Anyone else get sleepy while trying to meditate
Posted by seraphThank you, this helps. I do think I have to do some research on meditation and the types of practices, as well as the goal-- beyond relaxation and stress relief. Concentrating on breathing has helped with anxiety, but I end up feeling like it's just a mode of controlling emotional states-- the practice feels a little empty. So research it is, I obviously don't know enough just yet.
Correct meditation practice involves cultivating relaxation along with concentration. Too much relaxation promotes dullness and states of zoning out, while too much concentration promotes agitation.
Keep at it. When you feel a bit drowsy, catch yourself and very gently return your attention to your breathing, or, depending on the practice - shamatha or shikantaza or whatnot - return to mindfulness of “just sitting”, or to the object of concentration, respectively.
Also, meditating too long when one isn’t accustomed to it will promote drowsiness.
At any rate, drowsiness is normal. Just another feature of the body-mind functioning. It’s not to be an object of frustration. Just work with it and around it. Meditation that is done with regularity will eventually address both drowsiness and agitation as a matter of course. Correct practice involves a *daily* meditation routine. Occasional meditation isn’t useful long-term. In this latter case a better practice would be to spend more time studying the relevant scriptures and contemplating them, which should be done anyway. Jnana and dhyana are complementary.