You’re sitting there, trying to meditate, following the instructions, and you start thinking, am I doing this right? What exactly am I supposed to be feeling? It’s a familiar situation most meditators face, especially those who are fairly new to the practice.
There is no particular feeling you’re ‘supposed’ to have during meditation. Your job is to simply try observe each and every experience that you have – the physical and mental contents of the body and the mind – with equanimity. Whether you feel joyful, sad, frustrated, blissful, heavy, sweaty, anxious, energetic or in pain, is irrelevant.
So you could say your aim is to feel a sense of acceptance towards the present moment, whatever form that may take. Through meditation, this is what we train the mind to do, over and over again. There’s a lot to unpack here so let’s take a deeper dive into what this all actually means.
Physical Sensations During Meditation
Our minds and bodies are closely connected. Whatever we feel in the mind we also feel in the body. Take anger as an example. A thought about a situation that bothers us might trigger the emotion of anger in the mind, which we may then experience in the body as a burning or constricted sensation, maybe in the chest or throat area, for example. Those uncomfortable physical sensations usually result in an impulse to react to them – either to lash out mentally in our own minds, verbally or even physically. The sensations we feel often cause us to roll around in even more angry thoughts, triggering further uncomfortable sensations, and causing a feedback loop that may go on for hours.
Whether a feeling or emotion is triggered by a thought or a physical situation is irrelevant. If you observe closely enough, you will notice that most thoughts appear with an accompanying physical sensation. You may notice that when you are feeling an undesirable sensation somewhere on the body, there is a flurry of worrying thoughts in your mind. The two are so interrelated, when you are observing one, you are also observing the other.
A great example of this comes when we observe the breath as the object of our meditation. You may notice that when you feel uneasy or stressed, the breath becomes shorter and shallower. Your mental state has produced a physical effect in the body.
Even when your thoughts are generally neutral, you will find that you experience neutral sensation sensations, although these can sometimes be hard to feel. We largely ignore them because we consider them as ‘boring’.
So when we observe our mind we also observe our body, and when we observe our body we also observe our mind. This has direct consequences for what we ought to focus on during our meditation, and how we observe that experience.
What Should I Feel During Meditation?
The beauty of meditation is that there is no particular feeling you’re supposed to have. It takes you exactly as you are in this moment. That is, the truth of your current experience, whatever is happening to you, right now. You just accept this truth. Meditation is a mental training in accepting the truth of the present moment.
So what exactly are you supposed to be directing your mind to feel then?
As we’ve discussed, we experience our inner and outer world through our physical feelings. This is often the easiest access point for us to experience our present reality – to be mindful of the present moment. It is much easier to observe the physical sensations that we experience than some abstract thoughts or emotions. We’ve also seen how by observing our body, we also by direct consequence observe the nature of our mind.
So then, the question becomes – how does your boredom, your sadness, your frustration actually feel like in your body? What does it feel like to be alive and experience these abstract emotions? If an alien or robot was to ask you – “what does frustration feel like?”, what would you say to them? For some of us frustration may be a burning in the chest – this is what you are supposed to feel. So witness that burning feeling – what exactly is it? Watch it, get comfortable with it, maybe even notice if it changes over time.
This can be applied to any experience that you have. You could feel tired, you might feel energetic, maybe there is some pain in your back or your left eyelid might be twitching. You might feel anxious, there may be a heaviness in your chest, hordes of thoughts swirling around in your head or you may even feel bored. All your supposed to do is ‘be’ with these ‘feelings’ in terms of how they physically feel and accept them exactly as they are.
And over time you might come to some interesting realisations about these feelings. You might see how impermanent all these feelings are. How they’re constantly changing and how you’re not really in control of them. You might also see how futile it is to react to something so ephemeral, to something with such little substance.
There is a common misconception that you should be feeling something ‘special’ during meditation. The practice is actually more about fully experiencing the ordinary and the mundane – what it feels like to be fully human. So never look for anything special during your practice. Don’t have any expectations for what you believe you ‘should’ feel. This will only hinder your meditation. Just because you aren’t experiencing pure bliss or mental clarity doesn’t mean you aren’t meditating correctly.
How Do I Know If I’m Meditating Correctly?
By now you might have noticed that meditation is not really about what’s happening but more about how you relate to what’s happening. Are you reacting to these feelings or trying to observe and investigate them?
You can picture yourself sitting on the bank of a river, watching all these experiences pass by, without jumping in the river and getting attached to them. You can even imagine yourself staring up at the sky, with these experiences simply being clouds passing through the clear blue sky. You are the observer, and these feelings are just different phenomena passing by. Sometimes there are storms, and sometimes the sky is clear – you cannot control what happens. But there is one thing you can control – how you respond to the clouds.
So how do you know if you are meditating correctly? It’s actually quite simple:
- Stay aware of the present moment; and
- Try to objectively observe the present moment with detachment (i.e. accept the present moment).
It’s simple, but as you may have discovered on your journey, it’s not easy. Meditation is the repetition of these two key elements – over and over again. It is a mental training, just like any physical training you would do in the gym. It takes consistency, patience, discipline, with a gentle touch of kind-heartedness towards yourself. Through it, you develop the essential qualities that you expect any person of wisdom to possess.
What Should Happen When You Meditate?
As we’ve discussed, there is no particular feeling or ‘state’ that you should be trying to get to during meditation. There is nothing that ‘should’ happen. There is just your effort to stay aware of the present moment, and your experiencing unfolding in front of you.
Meditation isn’t about experiencing blissful and rapturing experiences. It is about being comfortable in your own skin, no matter what you are experiencing. Sure, as you continue to practice, you will come across many experiences, some of which can be very pleasant. But as with any other feeling, this is just temporary and fleeting. The danger is in becoming attached to these impermanent experiences.
You can have all the blissful experiences you want during meditation but at the end of the day you come out of them and face the ups and downs of life. Just like everything else, they pass away. What good are they if you cannot remain balanced in the face of life’s everyday inevitable pain and unexpected events? These experiences will not change you unless you let go of your attachment to them by seeing them for what they really are – temporary and fleeting.
Successful meditation also has a habit of bringing out some of our deepest fears, desires and habitual tendencies which can result in some fairly challenging experiences. However, it is only in confronting these parts of us that we can learn to let go of them. Our practice often gives us exactly what we need in the moment that we need it.
How Do You Feel After Meditation?
The most common experience of most meditators is to feel a sense of calm and peace after a meditation session. Usually this is felt as lightness and clarity of mind. However, this is not always the case. A strong session can sometimes bring up a deep-seated fear or desire, resulting in feelings of unease and aversion.
Again, this is completely normal and you needn’t worry. If you keep up your practice, you will notice that these feelings eventually fade and make way for understanding and self-knowledge.
A great way to do this is to stay mindful of how you feel before and after your meditation sitting. When you first sit down, perform a check of how you’re feeling in general, and do the same at the end of the session. It also helps if you mentally note this feeling. Difficult feelings, in particular, lose much of their power when they are mentally noted for what they are – just a feeling.
So in the end, just remember that you needn’t worry about what you are feeling or what you think you ‘should’ be feeling. Meditation has a funny way of giving us just the right amount of challenges, and moments of clarity, to help us grow on a daily basis. The important thing is that, no matter what you experience during your practice, you feel it fully and accept it exactly as it is. This is the essence of the practice.