Common Meditation Experiences
I am experiencing some pretty intense symptoms and agitation (emotional and physical) inside of my meditation do you have any tips on what I can do?
Our first and most important piece of advice would be, don’t concern yourself in any way about what is unfolding for you. And don’t resist it. We have so much stored up emotion, pain and imbalance that when we open up our mind, body and nervous system’s natural creative intelligence, it wants to self-correct and self-heal itself as quickly as your system can handle. Sometimes, it spills into our meditation and all we can try and do is be an innocent witness. It is very convincing and so you may feel anger, intense anxiety, sadness or tears coming. If you do, take comfort that there are many people before you who have ridden through the emotion and many more who will come after you who will do the same. It’s all part of the process of equilibrium. And once greater levels of equilibrium become stabilised, you will experience more peace and greater capability to live life to your fullest, and the meditation will be a source of joy and contentment for you.
The next most important thing for you to remember is to stay in the meditation for the full time you had allocated for it, which in most cases will be the full 20 minutes. Just because it may not be a comfortable experience does not mean it is not valid. Indeed, it is incredibly valid to process that which we’ve held locked inside of ourselves so much. Until we do, we’ll never be clear of it. By riding the meditation out we are staying in the game and helping our internal healing mechanisms flush it out of our system. In time, this process will be complete and then you will be free of one of the most significant things holding you back. My sincere advice would be NEVER BREAK OUT OF A MEDITATION EARLY DUE TO DISCOMFORT.
Indeed, these malignant cellular structures within brain and body will agitate like mad to try and stop you meditating, in the hope of maintaining the status quo so that they can continue to survive – all cells have an instinct for survival and some of these malignancies can be as large as 100 million cells, and so when they agitate for survival, we really feel it. These are often aided and abetted by our ego and our intellect, who also feel threatened by the experience the meditation delivers. Their supremacy over your existence will begin moving towards a more balanced level of functioning and so they will generate internal signals of doubt, distress and dissatisfaction in order to maintain their pre-eminent status.
All we can do is try and tune into that pure essence inside of ourselves which knows this is good for us and roll with the programme. In the absence of that, drawing on any reserves of courage and toughing it out will likely prove to be one of the best and most liberating things you ever do.
The last few minutes of the meditation often feels the smoothest and deepest. Can I do more than 20 minutes so I can enjoy this sensation a bit more?
This is quite a common experience. Often in the early days the de-excitation of the nervous system takes the majority of the allotted 20 minutes to fully play out, leaving you with a deep experience right at the end of your meditation. If your system was free of stress and baggage you would go straight into the blissful zone, but very few people have this experience because there is decades of accumulated baggage to chip away at.
However this isn't such a bad thing because it actually teases the brain into swifter neuroplastic development because it is chomping at the bit to get to this state. It also represents a wonderful opportunity to continually improve our life experience with the systematic clearing out of old (and daily) rubbish.
With time you will likely find yourself getting into the zone earlier on in your meditation, but don’t worry if that is not the case as lifestyle, body-type and other factors can mean it feels generally quite shallow.
One other tip you can do, is to place your hands and arms to the side of you (11 o’clock and 1 o’clock) and turn your hands upwards. This tends to give you a little more of a float sensation. If you wish to ground, then place hands one on top of the other in your lap.
My head keeps nodding forward and I feel like I’m going to sleep, can you provide some guidance?
Don’t worry, it’s very unlikely that you are going to sleep, and even if you are, it will be because that’s what you’re body so desperately needs and so it’s good to surrender to it. The level of rest you gain when you enter the sleep state via the meditation is so much higher than a regular nap, so you can take solace from the fact that your body is getting deep hits of what it most needs. However, it is more than likely that you’re actually going into a different state to the sleep state, known as Turiya (Transcendence) in ancient India, and it is one which will be hugely restorative to every aspect of your mind, body and nervous system.
If your neck is aching from the slumping forwards, then cuddle a pillow like a teddy bear and allow your chin to rest on the top of the pillow. This will keep your head more upright as you meditate.
I find myself very distracted by noise when meditating in public places. Can I wear ear plugs or listen to music to help combat the sound?
It is not generally advised. The whole purpose of this practise is to allow you to be at your peak no matter what the external circumstances. We are intent on cultivating an ability to relax into the meditation and surrender to the process regardless of the noisiness or distraction of our environment.
The meditation will still work to a satisfactory level even in the most uncomfortable of conditions. It may not be perfect, but very few things in life are. And developing your capability to relax into to it in spite of circumstances will ultimately lead to a more ideal life experience.
Please note, if you’ve had a prior history of anxiety, then it’s quite possible you may be very sensitive to noise in the first year of meditation, and so you have more latitude to do whatever you need to make the meditation comfortable. However, it will be good for you to push yourself out of the comfort zone a little bit on a fairly frequent basis so that you can expand the envelope of your capability bit by bit.
Can you remind me why those 2 mins at the end are important? And can I do more?
It's ABSOLUTELY essential that you take those 2 minutes of eyes closed after EVERY meditation. Your brain needs this time to prepare itself for waking state activity again. If not, it may become shocked, you may feel agitated, and you'll lose much of the benefits of the calmed down nervous system that you just created in the meditation. It helps the brain to programme calmness.
One metaphor I like to use is digging for treasure (in our case rubbish!), it's a dig that takes months if not years and we need to protect the dig each day in case rain comes in and the sides cave in. If we don't protect it with a cover, then we spend most of the next day clearing up the parts thats have caved in. The 2 minutes at the end helps protect the work we have been doing durring the meditation, so next time we can carry on where we left off and ensures the good work gets saved.
It is such an important point, that if you're really in a rush, then it's better to shorten the meditation to make sure you have plenty of eyes-closed rest time at the end.
And yes, you can absolutely do more than 2 minutes, that is simply the bare minimum, 3 to 5 minutes is even more powerful from an integration perspective. You can even lie down and get more comfortable!
I often find I have a headache during and sometimes after meditation. Why would this be?
The reasons for this could be numerous. If it's the first few weeks, it may well be a symptom of the clearing out process, or the more enhanced activation of your brain. It may also be a result of the greater blood flow to the cerebral cortex that the meditation elicits. If you are a smoker. this phenomena may be particularly pronounced, as smoking cigarettes tends to constrict your cerebral arterial channels.
It is worth noting that from time to time, we will have another big wave of release, and so they can occur from time to time as your meditation practice continues and you find yourself digging deeper.
It can also be you are saying your mantra too loudly - repeating the mantra loudly is famous for creating headaches. The mantra needs to be the faintest little pulse you can naturally and effortlessly employ in any given meditation. Nothing more. Please note the italicised word effortlessly, you cannot force the mantra to be quiet, you can only allow it to be soft, faint and gentle.
If you find your mouth, throat, tongue or lips moving during the meditation then you are repeating it way too forcefully. There is never a circumstance where saying the mantra with your mouth is advised.
Attempting to focus on the mantra is also famous for creating headaches. Whether that's because you have fallen for the classic pitfalls of thinking that focusing on the mantra is a good thing, or that greater number of repetition is better, or you simply are under the misguided notion that drifting off the mantra is bad, please DO NOT focus on the mantra. Gently and faintly enliven it, and do so as nonchalantly as you can. Forgetting to repeat the mantra is part of the process, so be as cool, calm and casual about the mantra repetition as possible and then you will get the most out of it as well and will go a long way to ensuring you don't get any headaches.
