Why Everything Gets in the Way During Meditation: Your Back, Thoughts, Irritation

AVAlexander Volchek

Someone sits down to meditate, and their back starts to hurt. Different thoughts come up, images appear, their legs go numb, irritation arises, and they want to switch everything off and immediately say, “I cannot meditate.” Let's take a broader look. What if you are writing a report during the day and your head hurts? What if you are talking to your child and find it hard to concentrate? What if you go to a store and your body hurts? Or you are watching a movie and cannot keep watching it? What is really happening? Why is it specifically during meditation that people immediately conclude something is wrong with their meditation?

With the meditation itself, the place where it happens, or the people practicing it. Meditation is not an isolated event, disconnected from your life. It is not some special island you have gone away to, where your body is supposed to become perfect, your thoughts are supposed to disappear, and you suddenly turn into a calm person. You sit down and begin to perceive. If you have finally begun to look at your body, why should it immediately feel good? Perhaps you have simply begun to see what you do not see during the day. Perhaps your body has been tense for a long time. Perhaps your thoughts have been racing for a long time, but you have not been hearing them.

Perhaps the irritation was there, but other activities covered it up. It is like breathing. You can spend thirty minutes breathing properly in the morning, then go drink wine or smoke cigarettes in the evening. What was the point of those thirty minutes? If you do not pay attention to your breathing throughout the day, it is just an isolated exercise. The same goes for meditation. The point is not to make sure your back does not hurt during meditation. The point is to begin perceiving what is really happening to you. As your perception expands, you may begin to see pain, thoughts, irritation, difficulties, and energies that do not want you to expand your perception.

And this is not necessarily a problem with meditation. It may be the first honest, real moment when you have finally seen yourself.