123
participants (predominantly white, male and educated) from various social media sites with an
online survey assessing meditation and psychedelic experience, and a series of randomised
measures. These measures included:

• scales assessing perceived benefits of meditation for psychedelic preparation,
• anticipated effects of pre-psychedelic meditation training on mindfulness and altered
  states of consciousness,
• preferences for meditation approaches and techniques.
• the perceived impact of meditation on psychedelic experiences
• perspectives on developing structured meditation programs for psychedelic preparation.
  They then performed various statistical analyses on the responses.
  Results
  It is worth noting the authors created an unvalidated measure called the Perceived benefits of
  meditation for psychedelic preparation (PBMPP) score. The 7 elements they deemed
  important were whether meditation training would:
  (i) increase the likelihood of a positive psychedelic experience,
  (ii) enhance safety during the experience,
  (iii) facilitate the emergence of helpful insights,
  (iv) support smoother post-experience readjustment and integration, and
  (v) lead to lasting benefits.
  (vi) help individuals access deeper meditative states during the psychedelic experience
  (vii) reduce the likelihood of negative experiences.
  Participants rated all of these highly, with (i) and (iv) receiving the highest ratings.
  Participants felt that meditation training would improve various helpful mindfulness factors
  with particular emphasis on acceptance (“I can tolerate emotional pain.”) and present-focus (“I
  try to notice my thoughts without judging them.”). In terms of handling the Altered State of
  Consciousness, participants expected that meditation training would enhance Oceanic
  Boundlessness (eg “I had the feeling everything around me was somehow unreal”) and reduce
  Anxious Ego-Dissolution (eg “1 was afraid without being able to say exactly why”).
  The authors split meditation in 3 different ways in order to examine it from different angles:
• Meditation ‘practices’ eg Focused Attention vs Loving Kindness
• Meditation ‘elements’ - they performed a literature review and expert review to identify 18
  competencies that meditators can develop eg “observing attention”, “positive emotion
  cultivation”, “relaxation/tranquillity cultivation”
• Meditation ‘processes’ - fundamental psychological processes that meditation training
  can influence eg “Attention Regulation”, “Body Awareness”, “Emotional Regulation”.
  One stand out finding was that when participants were asked which meditation practices would
  be most helpful, they significantly marked out Loving Kindness meditation (“metta meditation”)
  and the cultivation of Positive Emotional States as being most helpful, and Focused Attention
  techniques or Concentration techniques as least helpful.
  The cultivation of positive emotional states involved meditative ‘elements’ or competencies such
  as:
• A sense of humour
• Empathy and compassion
• Positive emotion cultivation
• relaxation/tranquility cultivation
  Other meditative ‘elements’ or competencies that were deemed particularly helpful were:
• Comfort with discomfort
• Non-discriminatory awareness (an open form of concentration that allows phenomena to
  arise within concentration without aiming focus on anything in particular)
• Equanimity
• Curiosity
• Ongoing awareness
  They also examined meditative processes and participants expected that forms of emotional
  regulation would be most helpful for the psychedelic experience, for example:
• Emotion Regulation I: approaching ongoing emotional reactions non-judgmentally, with
  acceptance;
• Emotion Regulation II: being able to ‘stay with’ strong emotions and whatever is present
  in the field of awareness, letting oneself be affected without trying to escape or suppress
  them;
  There were was a smaller but still positive expectation for two other meditative processes: Body
  Awareness (focusing on internal experiences such as breathing, emotions, or other body
  sensations), and Change in Perspective on the Self (detachment from identification with a static
  sense of self, seeing the activities of the mind and body as fleeting occurrences rather than as
  ‘reality’).
  Finally participants recommended a pre-psychedelic experience meditation training of around 22
  days with a daily practice duration of about 30 min, and supported its online delivery, and
  asynchronous delivery.
  My Takeaways
  Firstly I found it very helpful to see how the authors “codified” meditation into 1) practices 2)
  competencies and 3) processes. I feel that this alone was a helpful contribution, and could help
  people reflect on what techniques they are using and where they could build competency. For
  example, it made me reflect on the competencies and processes I use (I agreed that I tended to
  use practices and competencies that cultivate positive emotional states such as Loving Kindness

