Are you falling asleep during meditation?
And is this preventing you from making progress in your practice?
In today's video i will share with you five tips to overcome sleepiness
and at the end of the video I will also share a little bit about my next video
which will be a little bit different and special, so make sure you stay until the end.
If you haven't subscribed to my channel, please hit the subscribe button and also click on the
bell icon if you want to be notified every time i upload a new video on meditation or mindfulness.
And if you are new to the channel feel free to introduce yourself, let me know how long you've
been meditating and how i can help you. I love to learn about you so use the comment section below.
Sleepiness during meditation is a very common challenge for many people.
A lot of time, most of us, we have a busy life and so, when we come down to sit and meditate
and close our eyes, our body thinks it is time to sleep. We feel relaxed and so we can feel
all the tiredness and the sleepiness that come. So how do you deal with that in meditation?
Here are my five tips and also i will give you another approach at the very end of the video.
Tip number 1: Take a few deep breaths. So what we want to do is to bring in some energy for us
to stay awake and the easy way to do that is to take a few deep energizing breaths
so you take a deep inhale, you feel up your lungs and slow exhale,
like this. One advantage of taking a few deep breaths at the beginning is that
it helps to settle the body, it helps to relax the body right away because a lot of time,
we feel restless and so taking a few deep breaths activates the part of the nervous system that
calms our mind and our body. The second advantage of taking a few deep breath is that it gets
through our thinking right away and it accentuates our focus on our breathing from the get-go,
so not only taking a few deep breaths at the beginning helps to bring some energy in your
practice but also helps to focus your attention right away on your breathing.
Tip number two: Stretch. Another way to bring more energy in your body is to
stretch you can stretch your arms up and down you can stretch your neck do with your circle,
and you can combine your breathing along with your movements. Breathing in and breathing out.
I particularly like stretching my arms and my neck and my shoulders but we also have to be
gentle with our body so do what feels
good for your body. So you can combine breathing and stretching at the same time.
Tip number three: meditate with your eyes open. Again another way to bring in some energy to your
practice is to open your eyes in your meditation and you have two choices. One is that you can look
at a 45 degree angle toward the floor and keep your eyesight slightly open, don't fix
on anything particular and just rest like this. So that is one way to meditate with your eyes open.
Another way to meditate with your eyes open is to bring an object and put it in front of you
and simply rest your eyesight on it. Here, your attention can is no longer your breathing but it
is the contact of your eyesight with the object so the focus of your attention is the object
and you try to maintain your attention on it and every time your mind drifts away, you notice it
and you bring it back to the object. At first, i enjoyed meditating with my eyes closed so i can
refocus my attention to what is going on inside of me. But lately, i have been experimenting with
meditating with my eyes open and so it trained me to it me to generate the energy of mindfulness in
a more awake state and so i can bring this energy of mindfulness into my daily life more easily.
So play with it, experiment with it and let me know how it goes.
If you are having difficulties to stay awake during your meditation practice please let me
know in the comments below and let me know also if any of those tips and the following ones,
if they are helpful and if they make a difference in your practice.
Tip number four: Stand up. Another way to bring energy is to stand up and one of my teachers,
that's what she does, she meditates standing up. She takes a hike and because of her back,
sitting is not very comfortable so she prefers to stand up when you stand up make sure that you
have a slight bend on your knees, that you don't lock your knees and that your feet are about hip
distance apart. Make sure that your shoulders are pulled back and relax, that your neck as well is
relaxed and yes and again you can also open your eyes or meditate with your eyes closed, up to you.
Tip number five: Practice walking meditation.
Another way of meditating that is very very popular and common
is practicing walking meditation. Here when we do this practice, our attention is no longer on
our breathing but it is under the sole of our feet. I have made a video on walking meditation
and i will put the link in the description below and also in one of these corners.
So make sure that you check it out, it can be very pleasant and enjoyable as well.
So last but not least, this is not necessarily a tip on how to stay awake during a meditation
but rather how to be with sleepiness. Sleepiness is not necessarily a problem,
sometimes we are just tired and so we fall asleep and it's fine. It is a problem if every time you
meditate then you fall asleep. But if you feel sleepy in your practice,
see if you can be curious about your experience, see if you can maintain your awareness to notice
what is going on as you are falling asleep as you are drifting from wakefulness to sleepiness.
The most important thing in meditation is to know what we are experiencing,
is to be aware of what is going on and so when we are falling asleep,
it can be a good experience to just become aware of the sensations in the body,
of the state of your mind, just be curious and become familiar with your experience.
Next week, i will share a special video.
It will be about five meditation techniques that I have learned from my primary teacher,
Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and how those teachings have profoundly affected my life.
So i am very excited about this video, i hope that you enjoyed today's video and you will enjoy the
next video and yeah let me know in the comments again uh what you think about today's video.
Thank you so much for watching and i will see you very soon. Bye!