By Rashmi S Bismark, MD, MPH

Whether you are a new explorer of meditation or have been on the contemplative path for ages, strong emotions and uncomfortable thought patterns are bound to arise during a practice.   You don’t have to be at a silent retreat for them to show up.  Even in a five-minute seated meditation at home, it is completely natural for deep-set feelings to manifest.

I Thought Meditation Was Supposed to Be Relaxing…

From my years of teaching meditation, it’s clear the notion that meditation equals blissed-out relaxation is one of the most common misperceptions. Although the pausing, breathing, and slowing-down associated with meditation can initiate the physiologic relaxation response,¹ relaxation is not necessarily a promised byproduct. Beginning to witness cycles of thought patterns, encountering the inter-related emotions, and feeling into the comings and goings of bodily contractions and releases can all make for a full sitting.  

As a relationship with innate awareness matures, so deepens the ability to include and recognize more of life experience—the pleasant with the unpleasant, the empty and the overwhelming. The teachings of mindfulness urge practitioners to maintain equanimity, clarity, patience, and loving care through it all, but at times the emotional tone can feel like too much. When the experience is far from the expected delightful rest, failure seems like a reasonable deduction, as does quitting the practice altogether.

Inviting a freshness of curiosity, let’s explore why these challenges may arise and navigate strategies to approach them that can support you and your practice.   

Am I supposed to be feeling this?

Just as in every day life, difficult emotions and feelings of discomfort can arise during meditation. Sometimes they are in relationship to a present-moment focus of the meditation practice. Other times they can have to do with an ongoing experience or current life-event. Now and again they can be associated with unprocessed or deeply rooted emotions from the past.  

Cultivating a relationship with inner experience through meditation can begin to release overtones of joy, anger, sadness, and/or ambivalence. This opens space in awareness for more subtle nuances of emotion and related thoughts.

Raw emotion rarely exists in a vacuum. Thoughts, the stories we tell ourselves, memories, assumptions, judgments—these are all often intertwined. Also enmeshed are patterns of gripping and softening within the body and, of course, our habitual reactions to them. Awareness of any of this can trigger a range of responses, sometimes initiating physiologic stress reactivity.

Before we know it, our bodies can cling to and harden around the mind’s flow of thoughts and their accompanying emotions. Attention can center upon these potentially traumatizing stimuli. Emotions, thoughts, sensations, and reactions can spiral into discomfort.  

This can play out in different ways. We may enter a “fight or flight” mode of hyper-arousal, heightening agitation, anxiety, or anger. At other times we may “freeze,” which can translate into feeling emotionless, numb, or disconnected. 

You may be able to relate to these reactions in your everyday life. You may also be very familiar with your personal range of tolerance—that space where you can effectively cope with life’s challenges in ways that are calm and engaged (vs. anxious or exhausted). 

Often just noticing and acknowledging what is happening in the moment is a real step towards integration, towards yoga. This recognition itself is mindfulness—bringing as much awareness to the wholeness of experience you can muster, opening a door to choose the next steps.  

Where to step first? 

When we realize we are caught within a cycle of stress reactivity, sometimes we are able to engage with what is happening in meaningful ways. We may be able to feel into the emotions, soften into our vulnerabilities, let ourselves cry, laugh, or scream, and maybe even allow it to release. 

We may be able to remember that this too shall pass and explore the experience with love. Investigating the underlying elements with patience and care, we can even transform difficult emotions, negative streams of thought, or pockets of pain into healing insights, allowing for rest and growth.

But sometimes the experience can shift well beyond this window of healthy contemplative engagement. Sometimes the experience can move into unbearable hyper-or hypo-arousal. Agitation or disconnection can even become too severe to sit with.

What to do when it all feels like too much?

Following are some ways to reconnect with innate, resourceful strengths within the context of meditation when you feel like you need a breather.

Remember you have choices.

In moments of heightened stress it becomes easy to forget we have choices, especially if we have gotten caught up in the rules we place around a practice. For example, there are many meditations where it is encouraged to stay with discomfort and nurture awareness of life experience. These can be beautiful practices, but there is also a point where “following the rules” may not be the most skillful means.

As soon as you begin to move past your window of healthy engagement, check in with your heart, mind, and gut. If the wisdom you carry there is telling you this is truly not right for you in this moment, trust yourself.  Maybe this is not the best time for you to explore a meditation session. You can always come back to it when you are ready. Maybe the skillful option is taking a mindful walk in nature, journaling, calling a friend, or consulting a trained therapist.  

