I've found that many people don't meditate because their experience of meditation is unpleasant and stressful. There are specific difficulties that are sometimes encountered. Generally, that is one of the advantages of working with a good meditation teacher, they can guide you. However, most meditation teachers don't have this full set of distinctions.
Furthermore, a good meditation teacher is not always easy to find. While this list of remedies to meditation problems is not a substitute for working with a truly outstanding teacher, my hope is that it will help folks to smooth out many of the obstacles that keep them from meditating on a regular basis.
This is a troubleshooting check list for meditation.
Every meditation difficulty has specific and remediable causes. Many times people try to plow through things, which is ok, unless it interferes significantly with your meditation.
Furthermore, and especially when someone has signifcant stress while meditating or has even completely abandoned meditating, there may be multiple factors to be handled.
1) Are you meditating while you are tired?
If so, meditate after a nap or a full nights sleep.
2) Are you meditating while you haven't gotten enough sleep?
If so, meditate after a nap or a full nights sleep.
3) Are you meditating while dehydrated?
Many people do not drink enough water. The minimum suggested amount is 1 oz of water for every 2 pounds of body weight. A generalization is you should be drinking at least 3 quarts of water each day. Drink at least 3 quarts of water for 3 days, and you should notice a difference in how smoothly your meditation goes. This needs to become a habit.
4) Were you hungry during your meditation?
Eat a good meal, with some protein that fills you up an hour or so before your meditation. Not only can the sensation of hunger be distracting, but the physiological state of hunger can cause our minds to drift, and make it more difficult to focus.
5) Were you tired because you were too full?
Wait an hour or two after eating before meditating.
6) Was the environment too noisy?
Find a different place or time to meditate, or handle the source of the noise, or use some sort of noise blocking ear covers, or a white noise generator. Alternately, soothing soundscapes or light classical music may be helpful.
7) How was the room temperature?
If not comfortable - adjust either the room temperature, or your body temperature by wearing or removing additional layers, hats, gloves, whatever is needed. You may need to get the heaters or AC fixed. Also, if you may need to change locations, or times.
8) Not starting with a relaxed posture?
Take 30 seconds or so, at the very beginning of your meditation to relax your body.
9) Is your attention on things you need to do?
A) Are any of them pressing, for instance you will get a parking ticket if you don't put money in the meter? Anything that is pressing, handle ASAP.
B) For other incomplete actions that don't need to be handled immediately:
i) make a complete, written, specific list of what needs to be done, by when.
ii) Make a plan for doing the actions. What will you do when.
iii) Set your list aside while you meditate
iv) After you meditate, at the earliest possible opportunity begin to take the actions you outlined in steps i and ii above.
C) Make a regular practice of making such a list on a daily basis.
10) Do you not completely understand the meditation process you are doing?
a) re-study the process, until you are very clear on how it goes.
b) imagine yourself meditating this way ... does it make sense?
c) Try it out for a short meditation, say 3 - 5 minutes and see how it goes
d) If it's still confusing at this point consult another reference, or pick another style of meditation.
11) Is some of your attention distracted by keeping track of the time?
a) get some kind of a timing device, or a recording that is X minutes long of soothing music. That way you can let yourself be fully absorbed into your meditation without any attention on the time, knowing that you will be roused once the time is over.
b) Another possibility is to meditate with one other person, or a group of other people, and have one person designated as the time keeper, and rotate who plays the time keeper role.
c) Yet another possibility is to have some kind of objective reference point. For instance, if your meditation is the recitation of a mantra timed with your breathing, then you can use a mala, which is a set of beads on a string, with one clearly marked. With each repetition you move 1 bead along the mala. Keep track of how many times you go around the mala, which traditionally has 108 beads. If you are timing your mantra with your breathing, then if you breath approximately 4 times per minute, it would be about a 20 to 25 minute meditation to go around the mala once.
d) Since it's ideal to have as long of a meditation period as we possibility can, if your schedule will allow, you go until your legs start to fall asleep or you are otherwise somewhat uncomfortable, then stop or take a short break.
12) If you are using a mantra, do you clearly know what the mantra means?
If not, look it up dictionaries and similar reference materials, until you know exactly what the word or phrase means.
13) Have you drank alcohol in the last 24 hours?
If you have, wait until it completely wears off and at least 24 hours have passed before you attempt to meditate. Meditation is not recommended while even slightly intoxicated.
14) Have you used any "recreational" or "street" drugs in the last 3 days?
If you have, it is recommended that you wait until 72 hours have passed before meditating.
15) Have you consumed more than the equivalent caffeine of 2 cups of coffee?
If so, drink some water (couple quarts), take some B vitamins, and wait a couple of hours, then give it another go.
Reduce, or eliminate your daily caffeine intake.
16) Have had you had much refined sugar in the last 12 hours?
