How To Deal With Restlessness During Meditation

Dhamma Talk + Guided Meditation Session 025: June 24th, 2020, by Sophia Ojha Ensslin and Cristof Ensslin

Banner Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

Introduction

Last year, in this meditation group, we have studied and learned about the five hindrances in meditation:

1. Craving for sensual desire

2. Ill will and aversion

3. Sleepiness and drowsiness

4. Restlessness and worry

5. Skeptical doubt

While they’re all interrelated, we can often pinpoint one major source of disturbance upon reflection. Different ones come up at different times. However, we all tend to have a “pet” hindrance, one that is present most often. For me, it is restlessness.

In today’s talk, I (Cristof) want to share with you how it manifests itself most typically, and how I have learned to deal with it.

Read on below or watch the talk and meditate with us by playing the videos to your right.

Dhamma Talk by Cristof

Meditation Guided by Sophia

Handout

This week we have prepared a 4-page handout for you. It is posted left/below as blog content. Plus, you can download it as PDF by clicking on the following button:

Restless In Meditation

When I sit down to start my meditation session, I commonly have a fairly easy time to establish some level of mindfulness initially. That calms my mind down. As I make present moment awareness my top priority during the sit, I set my attention to whatever is happening right here, right now.

I start with a body scan in which I feel some kind of tingling sensation in most or all parts of my physical existence. That’s touch consciousness. Having my eyes closed, the sense of sight is virtually turned off, but hearing consciousness is quite present. I let the sounds from the outside pass through my awareness, such as birds singing, the dishwasher running, or people talking. 

By not judging what I perceive and just acknowledging its momentary presence, I don’t give it any importance beyond what’s needed. Like that, my mind can become and stay calm. That’s a very peaceful and pleasant state of mind.

As time goes on, I often find my mind creating more and more thoughts. Random thoughts, unwanted thoughts - at least right now in meditation. Some are about the past, some about the future. They may get so strong, connected, and laden with emotions that it feels literally like a mind storm. That’s restlessness of the mind. 

Occasionally this is accompanied by physical restlessness, where I feel the strong urge to move around. The body seems to not be able to sit still any longer - as if I was to explode otherwise. That’s restlessness of the body.

How to deal with these phenomena depends on their strength and my momentary ability.

How I Deal With Restlessness

When it’s restlessness of the mind at an early stage, say a faint little scarce thought about what’s for lunch today, I can simply bring my attention back to my meditation object. Whether it’s body awareness, the breath or a mantra of gratitude or loving kindness that I am focussing on in this session, I first acknowledge the presence of the thought that has arisen, for it’s what’s going on in this very moment in my mind consciousness. Then I gently steer my attention back to the meditation object.

Higher stages of restlessness bring about whole trains of thought, well fleshed out and in all detail. For example: what and how I’m going to cook or what I did wrong in the past in a particular situation or maybe even a whole business or marketing plan for a product idea in my work. This is more difficult to deal with as it often comes with stronger emotional accompaniment. 

The first line of defense is the same like above, which we can extend using the AGM model from a few sessions ago (Session 014: How to Overcome a Restless Mind in Meditation): 

1. Acknowledging the present moment as it is, with this uninvited thought storm as the protagonist. It’s simply what’s happening right now in my consciousness.

2. Gratitude: I can be grateful for this unique opportunity to get to know the workings of my mind more deeply. The more I learn about this phenomenon, the better I can deal with it. The lessons learned I can usually apply not just in meditation, but also in life outside the meditation. Thank you!

3. Metta is the Pali word for loving kindness or loving friendliness. So now, I can be kind to myself, not beating myself up for having this thought in the first place. I can be kind to the thought by smiling at it and wishing it well for its onward journey out of my mind.

What if that doesn’t work?

What I have tried in the past is to write everything down. After all, it could be the long awaited million dollar idea, right? While this seems to make sense at first, I have learned that it is rather counter productive. Instead of getting it out of the system I actively engage in the thought in my mind. That gives it more and more strength. So, in the end, instead of quieting the mind it roughs it up. What to do instead?

Just last week during a meditation sit, I was able to do something new to me. Not only were mind storms raging, but also my body seemed to not be able to sit still anymore, not a single second longer. But then, suddenly, I was able to see restlessness as separate from my mind. I could see it as a non-physical phenomenon, detached from myself, that had come up, temporarily blocking the natural state of quietude of the mind by producing thought after thought. 

Imagine a rain cloud blocking the sun for a while, pouring down a monsoon on us and the earth, and then moving on or dissipating. That’s restlessness. It’s not me or you who are restless, it is not our mind that is restless. It’s its own thing that comes, stays for a while, then goes away.

This view helped me surprisingly fast. The “cloud” of restlessness of mind vanished almost instantly. My physical urge to twitch and wiggle and move waned nearly immediately.

This is something we can all practice and work with. Once we become aware that our mind’s eye is not on the meditation object anymore, but kept busy by a thought storm instead, we can go through the AGM process and complement it with a visualization of restlessness being a rain cloud, which happens to be over us right now. We can open an umbrella and wait until it’s over. 

Restlessness Leads To Peace

We have just seen several examples for how to deal with restlessness in meditation, to get back to a sense of peace. Not despite but thanks to the restlessness happening, we can feel the peace that’s on the other side ever so strongly. Interestingly, the stronger the restlessness is, the more pronounced the sense of peace becomes.

Depending on the strength of the restlessness present, we need to use the appropriate antidote. The ones presented here today are surely not all antidotes available. But they are those that have worked for me. You may find your very own ones the more you practice.

Let’s practice right now with a meditation together. Thank you for being here.