Most of us come to meditation with varying degrees of expectation that it’s supposed to make us feel good. And really, that’s a very normal human reaction. We seek out things that make us feel good, and lose interest in things that don’t. Even when we know intellectually that meditation is good for us and we want to keep at it, we get that irresistible urge to do something, ANYTHING other than sit there.

 Even when we know intellectually that meditation is good for us and we want to keep doing it, we get that irresistible urge to do something, ANYTHING other than sit there.  

Certainly a good place to start examining this issue is to take a closer look at the rest of your life. Like most of us, your days are probably pretty packed. How much have you gotten into the habit of filling up your time with things to do? Are you constantly multitasking throughout your day? Do you feel the need to fill every spare moment, including you leisure time, with tasks, projects, and doing, doing, doing? Are you constantly checking your email, phone messages, Facebook and Twitter? When we have a momentum of speediness in our life, it will inevitably carry over into our meditation. What can you do to slow that down a bit?

But I think another even more important place to look is around our views of meditation itself. I’d like to suggest that feel-good meditations aren’t really what we’re after. I think what we really want is not to feel held so captive by the ups and downs of our lives. To not get so blown off course when things get tough. More sturdiness and resilience.

Am I right? If so, I’m going to ask you a challenging question. Is boredom bad? Just because it’s uncomfortable, does that mean we should avoid it? What if we were to get to know boredom so well that we could prevent it from happening in the first place? Or knew how to deal with it confidently when it arrived?

The American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron suggests what this might be like in her book, The Wisdom of No Escape.

“There’s a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who have ever been born on the earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable. You can see this even in insects and animals and birds. All of us are the same.

A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet. To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how the whole thing just is. If we’re committed to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come up against the least edge of pain, we’re going to run; we’ll never know what’s beyond that particular barrier or fearful thing.”¹

 Rather than being at the mercy of our feelings, we learn to stay and hold our ground from a different place of knowing.  

What she’s alluding to here is a kind of contentment and confidence that comes from a deeper place than simple ego-driven pursuit of pleasure or avoidance of discomfort. Rather than being at the mercy of our feelings, we learn to stay and hold our ground from a different place of knowing. We’re able to stand firm no matter what’s going on, whatever storms blow us around. We make our choices from a fuller awareness of who we are rather than what feels good. And because we’re acting with a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us, we can choose to flow in harmony with the world as it is, rather than fighting our way through it.

So when we sit in meditation, feeling bored or restless, what can we do? Start by taking a deep breath and bringing your awareness to what’s coming in through your five senses: what are you seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling? What’s the quality of your physical experience? Is your energy high or low? Are you tense or relaxed? What thoughts are running through your head? Acknowledge those thoughts for what they are – just thoughts. (Recent research suggests that just noting these thoughts weakens their hold on us.). Notice that we’re not judging anything, but simply observing and taking in everything that parades before us.

And what does that do for us? When we do that over and over, something subtly starts to shift. At first it will feel really hard to stop judging everything, wanting the boredom to go away, wishing it will all end. (When that happens, it’s OK. Just try to observe those thoughts too.) But after a while, a small space begins to emerge between “me” and those seductive thoughts. It may only be a tiny crack, but it’s just enough to take the edge off the experience. When that begins to happen, celebrate it. THAT is the start of your connecting with a deeper awareness. It’s a far more stable and satisfying place to be than just “comfortable”!

So if you’re feeling discouraged by your meditation practice, please don’t give up! I think the arrival of boredom is actually a good sign. It means you’re ready to progress to a new level, and you’re being shown the doorway in. It’s about as direct and concrete an invitation as you’ll get. Why waste the precious opportunity? With patience, it IS possible to let go of our likes and dislikes, and to see through them to a deeper layer of sturdiness, resilience, and yes, contentment. It’s a place that’s much more free and unburdened. We can stop investing all that energy into running around, chasing after this and that, and instead BE the stillness and calm that we were seeking all along.

^1. The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Lovingkindness by Pema Chodron (Shambala, 2001), p. 3.

Like most people I’ve sometimes had periods when I’ve found it hard to sleep (or to get back to sleep). It’s not that it’s noisy or that my partner is tossing and turning, but simply that I’m wide awake with my mind both tired and over-active.

