Why does my meditation suck right now?

(and other musings on being a meditation teacher during COVID-19)

“Why does my meditation suck right now?”

I’ve been asked this by more than a few of my clients over the last few weeks. Clients who have found solace in their meditation practice, ranging from years to months, now are questioning whether or not to “stick to” their practice as diligently as they have before.

In this article, I’ll be speaking primarily about clients who practice Vedic Meditation, which is a silent-mantra based practice, used for 20-minutes, twice per day. Sittings in this style of meditation include accepting the presence of thoughts as an indication of stress leaving the body.

However, clients who join me for mindfulness-based practices are also reporting a “suckiness” to their meditation experience right now.

What defines this “suckiness?” Inside of meditating, it has been reported to include a very active mind during meditation, and an “antsiness-in-the-pantsiness” (or time moving very slowly and wanting to cut the meditation short), which leads meditators to think “why bother?” afterward. Outside of meditation, it’s defined as a general feeling of blah, RUC’s (random urges to cry), and anxiety about the future.

For my fellow meditators, I’m here to explain to you WHY your meditations might suck right now. Why you might be having trouble sitting still for your regular practice. Why your mind might be racing more than normal. Why you are still feeling ALL the feels, even though you think you shouldn’t be.

I’m here to tell you why you need to keep meditating, even though it might feel like it sucks right now.

I’m also here to tell you why we, as your teachers, look like we’re unshakably positive superheroes through all this. I am going to pull the curtain back for you on my experiences these last few weeks, so you can see the actual value of an ongoing practice, which may not be what you expected.

Meditation is, at its core, a stress-relieving tool. Most of us, up until a few weeks ago, had a normal amount of stress in our lives. The day-to-day stimulation of living and working in the western world in modern times. To varying degrees, we all had the safety blanket of our routine to anchor us in a sense of “knowing what’s to come.”

Then, the world turned upside down in a matter of weeks. Whatever your transition has been, whether that is employed to unemployed, employed and now working from home, realizing you’re an essential worker, etc, it is still that: a transition.

Transitions force us to adapt quickly. Have you ever moved? Suddenly your commute is different, your trusty corner-bodega is gone, and you can’t order in from that awesome sushi place anymore. These individually feel like minor adjustments, but they compound to require a lot of Adaptation Energy.

Adaptation Energy is the amount of energy we have each day to adapt to our surroundings. Now, think about all the ways your life has changed in the last few weeks. Add up how much Adaptation Energy this has cost you. Probably more than you realize.

Meditation is one way we can refill our well of Adaptation Energy and launder our excess stress, but right now, we’re looking at a global energetic shift that is affecting everyone.

Let’s look at this metaphorically. In your minds-eye, think of yourself floating in a large body of water, in a storm, with a life vest on. In this picture, you are you, the lifevest is your meditation practice, and the storm is current events. Note, the life vest isn’t protecting you from the storm, but it is keeping you above water.

This is how we must look at our meditation practice right now. It doesn’t mute our feelings nor save us from what we are going through energetically and emotionally. Instead, it helps keep us afloat through it, and through it, we must all go.

So how does this relate back to the “suckiness,” of your current meditation practice? Remember, thoughts during meditation are indicative of stress leaving the body. Having a lot of thoughts during your meditation means your body is doing its job: laundering the excess stress out of your system, as fast as it can.

I also hazard the guess that despite your best efforts to work out at home and do some movement, you’re not moving nearly as much as you’re used to. For example, I live in a city, and just commuting to and from work means I’m walking a few blocks each way, standing on the train, going up and down several flights of stairs, and more. Compound this into all of your old daily activities.

Meditation also gives us access to deep rest, which is what we’re getting when we experience more “suspended” meditations. Suspended meaning we feel as though we’ve maybe fallen asleep, or the time has sped up and our sitting feels like it went really fast.

Often you would see an oscillation between thought-filled meditations and these suspended meditations when life was the old normal. Now, you’re checking the time every two minutes and can’t seem to relax into that suspension.

This is because your physical body isn’t as tired as it is used to being. Your body doesn’t need the restful meditations as much as it needs to launder stress. Stress being in the form of thoughts, means we have more “antsiness-in-the-pantsiness” meditations with lots of thoughts.

Trust me, there IS value in doing these meditations because if you don’t, your body is going to hang onto the excess stress and you’ll be less able to adapt to the ever-changing world. This will result in you being more exhausted and cranky in the long run.

The truth is, we don’t meditate to get good at meditation, we meditate to get good at life. This is a gentle reminder that you don’t need to feel like you’re transcending into the neverending sparkly cosmos in order to have an effective meditation. Thoughts are not the enemy, and skipping your meditation is. When you skip a sitting, it’s like taking your life vest off in the middle of the storm.

When you start to focus on how it “sucks,” reinvest your energy into trusting your body knows what it needs right now from your meditation. Your body is smarter than your intellect thinks it is.

As for your teacher, who, to you, probably looks like a proper bliss-bunny, bouncing around the pink fluffy clouds like a cherub in a Renaissance painting on Instagram, while the world is seemingly coming apart at the seams. We aren’t immune to what’s going on around us, either.

Fortunately for us all, we are humans, not cherubic bliss-bunnies. Our experience on this earth in a human body equates to feeling emotions. We feel emotions both through our body, thoughts, and feelings. Emotions are inextricably tied to our human experience on this earth.

We as teachers are simply a little further down the road in our practice. After years of practicing meditation ourselves, we simply move through our feelings more quickly. This means, rather than days spent in depression, it’s a day or even just a few hours. Rather than feeling like the world is against us, we have a few more bits of evidence that the Universe has our back and this too shall pass, opening up possibilities we never imagined, on the other side.

For me over time, this has developed into both a sense of being “bigger” than my emotions with an ability to simultaneously feel what I’m feeling. On another level, I can relish in having a body that can experience emotion. No, I don’t like feeling depressed or anxious, but I am able to respond to these emotions, rather than react to them. I can easily recognize when I need to stop- drop- and take a nap (aka take time to do whatever self-care feels good).

I bet you’re experiencing this, but you don’t realize it. Take a moment to look back on the “you” who once existed pre-meditation and put that version of yourself in the current situation. How would that “you” react differently than who you are, today? I’m willing to bet that your answer is: the old-you would have reacted much worse than today-you.

Often, we can lose sight of how far we’ve come because we are too “in it” to see the progress we’ve made. By stepping outside of your current state of consciousness and putting your old-self into the current situation, you can more easily find the evidence of your progress.

I hope you can take solace in knowing you are not alone. Every person inhabiting this earth right now is being influenced by our current events in some way. This is a time for radical change, and your meditation practice will continue to keep you afloat through it all, even if it doesn’t feel “relaxing,” to do right now. It’s not about the meditation sitting, it’s about how you handle life outside of it.

Allow yourself to be on the journey through this. Allow yourself to be wherever you’re at each moment. Know that in these times we have both the opportunity to see how strong we are, as well as to reflect on how we continue to grow. Know that you’re exactly where you need to be on your journey. Know that if you keep showing up for your meditation practice, Nature, the Universe, or whatever you call the energy that connects us all, “It,” will support you.

Happy Meditating!
Kelsey