Why are many men skeptical of meditation and spirituality?
During a meditation session, you're sitting in silence and focusing on your breath, when suddenly your mind starts to wander, and you start to think about a conversation you had with a friend. Slowly the thoughts start to pick up steam: Maybe you said something wrong. Could that have hurt your friend's feelings? Your friend seemed a bit off that day, actually. Are things alright with their partner? And then quickly you find yourself in an unending chain of thoughts about your friend and their partner and this leads to a tangential thought about some couple you once knew. Maybe you should reach out to them?
Now you're not meditating at all. You've been completely swept up by your monkey mind. And now that you're aware that you've gotten swept up, you start to think: "Am I doing this right? I've been at it for months, is meditation really working for me?"
If you've ever experienced something like this, then know that you're in very good company. As natural as meditation sounds in theory, actually doing it is another story. While a regular meditation practice is scientifically proven to produce a wide range of profound changes in the brain and body – changes that can lead to a happier, healthier, more spiritual life – learning to meditate can be a real challenge for many people.
[newsletter]
Here are some of the most common challenges people face when they try to build a meditation practice, along with some practical suggestions for overcoming them.
7 Common Meditation Obstacles:
- Can't focus
- Discomfort in the body
- Too tired
- Intrusive thoughts
- Too busy
- Don't see the benefits
- Emotional overwhelm
1. Can't Focus
For a lot of people, the fact that you’re “not supposed” to think during meditation makes it so that you can’t think about anything else! This can make meditation feel impossible. But the truth is, the goal of meditation isn’t to not think: it’s to ‘notice’ your thinking. Whenever you get caught up in your thoughts, you simply return to the breath. This is the practice. Every moment that you catch yourself lost in thought and return to the breath is one rep of your “consciousness bicep” being worked out.
Getting lost in thought is actually an essential part of the meditation process. Noticing you’ve gotten lost – and returning to the breath – is what builds the ability to observe your own mind, and this leads to awareness and inner peace.
What to do: Don’t try to stop yourself from thinking. Instead, just notice when you get caught up in thought and gently bring your attention back to the breath, over and over. As you practice, you’ll find that getting swept up in thought is happening less and less often.
2. Discomfort in the Body
Physical pain and discomfort is one of the main challenges faced by people who try to sit still for any length of time. When we take away all distraction and try to focus on the breath, unpleasant physical feelings we’ve been ignoring can become quite hard to bear. Pain is the body’s way of speaking to us, asking to be heard, and ignoring it completely when we try to meditate will make the practice feel like torture.
What to do: You don’t have to sit in a traditional cross-legged position to meditate. You can sit in a chair, lie down, or even walk. Choose whatever position makes you comfortable.
If you do experience physical discomfort during your practice, you can try directing your attention to the area where you feel the discomfort, and just observe what you feel. Discomfort is often a combination of sensation and story. The sensation is simply what’s happening in the body, while the story is our interpretation of and resistance to that sensation. Focusing on the sensation itself, rather than the resistance, can significantly reduce your experience of discomfort.
3. Too Tired
For a lot of people, sitting still with the intention of emptying your mind is more or less the same as going to sleep. It can be very hard to remain alert, especially in the early days of building a meditation practice when you’re not used to sitting quietly.
What to do: Meditation in the morning is generally easier than in the evening when you’re winding down for sleep. Try to fit in a few minutes of practice right after you wake up if possible. Also, keeping your back straight and sitting in an upright position makes it much easier to remain alert during meditation, versus lying down which invites sleep.
4. Intrusive Thoughts
Intrusive thoughts can range from mundane concerns about our daily lives to negative, frightening, or disturbing thoughts. Everyone has them, especially when they try to sit still and meditate. Most of the time, intrusive thoughts pop up because something is asking to be heard: be it a concern about your health, a difficult situation that needs to be dealt with, an emotion that needs to be processed. But these thoughts can derail us from our meditation and make it difficult to continue.
What to do: Allow intrusive thoughts to exist without engaging. Rather than fighting the thought or picking it up and running with it, try to observe it. Visualize the thought as an object: perhaps it’s a leaf floating downstream on a river. Try to feel the energy of the thought as a sensation in your body, rather than a story in your mind.
5. Too Busy
Most of us lead incredibly busy lives. Between work, family obligations, social commitments, keeping the house clean, getting some exercise, and eating right, adding something new and time-consuming to our daily routines can feel impossible. It can be hard to feel like there’s room for a regular meditation practice, especially when you’re just starting out and not yet feeling the benefits of meditating.
What to do: Start small, and don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Even five minutes of practice a day is incredibly effective. Five minutes is an amount that almost anyone can find in their day, even if it's a few quiet moments after you wake up or before you go to sleep. As you experience the benefits of meditating, it will feel more and more natural to make room in your schedule.
6. Don’t See the Benefits
Maybe you’ve been trying to develop a meditation practice for a little while now, but you’re not feeling the changes you were promised. The lack of tangible, immediate benefits can make it hard to stay motivated to meditate, especially in the early days.
What to do: Keep going! Most practitioners report that they begin to feel the benefits of meditation within two to three weeks. Be patient with yourself and your practice. If you need a little motivation, you might want to learn more about the profound changes that meditation makes to our brains.
7. Emotional Overwhelm
Some new meditators are surprised to find that meditation can bring up strong negative emotions: feelings of sadness, grief, or even intense anxiety. This can happen because when we take away the distractions of everyday life and focus our attention inward, we have to confront whatever we’ve been avoiding feeling. This can be an effective part of the meditation process – allowing these feelings to surface and pass through us can be incredibly healing – but it can also cause people to abandon the practice when it becomes too uncomfortable.
What to do: Be gentle with yourself and take breaks. Don’t try to force yourself to meditate through overwhelming feelings. If emotions become too intense, it's perfectly fine to stop for the day. Try to see the emergence of these feelings as a positive sign that your practice is working and that you’re moving toward greater inner peace. It might also be helpful to speak with a therapist or counselor if difficult emotions are consistently surfacing during meditation.
[community]