Over the years I’ve tried various things, like reading, getting up and making a cup of tea, etc, that have been useful in breaking into any unhelpful mental patterns that I may have. And often those things work well. Insomnia (in my case at least) generally involves being caught up in a loop of thinking that stirs up emotion, and that cycle of thinking in turn stirs up emotion which causes more thinking. That cycle needs to be interrupted for sleep to take place. Even getting up and making a cup of tea (a stimulant!) can be enough to interrupt the cycle and allow the natural sleep process to kick in. And I’ve found that reading provides an alternative thought-stream (I have the author’s words in my mind rather than my own thoughts) and can help lull me into unconsciousness.

But I’ve also found some meditative techniques that have never failed to work, and I mostly prefer to use these. The times when I’ve chosen not to use them are when I’ve been on a creative streak and I haven’t actually wanted to sleep because my preference has been to “go with the flow” and do the writing (or whatever) that’s been buzzing around in my mind.

The reason that I decided to turn to a more meditative approach is that sometimes wanting to get to sleep will actually keep you awake! What happens is that you lie there awake, but wanting to sleep. At some point you start to drift off, and some dream imagery may start to well up into the mind. Then the part of your mind that’s still awake gets all excited because it sees signs of sleep, and this excitement wakes you up again! This is classic craving, or grasping, in which your mind tries to grab hold of something it wants. But sleep by nature involves letting go, and so the act of grasping will prevent sleep from arising. This happens in meditation too, of course. When we try to recreate enjoyable meditative experiences we often find that we prevent them from occurring — the reason they occurred previously was that we’d stopped grasping and had simply relaxed into our experience.

There are four different meditative approaches that I’ve found to be useful in dealing with insomnia.

1. Mindful breathing

This is as simple as you can get. Basically, just meditate! But there are a few caveats. Not all meditative techniques will help you to sleep. Some will actually cause further stimulation and keep you awake.

So, lying in bed, keep your awareness focused on the sensations of the breath in your belly, observing the rise and fall of the abdominal muscles. It’s important to keep your awareness focused on the belly rather than any other part of the breathing process, because this is the most calming place to observe your breathing. The sensations in the chest, throat, and head are actively stimulating, and so observing the breath in those places would be counter-productive.

Also, pay more attention to the out-breath rather than the in-breath. The classic way to do this is to count at the end of each out-breath. You could also say the word “out” as you exhale. The out-breath is more relaxing, while the in-breath is more stimulating.

The other methods I use are based on an observation that there are three things that keep me awake: thinking that is comprised primarily of “inner chatter,” thinking that is composed mainly of vivid mental imagery, and physical arousal where there is restlessness in the body.

2. Dealing with inner chatter

Sometimes we can’t sleep because we’re talking to ourselves so much — internally, of course. There may well be some inner imagery (see the technique below) but mainly we’re caught up in hearing inner discussions.

If you have a lot of inner self-talk, try making the voice or voices in your head become very s-l-o-o-o-w a-a-a-n-d d-e-e-e-e-e-p, like a vinyl record that’s been unplugged. The trick is to notice the stream of inner chatter and to take control of the flow, slowing it down. You may have to do this a few times, but you’ll notice that as the voices slow down you’ll almost immediately start to feel more sleepy.

3. Dealing with vivid inner imagery

Sometimes our stories are primarily visual. There will of course be an inner soundtrack that accompanies the movie we’re showing ourselves, but it’s the images we’re mainly caught up in and that are keeping us awake.

I’ve found that the most effective approach under these circumstances is to make the imagery go dark, and then to fade in some images of natural scenes. I prefer to visualize leaves on trees, moving slowly in a breeze. The slowness is important. It’s also important that the images be of something relatively unstimulating and restful, which is why nature images work. But a mundane scene, like rain dripping off of leaves, is more effective than inspiring mountain scenes, which are likely to keep you awake.

I often make the weather bad. As I mentioned, rain dripping off of leaves is effective. The fact that it’s raining means that the imagery is duller than usual, and the lack of stimulation is the key to getting back to sleep.

With the techniques of slowing down mental chatter or calling to mind calming (and even dull) imagery, what you’re doing is taking charge of your mind. Rather than letting an uncontrolled stream of images and dialog run through your mind, keeping you awake, you’re deciding what you’re going to think about.

