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Dealing With Problems You May Encounter During Meditation
Everyone experiences some challenges with Meditation
At some point, you will experience some form of difficulty during your meditation. It is helpful to think of these difficulties as an opportunity for practice. Challenges and difficulties are an integral part of life and provide opportunities for learning. Think of meditation as a laboratory for experimenting and learning. Don't look to avoid these challenges but rather lean into them with kindness and an open mind. Here are some common difficulties with possible approaches for practicing are below.
Legs Going to Sleep
It is very common for beginners to have their legs fall asleep or go numb during meditation. Numbness is caused by a pinched nerve - not by lack of circulation. You cannot damage the tissues in your leg by sitting. So relax. When your legs fall asleep, practice examining what it feels like. Try to stay clam and notice the sensations and try to stay in your position the whole time. Gradually over time, the numbness will disappear. If it is too uncomfortable to sit with, then pause versus reacting immediately, notice your sensations and then make a purposeful decision to change your body position and move.
Drowsiness
Because meditation is very calming and relaxing, you may experience drowsiness. This state of calmness and relaxation also occurs as we are falling asleep and you may associate this time with time to go to sleep and start to drift off. When you find this happening, apply your mindfulness to the state of drowsiness itself. Notice what drowsiness does to your thought process. Identify what bodily feelings are associated with being sleepy. Having an inquisitive awareness is the opposite of being drowsy - so you should notice your sleepiness disappearing as you are going through this inquiry process. If it does not go away, there may be a physical cause to your sleepiness - perhaps you just ate a large meal or have had a physically exhausting day. If you are exhausted - take care of your needs first, then meditate. If you have just eaten a large meal, then perhaps shift your meditation time to later after your meal.
Inability to Focus or Concentrate
At times our minds may be agitated and gyrating wildly across thoughts or easily distracted by some random thought calling to us or a 'day-dream'. Use the awareness of this happening as an opportunity to experiment with ways to combat our inability to focus or concentrate. Here are a few options for things you may try: 1) reestablish mindfulness with a few quick deep breaths. Inhale and exhale strongly and quickly. The action of changing tact will cause your brain to focus on your breathing process here. Use this as an opportunity to reground into mindfulness; 2) Count your breaths - force your mind to focus on counting as you're breathing - this should enable a refocusing; 3) Focus on your breath and say "in" when you're breathing in and "out" when you're breathing out; 4)If you are being distracted by a persistent thought, cancel that thought out with a different - opposite rational argument to your thought (break the loop of thinking) and 5) Recall your purpose - remind yourself why you are sitting and meditating and practicing mindfulness.
Fear
For some reason, states of fear may arise during meditation. This may be because we unconsciously trigger some repressed emotions or we are afraid of the unknown or for some other current emotional turmoil in our lives. Should you experience a sense of fear during meditation, no matter the source of the feeling, mindfulness will help. Observe the fear as it is. Study it's effect. Notice how it makes you feel and how your body is reacting to the fear. If you're having strong fear images, watch these as if you were watching a movie. Observe what is happening. Don't fight the situation and don't try to repress any feelings, images or memories. Almost think of these like clouds in a sky and watch them move past. Remind yourself if necessary any of these images or memories and the fear can't hurt you. It is noting but an emotion. If you are able to let these emotions pass by without repressing or stopping them, it will have run its course in your conscious attention and will be gone. Using mindfulness in these situations enables the brain to process the emotion so it will be gone.
Agitation
Agitation and restlessness frequently occurs when there is some deeper experience happening in the unconsciousness. Rather than confront something unpleasant in our experience we repress it or try to bury it and avoid it all together. This doesn't work generally It is typically the mental energy we're using to cover-up and avoid emotions and thinking about something that boils and create agitation. When this type of discomfort appears during meditation, just observe it. Don't let it overtake your meditation. Don't jump up and stop your meditation either...but don't try to make it go away. Try to separate from it to be able to observe it; let it be there and watch it. Notice what you can see. Let whatever is going to arise come up and watch it go by. If you can just sit and observe, your agitation and discomfort will eventually pass.
Trying Too Hard
Whatever drives us to learn about and practice Mindfulness, sometimes makes us very serious about going through our practices. We can get so obsessed with doing it 'right' and so we may find ourselves tense and striving for some sense of progress or outcomes while meditating. We cannot stress enough that you just need to practice being mindful - noticing, being in the present and being kind to yourself and the rest will take care of itself. You don't need to DO anything to make meditation a certain way - or frankly any mindfulness practices. Just try to relax, enjoy the process and journey.
