Falling Asleep During Meditation
A Conversation About How to Remain Wakeful During Practice
During retreats and online guided meditations Ton Bisscheroux has sometimes fallen asleep. He's felt ashamed, and blamed himself for missing a chance to abide in open awareness. Sometimes his judgment was milder because he found himself relaxing deeply and having no discursive thoughts. To explore this more deeply, he talked with Laura Shekerjian and Raven Lee, both senior students with Ligmincha International and senior teachers with The 3 Doors.
Ton: Before the meditation, I feel awake. But, during meditation, I find it hard to find the balance between focus and relaxation. When I close my eyes they feel tired, and I feel my head becomes heavier and starts to nod. I can't hear the instructions anymore. Before the end of the meditation, I wake up. Several times I have heard the instruction on what to do when you feel drowsy, but I am not able to follow them.
How would you describe what happens when we slumber during meditation? And what can we do to prevent it?
Laura: If you are not feeling tired before you sit, you can start to explore your experience in a number of ways. You could consider whether your posture supports alertness, keeping the spine elongated and the chest open. The eyes could be kept open, not closed. Closed eyes may contribute to the sense of drifting away into sleep. A deeper, fuller breath also can help bring energy into our body.
It also is important to consider what is meant by relaxation. In everyday life, relaxation is often about stepping away from activity, distracting ourselves and/or spacing out. In practice, relaxation is about loosening the patterns and structures that support the pain identity. The ego, which is so tied to this identity of limitation, doesn't know what to do and everything comes to a halt. Either we drift away or we abide in a dull, half-conscious state. The wakefulness that pervades the space of relaxation or release is absent.
In thinking of the three refuges of stillness, silence and spaciousness, this points to the need to focus our practice on the second refuge and coming to rest deeply in the silence of being, which leads to awareness of openness. The emptiness that can arise from letting go needs to be recognized. We need to wake up to ourselves. The vivid, self-illuminating awareness of the second refuge can help us know our own unbounded nature as very different from the nothingness that the ego gets lost in.
A final thought has to do with where we focus our attention. If we begin to feel sleepy, where does our attention go? Do we reinforce this state by telling ourselves how tired we are or do we recognize the fatigue and open our awareness wider? The wider awareness may then host fatigue in that moment, or we may just note it as we would any bodily discomfort and not overly identify with it.
Raven: When we fall asleep during meditation, this is connected to the imbalance of open space and awareness. The awareness becomes dull and falls into the space. So the focus is maintaining the awareness, even if it is only a glimpse.
I remember during a retreat with Rinpoche a practice right after lunch. I didn't get much sleep the night before. I was aware of the me who was becoming dull and almost falling asleep. But I stayed aware with a very narrow ray of light, opening my eyes from time to time to freshen the inner refuge. Later, I asked Rinpoche about my experience and his response was very helpful. He used a metaphor of the light from a lighthouse. Even if the light is not full and bright, as long as there is a glimmer of that light, then one can connect with it.
What I find helpful, too, is when I am aware of falling asleep, I open my eyes and gaze upwards to stabilize the mind that is dull and sleepy. The central channel breathing also could be helpful to refresh and reconnect. I also find it supportive to abide in the space of the heart as the door to mind.
Ton: During retreats I have seen people nodding off. When they asked about it, often the response was that this can happen after a heavy meal, or when it is hot, or for people who were very busy before the retreat and who had now come to rest.
I was wondering, though, what the relation is between disconnecting in meditation and dealing with a past trauma?
Laura: If there is something in our life that is difficult to face, we tend to keep busy and distracted in our daily lives. When we sit to practice and turn inward, whatever we have been avoiding is right there. Going to sleep helps us avoid it. If we maintain our posture and keep our eyes open, we may be able to recognize what it is that is arising and find a different kind of relationship to it.
Ton: In dealing with my own trauma, my therapist has told me that many people use meditation to avoid pain, fear or other unpleasant feelings. I recognize that. When I started to meditate, I wanted to get rid of my physical, emotional and existential pain. A few years ago, when I became aware of the chronic tension in my body, my primary focus became to relax my body. Then I found out that it is a challenge to relax and be aware at the same time. Once, during a 3 Doors retreat when I shared that I could not stay awake, Raven invited me to catch the point just before I fall asleep. Once I managed to do that, and then I felt very alive.
I want to thank you for this conversation. Every time I feel stuck, there is total darkness. In this conversation I have learned that if there is just a glimmer of light, there is a door, a way to dissolve being stuck. Instead of blaming myself when I notice a heaviness during meditation, now I can relax and get interested in what is happening in the moment. I also want to thank Alejandro Chaoul-Reich, who participated by asking questions that prompted some of my comments and deepened the conversation. And I hope this conversation will benefit others, too.