4. Dealing with physical restlessness

Lastly, one of the things that can keep us awake is physical restlessness. This can happen to me when I’ve been exercising too late in the evening. Even though my mind is tired my body is very much awake. If you find that you have a lot of physical energy, then imagine that your body is becoming very heavy, and that you’re being pressed down into the mattress. I sometimes pretend to myself that gravity is variable, and that someone has turned the gravity dial up to “high.”

This uses the same principle as slowing down your inner chatter or making your mental imagery dark and restful. When you’re naturally tired the body feels heavy. When you reverse this process, imagining that the body is heavy, you become tired.

You may have to use all four methods. I use method one to start with, and then the others as required. It has always worked! Sometimes I’ve been lying there thinking, “Nope, it’s not going to work this time,” and then suddenly it’s time to get up and I realize that I’ve slept the whole night through.

A student asks: My sit didn’t go well today. I was really distracted, and couldn’t get rid of my thoughts. What am I doing wrong?

Sunada replies: Well, I’m afraid we all have days like that. You aren’t doing anything wrong at all. You’re just experiencing your mind more closely than you ever have before, and discovering what it’s really like! A bit of a shock, isn’t it? Believe it or not, this is GOOD news. You’re becoming more aware.

And really, I don’t think it’s possible to get rid of our thoughts, nor is that an aim of meditation. (Actually, I think the only people with no thoughts are dead ones!) Especially since you lead a very busy life, it makes sense that your mind can’t come to a standstill the minute you sit down on your cushion. A friend of mind described our minds as like electric fans. If you leave a fan on high for a while, then yank the plug out of the socket, the blades will keep spinning for a long time after the power’s been cut off. Our minds can be the same way.

So my first suggestion is to not get into the habit of evaluating how “good” your sits are based on whether you were able to reach a feeling of calm and relaxation. Meditation isn’t like a pill that we take to make us still and happy every time we sit. It doesn’t work that way. It’s more analogous to working out at a gym, where over the longer term our mental and physical constitution becomes more inclined toward calmness, and less thrown off by the ups and downs of life. So on a day-to-day basis we’ll have our “good sits” and “bad sits,” just like some days when we go to the gym, we feel terrible and aren’t able to get through our workout without gasping. But it’s still worth doing, and doing regularly, because it’s the cumulative effect that brings the benefit.

One of the things you can do to counteract a restless mind is to start with a fairly lengthy preliminary stage of body awareness and relaxation. When I start each sit, I imagine what it feels like to flop down into my favorite easy chair at the end of a long hard day — when I’ve done everything I could, the day is nearing its end, I feel good about what I’ve accomplished, and all I need to do is let go, relax, and get into that “ahhh……” sensation. It’s that physical sense of letting go, plus focusing on the breath, that helps to calm my body as well as my mind. Give that a try and see if it helps.

If a thought comes up, then see if you can imagine touching it lightly, like touching a bubble with a feather, and labeling it “thinking.” Don’t engage with it, don’t get on the train of thought, but don’t try to push it away either. It’s simply part of your present experience, to be observed with kindness and curiosity.

And there will be some days when those fan blades just keep spinning madly, and there doesn’t seem to be anything that can slow them down. If that happens, see if you can watch that busy mind, as it is. A good sit, in my opinion, is one in which every time we find ourselves having wandered off, we bring ourselves back with kindness and patience. It’s not a contest to see how long we can go without getting distracted! It also doesn’t matter how many times we have to bring ourselves back – even if it’s a million times. Because that means we brought ourselves back a million times, and that’s a million moments of awareness! Let’s keep the focus on what positive things ARE happening, and not get discouraged about being far from an ideal we’ve built up in our minds that may not even be realistic.

Having established her own practice while working full-time in high tech and then in arts administration, Sunada understands the challenges of balancing a meditation practice with a busy life. She has been teaching online meditation courses with Wildmind since January 2006, and has impressed students with her practical and friendly approach to teaching meditation. She also runs her own business, Mindful Purpose Life Coaching, that helps people navigate the choppy waters of their own spiritual journeys.

Editor’s note: The student with whom this exchange took place has granted permission to publish this journal entry, and will remain anonymous. Wildmind treats all student journals as strictly private, and never allows outside parties to read them without explicit permission from the student.