Wisdom Strategy Research Institute

Many people don't meditate on a regular basis 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, because this is an assembly of knowledge from many sources, not limited to one meditation tradition.

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 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, and receiving the full spectrum of rewarding benefits possible.

This is a troubleshooting check list for meditation. If you are having trouble meditating or maintaining a meditation practice over time, this list is an appropriate action to take to get it sorted out and handled.

Every meditation difficulty has specific and remediable causes. Many times people try to plow through these things with sheer will-power, self discipline and persistence. The path of plowing is sometimes very instructional, definitely ok. We can consider it a practice of itself. I recommend it only after solidly establishing your habit and practice of meditation. Plowing through whatever arises is fine, unless it significantly interferes significantly with your meditation. To some extent we can think of all meditation as plowing. Therefore, some balance and perspective will help.

Furthermore, and especially when someone has signifcant stress while meditating or has even completely abandoned meditating, there may be multiple factors to be handled.

This list can also be used to take your meditation to the next level. If you are already meditating on a regular basis, and finding benefit from your meditation practice. It is probably possible to deepen, expand and enrich your practice. The factors in this list may be acting as "hidden obstacles" that prevent you from gaining the maximum benefit from meditation. Therefore, everyone who is interested in or practicing meditation is encouraged to use this list, and to return to it on a regular basis, perhaps every 6 months or every year.

1) Are you meditating while you are tired? Do you fall asleep or almost fall asleep while meditating

a) A good practice in general is to have a period of physical activity, such as chores, a workout, a walk, yoga, a shower, etc. just before your meditation, this will tend to invigorate your body and mind, and naturally reduce the experience of tiredness.

b) When meditating for expended intervals of time, intersperse periods of 20 to 50 minutes of meditation with 7 to 12 minutes of walking meditation.

c) Meditate after a nap of 20 to 40 minutes and a full nights sleep (at least 5 1/2 hours).

When you sleep, what is the quality of your sleep? Do you wake several times during the sleep period? Are there environmental factors such as noise, light or other distractions? Are you worried about something(s)?

d) Factors other than a lack of sleep can cause the experience of tiredness. If you get sufficient high quality sleep, and a nap before your practice does not remedy the experience of tiredness, then we need to look at other things which can contribute to the experience of tiredness. Many of the remaining factors on this list can show up as tiredness, for instance dehydration; sugar, caffeine, and alcohol crashes; meditating on a full stomach or after eating a lot of carbohydrates; stress; maintaining too much tension in your body; etc. All of these and other factors can contribute to tiredness.

e) Finally, if all the above (i.e. the other factors on this list) have been explored and handled in some depth, and tiredness is still an issue for you during meditation, tiredness may be a compilation of emotional messages. A good way to handle this is to put your attention on the feelings of tiredness and ask yourself if there is any feeling of ____x____? Fill in the blank with an emotion. For instance, Is there any feeling of anger? Is there any feeling of sadness? etc.

Once you have located an emotion, ask the emotion (or yourself ) what it's trying to tell you or communicate to you. What can you learn from this emotion / communication?

It's possible that you may find a significant number of emotions and messages. Repeat this exercise as often as you need to in order to fully explore, learn from and address your specific experience of tiredness.

f) Do you often tell yourself or others how tired you are?

i) Give up this practice of discussing and focusing on your tiredness. These dialogs can act as suggestions, which help to induce or enhance the state of tiredness. On the flip side this practice of talking about tiredness can sometimes help to get to sleep, especially if it's part of how you recognize that you are in fact tired. The suggestion here is not to avoid all dialogue about tiredness in a way where you seek to engage in denial or avoidance of the reality of tiredness. If you are tired, it's ok to say so, either out loud or to others. The advice here is rather to avoid excessive commentary of tiredness, and to not use word labels such "tired" or "exhausted" to avoid describing or experiencing emotions or specific sensations.

It's one thing to say, "I'm tired. I'm going to bed now, good night." It's another to say,"Oh my gosh, I'm so tired. I had such a rough day. You should have seen what I had to deal with." In this latter example tiredness is used to embelish the description of the day in such a way as to meet a basic needs such as sympathy, stimulation, significance, etc. These are sources of drama, which is likely to increase stress. It would perhaps be better to spend 30 minutes on the mat releasing and clarifying the stress of recent events, before seeking release through this kind of conversational drama.

Conversational drama tends to increase stress, rather than decrease it. This kind of dramatic conversation can take many forms. Embellishing tiredness is a common one in our culture. This is not a must never injunction. Rather, it's something to bring greater awareness to. Also, this information is for consideration of yourself and your patterns. Spotting this pattern in others, and then bringing it to their awareness without an invitation to do so is a stronger form of conversational drama that increases stress, and can precipitate both meditation issues, and relationship issues.