Trust your inner ways of knowing. If it feels like you can keep meditating, continue reading below for more choices to explore.

Ground into stable anchors

Re-establish a connection with your presence by anchoring into a stable, comfortable focus of attention. Examples of an anchor could be the breath, a particular sensation within the body (feeling the feet resting into the floor or pelvis heavy in the seat), mantras, or affirmative words. Repeatedly resting attention back upon any of these can re-orient you back to the present moment. It can help to regulate the stress response, making it easier to sense into your presence of body, heart, and mind.

Re-orient to the environment through the senses

Sometimes using an internal anchor such as the breath, body, or a repetitive thought/mantra may not feel stabilizing. If this is the case, explore grounding into the present environment by resting the attention upon one of the five senses. 

If eyes are closed, open them. Take in the visual landscape. If you prefer to keep eyes closed, then explore the process of hearing. Allow sounds to come and go or focus on a particular one for grounding.

Touch can also be a stabilizing sense to explore. A hand can be placed on the heart or simply rest on the seat beneath you.

“Tend and Befriend”

The more familiar we become with ourselves through meditation, the more we may relate to our inner strengths. A big part of contemplative self-study is learning how to befriend ourselves and the ability to hold space for our experiences in the way a close friend can. Sometimes, when we are in significant distress, it can be more difficult to sense into this presence of clarity, courage, and care within.  

In times like this, we can tap into the “tend and befriend”² mechanism of the stress response by anchoring into the felt sense of someone or something we care about that makes us feel safe, loved, and resilient. You can experiment with this right now.

Take a moment to pause and recollect what makes you feel truly safe, loved, and resilient. It could be a person, a close friend or family member, an animal, a pet, or a plant—alive or not. It could be someone you admire or find inspirational like a teacher, a healer or a leader. It could also be a spiritual figure you take refuge within or a sacred place you love to spend time in, like somewhere in nature, a temple, or within community at church. 

Bring these resources to your heart and mind. What does it feel like to be in their company? Using all of your senses, what do you notice happening now?  Can you feel warmth and care supporting you? Where do you sense it? Can you rest into these feelings of safety, love, and resilience? 

As you practice feeling inner strength in ways like this during periods of calm, pathways of self-regulation and integration become more familiar and easier to access. Even in periods of strong emotion or reactivity, you may find yourself able to come back to presence with more ease.  Resourcing resilience in this way isn’t meant to be an escape or a way to spiritually bypass reality.  It is meant to increase the inner capacity to be with life mindfully.

Find your rhythm—focusing and expanding

Just as we might use the silence of meditation practice to help us restore and build resilience for our daily lives, within the context of meditation focusing on stabilizing presence through the practices above can help build a healthy foundation for widening attention. Once you are feeling more solidly connected to the safety of wisdom, love, and courage present within the moment, this resource of presence can support your return to continued practice.  

As you include more aspects of inner experience into your meditation, if at any point you feel yourself shifting from your personal window of tolerance towards distress, take a break or come back to resourcing presence. Find more safety and peace before expanding into broader circles of awareness. It is a constant touching and going, focusing and expanding.

Experiment, Play, and Grow

At the end of the day, contemplative traditions all arose to help support growth and development. They were never meant to torture us (though it can feel like that sometimes). Explore the various strategies described above. Experiment playfully with different styles of practice. Know what you can really anchor into, and stay with that practice for a while. Once you are comfortable, adventure more into other contemplative ways of experiencing the limitless essence of you.

If you are someone with a past or recent history of trauma or mental illness, strongly consider consulting your therapist before delving into a full on meditation practice. Also consider reaching out to a trained counselor if new issues arise. Allow them to support you. Some therapists and healthcare providers have experience with contemplative traditions, such as mindfulness, and may even be able to work with you to ensure your relationship with meditation is safe and healing.

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Rashmi Bismark, MD, MPH, is a Yoga Medicine® instructor and Preventive Medicine physician with expertise in mindfulness, currently based in Jersey, UK. Find out more by going to www.yogamedicine.com and www.rsbismarkmd.com

References

1. Benson H, et al. The relaxation response. Psychiatry. 1974 Feb;37(1):37-46.
2. Von Dawans B, et al. The social dimension of stress reactivity: acute stress increases prosocial behavior in humans.  Psychol. Sci. 2012 Jun;23(6):651-60.