tiredness

If you keep falling asleep in meditation

May 12, 2025

One of my more popular guided meditations on the Insight Timer app is meant to help people get to sleep. It’s been listened to 900,000 times across the two versions that I have available, suggesting that a lot of people have trouble switching their minds off at night, and find that meditation helps.

Unfortunately, a lot of people find that meditation switches their minds off when they don’t want that to happen; they keep nodding off while meditating. Here are a few pointers in case that happens to you. This is mostly meant for people who regularly have trouble staying awake in meditation, but even if that only rarely happens to you there’s some advice for you too.

First, if you’re falling asleep a lot during meditation, there are several possibilities:

It could be a health problem.
It might be that you’re chronically sleep-deprived.
It could be related to diet.
The time of day you’re meditating could also be a factor.
Possibly your posture isn’t letting you breathe properly.

Health

Health problems first: if you have Long Covid, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or some other energy-sucking condition, you might well struggle to stay alert or even just awake during meditation. Some of what I have to say later will probably help, at least a little. But as long as your condition persists you’re always going to struggle with tiredness.

I’m generally in good health, but like anyone my energy drops when I have a cold or other infection. When this happens, one thing I find helpful is to practice accepting that I’m tired. It’s not that I surrender to sleep. Far from it; I make a gentle effort to stay awake as best I can. But I accept that tiredness is just part of the mix of experiences I’m having. I’ll be dipping in and out of dreaminess during meditation, and perhaps even nod off momentarily, and I’ll keep saying to myself, “This is just how it is right now.” Saying those words doesn’t make me any less tired, but is an enormous relief, because it releases me from the assumption that I should be able to stay awake and alert.

Don’t get into a fight with your tiredness. Work gently with it rather than trying to force yourself to be alert. Using force will appear to work for a minute or so, but it takes energy, which in the long run makes you more tired, not less. Just value those moments when you’re more alert.

Adjusting my posture can help too. See that section below.

One of my students who was struggling with tiredness recently went to get his health checked and found he had developed diabetes. That’s an unusual case, but these things happen. If you have no known health conditions and nothing is helping to keep you awake in meditation, then it’s not a bad idea to go see your doctor. In most cases they’ll probably shrug, but it’s best to be sure.

Sleep-deprivation

A lot of us are sleep-deprived. Maybe we can’t get to sleep at night; you can find lots of information online about sleep hygiene and so on, and you could also try the kind of sleep meditation I mentioned above.

Sometimes we’re just burning the candle at both ends of the night: going to sleep late and getting up too early. If you’re going to sleep too late, maybe it has to do with seeking stimulation through TV or social media. One solution to staying up too late is to have empathy and compassion for your future self. In essence, treat your future self (the you that has to get up for work tomorrow) as a real person whose suffering is real, and be kind to them. Help them out by going to bed a bit earlier.

For social media compulsions I have a whole section of advice, called The Social Media Sutra. Dive in. There’s a lot of useful stuff there.

If you keep waking up in the middle of the night, often this is to do with hypervigilance or anxiety. I recommend recognizing and congratulating Māra — Māra being the personification of the thoughts and emotions that disrupt our well-being. Even the thought, “Oh no, I’m awake again. I’m never going to get back to sleep again” is Māra, and by recognizing this and congratulating him on how he’d fooled you into believing that thought you stop believing it. I can’t tell you how many times I’d had that thought and been asleep again within moments. Those middle-of-the-night feelings of alertness and awakeness can be pure illusion.

Diet

When I moved from Glasgow to Edinburgh many years ago, someone gave me a small espresso-maker — one of those little octagonal Italian things — as a house-warming gift. I was delighted to be able to start my day with a shot of rich, dark, very strong coffee. It took me a while to make the connection, but it turned out that drinking an espresso first thing in the morning gave me an energy crash around 3 PM. During these crashes, powerful waves of tiredness would assail me. Staying awake in meditation during those times was almost impossible.