2) Are you meditating when you haven't gotten enough sleep?
If so, meditate after a nap or a full nights sleep.

This distinction overlaps with the first. Tiredness and Lack of sleep may definitely overlap. However, the possibility exists to have a lack of sleep without feeling tired, and to feel tired after having gotten a full nights sleep.

a) How much time actually sleeping do you need? Are you getting the full amount of sleep you need? This varies somewhat by person, and by age, as well as other factors. Most of us need at least 5 1/2 hours. Be sure to allow at least this much for actually sleeping. You will probably need some time to get ready for bed, and additional time to get to sleep. This means that you may need to make sleep a priority in order to make enough room in your schedule for an adequate amount of sleep.

b) Is your bed comfortable? It doesn't necessarily cost a lot, nor take a lot of time to make your bed comfortable. First, of all remove any thing that does not enhance your comfort from your bed. Next, how soft are your sheets / blankets, pillows? If you have any doubts, go to a linen store and feel things. An important word to keep in mind is thread count. The higher the thread count the softer, although after 400 the increase becomes less noticeable.

c) Wash your sheets and linens regularly, and often. If you know your bed isn't clean, there tends to be some resistance to sleeping in it, that prevents one from having the best sleep possible.

d) Brush and floss your teeth before bed. The feeling of dirty teeth is distracting, plus it just isn't good for you.

e) How is the temperature of your room? Generally, around room temperature is best, where you don't notice the temperature either way, with a slight, almost imperceivable movement of air.

f) What is the sound scape like? Try to find a location, and a time to sleep when the environment is optimally quiet. You can also experiment with earplugs, and forth to block sounds out.

g) Turn off any media such as tv, computer or music. Some people claim that they need some sounds to sleep by. The first point to consider here is the content. If you leave your tv going all night, you are exposing yourself to the content of the tv shows, without your conscious filters to properly contextualize what you experience. If you really need something to listen to try something such as the gentle sounds of nature, or soft music. These sounds are naturally relaxing.

h) Do you feel safe? Be sure that your sleeping environment has adequate protections such as deadbolt locks, that all possible entrances are locked, that you have fire and smoke alarms in working order, that you have a phone close at hand, etc. Many Also, if you happen to live in an area that is unsafe, as quickly as possible relocate to an area of relative safety. No where is absolutely 100% safe, however, if you have at least basic protections in place, it can go a long way to easing your mind for a good nights sleep.

i) What is the lighting of the room. Completely dark is best for relaxing the eyes, but can lead to hallucinatory type phenomena similar to what we might find in a sensory deprivation room. A dim light such as a night light is acceptable if it helps, and does not distract. Generally darker is preferable to lighter. If you are uncomfortable with the dark, or even have a fear of the dark consider addressing the fear head on with a technique such as EFT, EMDR (or variation of), or the NLP Visual Kinesthetic dissociation technique.

j) Do you replay the day in your mind, or events from the day while you try to get to sleep?

This indicates that these events have unresolved stress associated with them. To remedy this run the day through the NLP visual kinesthetic dissociation a few times before or just as you are starting to lie down.

k) Do you toss and turn while trying to get to sleep?

The extra movement helps to keep you awake. Young children intuitively keep moving when they want to stay up late.

Find a comfortable position and force yourself to relaxedly remain still.

l) Trying to sleep after having consumed caffeine within 12 hours?

Reduce or even eliminate caffeine, especially 6 hours before 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.

Advanced meditators might deliberately seek out a noisy environment in which to meditate, as a challenge. So, if you are unable to easily shift your environment, you can incorporate the noise. The noise can actually become your source of focus, that you keep your attention on. It can be quite liberating to develop the ability to bring "clean" attention to a source of distraction.

Before you can do this effectively, you will probably have to work through your reasons why the noise or distraction is wrong, bad, evil - intentioned, deliberately distracting your meditation or shouldn't be.

See if you can separate the facts - which are the sensory specific, from your interpretation, story, and guesses about why.

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.

Note: 2 cups is a general guideline, which varies by person. It doesn't hurt to do some experiments such as what if you decrease your caffeine by half for 2 days? Does your meditation go smoother? What if you you completely eliminate caffeine for 2 days? How do your meditations go when caffeine free? Is there a noticeable difference? You may want to repeat this, or other variations in the experiment.

It should be fairly obvious. Don't get too stuck trying variations in caffeine tolerance. Remember, many meditation issues are somewhat subtle and there can be multiple factors. Sort for positive difference, versus complete resolution from changing caffeine intake. This also applies to all of the points on this checklist.

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, to be admired, 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 probably 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, or similar 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 dedicated effort, sometimes in the range of 18 or 20 hours a day invested in 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?

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