drowsiness during meditation with lifeflow 10

[Philippe]

Hi.

I do not have much experience with meditation, except a little, with fosus on breathing.
I am now doing mantra mediation with lifeflow 10, and I wonder if I do it correctly:
- I try not to put effort in the mantra, but I often suddenly notice that I had stopped thinking the mantra, and started drifting/daydreaming.
- Sometimes, I feel my head fall suddenly, like if falling asleep, and this bring me back to mantra cycle.

Do I have to do correct anything or continue as I do?

Thank you in advance,
Philippe

[twinkletoes]

Hi Phillipe
You will find yourself going through periods of cleansing and clarity. you are doing nothing wrong this is very very normal and only serves to enable you to relax more and improve the quality of your meditation . We all live much more pressured and busy lifes and it is so much harder to calm the constant noises in our heads. If we all took time out and allowed ourselves the calm time without guilt we would all benefit and be more productive in all area's of our lives.
During meditation you may drift away from your mantra and think of things from your present, past or future life. Acknowledge these thoughts, don't try to resolve them and they will float by so that you can deal with them at a more suitable time.
Do check out all the forums there is alot of guidence and advise on them which will help you to understand what is happening and why.
wishing you much meditation happiness and wellbeing
I hope I was of some help

[Edwin]

Originally Posted by Philippe

- Sometimes, I feel my head fall suddenly, like if falling asleep, and this bring me back to mantra cycle.

I have the same thing sometimes, it's a really weird and quite funny sensation ! A kind of a "dozing off" nod with the head right ?

Usually I know that I have been staying up too late when that happens :P
Not much you can do about it, try to add one hour sleep to your nights for a week and see if it makes a difference. But sleep is beneficiary too, just like meditation... Maybe you can paint eyes on your eyelids and as long as you don't snore your housemate's won't notice a thing :P just kidding of course.

[Fergusclan]

Philippe,

I am having the same experience as you. I am on day 3 with LF 10, and yesterday I reduced my head bobs by two times to a total of 3!! I noticed that my mantra fell by the wayside and I got some really vivid feelings like I was at a door and almost ready to go through it, but then my head snapped down!! I also noticed at the end of the 40 minutes yesterday that the top of my head felt almost fuzzy, like when your feet fall asleep but not quite.

From what I have read on the forum, this is all normal and part of the process.

Resist nothing!!

[NeuralNet]

I've just started using the LF sample and I'm really finding that I meditate much more deeply, but my last couple I'm pretty sure I've nodded off too. The music I set up in my playlist when it kicked in shocked me a little. My mantra had definately gone out the window at that point.

I got 10 hours sleep for the nights before, so I'm not sure I could get much more. I think Ill keep going and see what happens. I'm hoping that the concentration on the mantra will stop real sleep during my session and enable a bit more "proper" meditation

Does anyone know what the difference between deep meditation and sleep is? Is there any or is it that you remain lucid during meditation?

Thoughts from the more experienced appreciated.

[Inedible]

Try holding your breath if you feel drowsy during meditation. It will wake you up fairly quickly. If you try that a couple of times and it doesn't work, stand up and do walking meditation. If you still feel too drowsy to meditate effectively, you probably need sleep more. It doesn't matter if you had ten hours already or twelve or even twenty hours.

It is hard to draw a line betweeen meditation and sleep. The more you meditate the more it will change the quality of your sleep as well.

[Bhavya]

Those are good suggestions, Inedible.

Even though I'm a long time meditator, sleep can still be an issue for me too. If it's not caused by lack of sleep, it can be seen as a form of resistance. Another way to deal with it is to just be aware that the body is moving into sleep and turn your attention to the awareness itself. Sometimes that works for me.

Whatever the cause, it will pass as everything eventually does. It's best to observe whatever comes up, without reacting to it.

As far as the difference between sleep and deep meditation, the brain waves might be the same, and if it's deep enough (sleep or meditation) the ego will not be active or identified with. But with deep meditation, pure awareness will be there whereas in sleep it won't be. There might be some background thoughts, but it'll be like small, background static in the vastness of your awareness...a cosmic consciousness

Hmm, I hope that makes sense....

Bhavya

[Philippe]

Thank you all for your answers.
I'll just go on and observe whatever happens.