or metta). It then did two things - first it increased my confidence to use this technique with more
vigour, and secondly it made me want to increase my competency.
In particular I was pleasantly surprised to see “a sense of humour” listed as a key competency.
As I reflected on this, I realised that when things get really hard or “weird” during a psychedelic
experience, I often do find myself laughing because it seems to help me get in touch with the
temporary and passing nature of it. Whilst laughing, I’m non-verbally saying “Ok well that’s where
I am right now, oh well!”. This was important for me, because that skill had been quite
unconscious, whereas now that I’ve read it as a specific competency and brought it more into
conscious awareness, it will help me use and cultivate that skill more in future.
I was also interested to see “relaxation/tranquility cultivation” as a key competency for cultivating
positive emotional states. Practices such as autogenic relaxation have good evidence for
cultivating health & wellbeing (Manzoni et al, 2008), and could be used as preparation and
perhaps during an experience to develop this competency.
There was also something helpful about reading the CAMS-R elements that make up
“Mindfulness”; this combined with the importance participants placed on emotion regulation
helped me identify some gaps in my own practice where I could focus and potentially helpfully
improve my experiences.
Finally all of this together has given me a number of ideas about how to help others to prepare
their meditation schedule prior to a psychedelic retreat.
The authors’ own conclusions focused on adaptive affect navigation as a central mechanism for
both harm reduction and benefit enhancement in psychedelic contexts, quoting several pieces of
evidence from the study:

• the high endorsement of Lovingkindness meditation over concentration-based practices,
• the importance of the Positive Emotional States factor in their analysis of meditative
  elements (competencies), and
• the elevated ratings for emotion regulation processes over attention control.
  Comments/criticism
  One comment I would make is that I have also found Concentration Techniques and Attention
  Control to be immensely powerful, beautiful and insightful during psychedelic experiences, and
  some of the things I have learned have really deepened my general meditation practice and
  understanding of the mind. However, I realised very early on that these techniques had to be
  used at the right time - for example they are difficult to use during the peak of the experience, but
  can come into their own as one comes off plateau. Whereas at the peak of the experience, I tend
  to use Zen-like “Do nothing” meditation techniques as taught by Shinzen Young. So it would be
  interesting - but a challenging study - to examine different techniques at different times in the
  psychedelic experience. But it is important not to discard these techniques based on this study,
  which ultimately only examines the opinions of 123 people.
  That is another important point - this is essentially a study of people’s opinions so it should be
  taken with a pinch of salt. We don’t know whether any of these techniques are improving their
  lives, how often they use them, whether they use them correctly. It’s just 123 people on social
  media giving their opinion in an online survey and then a set of statistical analyses being
  performed on that data, which could have the effect of making it seem more formal or robust than
  it actually is.

That is why I am not making any concrete conclusions about the data, but allowing it to be
compared with my opinions and taking what is helpful to inspire my practice, and what agrees
with my own first-hand experience.
How you could use this information

• Reflect on your own meditative practices. Are you clear on what meditation practices you
  use? What meditative elements or competencies do you use? Which of these might be
  useful during a psychedelic experience? Which of these could be practiced in the run up
  to a psychedelic experience?
• Have you received formal training in Loving Kindness meditation? If not here is a
  beautiful series of instructions by renowned meditation teacher Rob Burbea
  https://dharmaseed.org/talks/9983/
• What other ways could you develop techniques for the cultivation of Positive
  Emotional states
• Do you use techniques that use Body Awareness eg Body Scans or techniques involving
  the Energy Body (see Burbea’s meditation above)
• In terms of Emotion Regulation (“approaching ongoing emotional reactions non-
  judgmentally, with acceptance” and “being able to ‘stay with’ strong emotions and
  whatever is present in the field of awareness, letting oneself be affected without trying to
  escape or suppress them”) how could you develop these psychological processes? Be
  creative. For example I sometimes sit in the sauna or a cold water shower and use that
  as excellent practice for the sometimes uncomfortable parts of a psychedelic experience
• it feels like this is a helpful training for that mind “muscle”
• Can you use some of the findings of this study to help motivate your consistency and
  duration of practice - for example, saying something to yourself like “If I meditate every
  day this week for 20 minutes, it will probably increase my likelihood of a positive
  experience and improve my integration”
• Would it be helpful to practice any of these competencies with a teacher to get some
  feedback and improve your meditative skill?