Too much refined sugar tends to interfere with attention, and cause fluctuations in mood. You will probably have more success with your meditation practice if you dramatically reduce or completely eliminate your intake of refined sugar products.
17) Is anyone discouraging, or interfering with your meditation practice?
a) who specifically?
b) How specifically were they discouraging to you?
* Be as detailed and specific as possible.
You may discover that what they are doing is not so bad afterall. Perhaps that is not the case, either. Occasionally when someone is having thoughts that some one or some group is discouraging their meditation, upon reviewing the situation thoughtfully you might find that in fact you had over - generalized or jumped to conclusions about what their behaviors mean.
c) Have you done anything to them that could have upset them?
If in fact you have done something that they got upset about, that could the cause of their discouragement.
If you have done something like this, using discretion, and good judgement, consider how to best make amends with them. This may include repairing any damage done, apologizing, asking for forgiveness, confessing what you have done, etc.
Sometimes these conversations are not easy. It is not always in everyones best interest to be forthcoming about such matters. However, 99% of the time, even though it may very scary, it is in fact for the greater good to fully talk about such things.
Be sure that you are not coming clean about something in a way that is designed for an ulterior "negativ motive" such as to get revenge or something.
Once you have done your best to handle the situation, and taken responsibility for your part in it, usually things will calm down, and they will cease giving you a hard time.
Occasionally, there are some people, that even when you go above and beyond what they could expect in order to make things right with them, they will still persist in negative behavior toward you. In these cases do what you can to avoid them as completely as possible.
d) Is there any secret you are worried that they may have found out about?
If so, write down specifically what the secret is, who specifically you think found out, when and where, and how you think they found out. Then, what specifically made you think they know. This will take the pressure off, and give you greater clarity regarding this person. Do this for every secret you think they might know.
It is also recommended that you share with the person the secret you have been hiding. Again use discretion, and realize that in about 98 or 99 percent of the time, this is in fact the best course of action. Furthermore, people usually know more about us than we think, and it will help them as well when you clear the air.
e) Boldly, and courageously ask the person to support you in your endeavors to improve yourself. Also, ask them how you can be more supportive of them.
18) Are you meditating to impress someone, or to win someones favor or approval?
If so, and if you have no other reason to meditate, it would be best to at least for now, put meditation aside and pursue things that are of interest to you, and that you see the benefit of doing.
19) Is there some recent traumatic experience that you can't stop thinking about?
While meditation can be helpful for these situations, it will not be smooth. It is advised to pursue a technique that specifically is designed for trauma resolution such as EFT, TFT, EMDR, or Index Releasing, or Visual Kinesthetic Dissociation.
If the incident is so intense that you have a very strong reaction to it, please consider working with a professional counselor who is skilled at one or more of the above methods.
20) Do you experience strange phenomena such as spiritual beings visiting you during meditation?
In general, the best thing to do if you think this is happening is to treat the image or appartion the same way you would a thought, by noticing it, and then returning to the meditation practice.
21) Do you have a regular time and place for meditation?
Establishing a routine for when, where and how you meditate makes it easy because you take the decision factor out of it. You are spending time trying to figure if, or when, or how, you just do it.
22) Are you meditating everyday?
Daily meditation will give you a kind of momentum that causes you to gradually getting more and more profound, noticeable, and "deep" results.
23) Is your meditation too short?
Each meditation session should be at least 10 minutes long, and ideally between 20 minutes to 45 minutes. Anything shorter that 10 minutes may produce enough benefit to be noticeable, and thus may be experienced as discouraging.
24) Are you trying to achieve Enlightenment in an unreasonably short time frame?
It's fine to have a lofty goal, but not being realistic can cause you to put too much effort into meditation which is counter productive. Furthermore, it can be disheartening when you get close to the established timeline, only to find that you still many of your same patterns.
Historically, most people that achieved Enlightenment, including Guatama Buddha worked at it relentlessly for years, at least 7 to 10 years, of 18 or 20 hours a day solidly meditating. If you are not a full time meditator, then probably best to think in terms of multiple decades.
Our basic goal at Wisdom Strategy Research Institute is to accelerate this process, so we have high hopes for you. Nonetheless, if meditation is the only transformational method you pursue, I really would not expect to see you achieve enlightenment in only a few weeks or months. Not that's it's completely impossible, just that it would be extremely unusual for such a thing to happen.
25) Do you have a disempowering or distracting story about the mantra, or the practice?
a) The easiest fix in this case is to change mantras, practices to one that you are comfortable with.
b) If for some reason, you want to continue using your current mantra, or practice, then take a close look at the rationality of your story. Does it actually make sense? Is it based on fact? What are the facts, and what is the guess or conjecture? Do you see that your story could be a misperception or misinterpretation? Do you have all available data necessary to know exactly what happened, and what it means? What else could the facts mean?
TO BE CONTINUED...