Not long after, a friend reported that he was having energy crashes at work in the afternoons. I knew he consumed large quantities of sugary breakfast cereal first thing in the morning, and I suggested that maybe sometime similar was going on with him. At first he dismissed my suggestion out of hand, but a couple of weeks later he realized that it was indeed the early-morning sugar-rush that was causing the dip in his energy levels later in the day.

Heavy meals tend to make us tired.

So there can be dietary reasons why you fall asleep.

Time of day

It’s not just diet and caffeine that can cause energy dips: mid- to late-afternoons are notoriously sleepy times anyway. On retreats, I’ve sometimes dreaded meditating in that time slot, because it’s such a struggle to stay awake. If, for some reason, that’s the time you normally meditate, you might find it difficult.

Interestingly, on retreats I found the only thing that worked to prevent nodding in the afternoon sits was to do yoga first. The stretching brought the body to life and released energy, so that those sits were alert instead of snoozy.

Posture

One of the main causes of sleepiness in meditation, though, is posture, and adjusting your posture is one of the main ways to combat drowsiness.

If you habitually sit a little slumped, with the back slightly bowed, this puts pressure on the ribcage. That in turn prevents it fully opening. A lot of people do this without realizing. We need to make sure that the back is reasonably straight so that we can breathe freely.

If you sit on cushions or a bench, make sure you’re sitting high enough. Sitting too low causes bowing.

If you sit on a chair and your back is resting against the chair back, then you’re probably sitting with your chest compressed.

My trick while sitting on a dining chair is to bend forward from the waist as far as I can. Then I wiggle my butt back until it’s making contact with the back of the seat, then sit upright. You should find that the seat back makes firm contact just above your buttocks. This means your spine can be effortlessly straight without it resting against the back of the chair.

Office chairs tend to be better designed for sitting upright, but even then I find it useful to do the butt-wiggle thing. In contrast to a dining chair, my office chair gives me a little support in the upper back as well as just above the buttocks. Your chair might be different.

The position you hold your head in makes a difference to your energy levels. Make sure your head is balanced and that the chin is not moving down to the chest.

In fact, I suggest playing around with the angle of the head. Pivot on the first vertebra rather than moving the entire neck. Notice how your ability to breathe fully into the upper chest changes with your head in different positions. With your chin even just a fraction too far down you’ll probably find that your upper chest doesn’t move as much. You need to be able to breathe fully into the upper chest in order to keep your body and brain oxygenated. Without that, you can’t be alert.

Other tips

Paying attention to the breathing higher in the body (in the upper chest, throat, and head) promotes alertness.

Paying more attention to the in-breathing also promotes alertness.

Finally, try being aware of the impermanence of each breath, and how it only comes once. There is just this one time to appreciate each breath. That awareness can bring a sense of urgency that helps keep you alert.

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Waking up from the hindrance of sloth and torpor

December 6, 2011

Bodhipaksa

on practice

Have you noticed that half the time when you ask people how they are, they answer with “tired”? We all seem to be tired, and when we sit down to meditate we may find that we nod off or sit there in a rather dreamy and unfocused state.

This is sloth and torpor — one of the states of distraction that we call the Five Hindrances. The schema of the Five Hindrances is a diagnostic tool that, combined with traditional “antidotes,” can help us to engage creatively with our experience in order to become more joyful, calm, and focused.

Most of the specific antidotes to the hindrances that I’m learned have been shared by other practitioners, or come from the commentarial tradition, but sloth and torpor is one of the rare hindrances where detailed instructions have been preserved in the original scriptures.

In talking with one of his chief disciples, Moggallana, the Buddha gave a list of suggestions for dealing with tiredness:

“Whatever perception you have in mind when drowsiness descends on you, don’t attend to that perception, don’t pursue it. It’s possible that by doing this you will shake off your drowsiness.

One of the main applications of this is that when you’re tired, you shouldn’t focus on sensations low in the body. Rather than paying attention to the movements of the abdomen, which will further encourage sleepiness, you should notice sensations that are higher up in the body, like the sensations of the breathing in the upper chest and head.

“But if by doing this you don’t shake off your drowsiness, then recall to your awareness the Dhamma as you have heard & memorized it, re-examine it & ponder it over in your mind. It’s possible that by doing this you will shake off your drowsiness.

Reflect on the Dhamma — the Buddhist teachings — helps to focus the mind, preventing it from drifting aimlessly. Also, the reminder of a “higher purpose” may have the effect of inspiring us and of arousing our energy and enthusiasm. You can run through a list such as the Four Noble Truths, of the Five Precepts, or the Eightfold Path, and give yourself an inner Dharma talk. You can even imagine that you’re explaining the teachings to a friend. A lot of people don’t have these lists memorized, which is a shame, and I’d highly recommend the practice of committing these teachings to memory. The effort really pays off in terms of mental clarity.

“But if by doing this you don’t shake off your drowsiness, then repeat aloud in detail the Dhamma as you have heard & memorized it. It’s possible that by doing this you will shake off your drowsiness.

So, this is the same advice, but here we’re talking out loud, which is further going to prevent us from falling asleep. For obvious reasons this method isn’t very appropriate when you’re meditating with others.

“But if by doing this you don’t shake off your drowsiness, then pull both your earlobes and rub your limbs with your hands. It’s possible that by doing this you will shake off your drowsiness.

So now we move on to physical stimulation, which gets the blood flowing, and which encourages the release of endorphins. The most useful form of stimulation I’ve found is yoga stretches — particularly when we stretch the hamstrings or hip muscles.

“But if by doing this you don’t shake off your drowsiness, then get up from your seat and, after washing your eyes out with water, look around in all directions and upward to the major stars & constellations. It’s possible that by doing this you will shake off your drowsiness.

Water in the face gives us a creative shock to the system.

This suggestion also takes us more in the direction of paying attention to light, which is the next piece of advice we’ll hear. Also the suggestion of raising the head to look up is significant. When we’re tired, we look down and the chin drops. When this happens, a chain reaction is kicked off: our experience is visually darker, our breathing shifts to the abdomen, and the center of our awareness typically moves downward in the body. All of these things heighten our sense of sleepiness. These effects can be noticeable with even a tiny movement downward of the chin. Raising the chin can cause mental stimulation.

“But if by doing this you don’t shake off your drowsiness, then attend to the perception of light, resolve on the perception of daytime, [dwelling] by night as by day, and by day as by night. By means of an awareness thus open & unhampered, develop a brightened mind. It’s possible that by doing this you will shake off your drowsiness.

If you have candles on your altar, then you can open your eyes and look at a candle. You can visualize light. You can imagine that you’re looking at a bright light. Or, if you relax and just notice your field of awareness, you may notice that some parts of your experience are brighter than others. You can pay attention to those in order to keep yourself alert. This can actually be a meditation in its own right.

“But if by doing this you don’t shake off your drowsiness, then — percipient of what lies in front & behind — set a distance to meditate walking back & forth, your senses inwardly immersed, your mind not straying outwards. It’s possible that by doing this you will shake off your drowsiness.

It’s hard to fall asleep while doing walking meditation.

“But if by doing this you don’t shake off your drowsiness, then — reclining on your right side — take up the lion’s posture, one foot placed on top of the other, mindful, alert, with your mind set on getting up. As soon as you wake up, get up quickly, with the thought, ‘I won’t stay indulging in the pleasure of lying down, the pleasure of reclining, the pleasure of drowsiness.’ That is how you should train yourself.

Finally, the Buddha recognized that sometimes you just need to take a nap! The strategies above can help combat and even overcome tiredness, but in the end you’re fighting your physiology, and your physiological needs are going to triumph.

There are other techniques for dealing with the hindrance of sloth and torpor, but the Buddha’s advice to Moggallana is still very relevant and useful.