Many people lose time on meditations that are not beneficial for their spiritual growth since they fall asleep while meditating. Even people meditating for years can have sleepiness during meditation which can lower the level of consciousness. In this article, we share some useful tantric techniques that help to combat sleepiness during meditations and ignite inner fire and aspiration leading to a better spiritual practice.
What is the Cause of Sleepiness During Meditation?
When daily meditation, even a short one, is followed by falling asleep, it stops having all the benefits of the practice. One of the signs that meditation becomes out of control is when the head of the practitioner drops to the front or back during the practice. The biggest risk here is that we train our brain how to sleep during the meditation, and this association gets stronger with time which makes it difficult to break this habit.
During meditation, we let go of the interaction with the outer world that usually keeps us awake in social activities and daily events. The tonus of contact with the outer world is taken away, and tiredness takes over, so we drop below the non-sleeping line in our meditation. There are two aspects of tiredness:
- lack of vital force, or energy
- lack of “fire” – the driving force, aspiration, and motivation
Usually, there is a combination of both parts that leads us to feel tired, and once we enter meditation with a tired state, we tend to fall asleep.
How Can We Improve Our Level of Energy?
To have more vital force, we need to regulate our sleep and eating cycles, eat healthier and lighter, practice energizing asanas and pranayama, and work on the root chakra. Stable sleeping cycles are very important in building a greater level of energy. When there is a regular routine of when we go to sleep, when we wake up, at which time we eat etc., the body gets used to the cycles and learns to not want sleep during the other times.
It is very important to understand how much sleep our body needs and follow this habit to improve our energy level and have a fruitful meditation without falling asleep. It is helpful to understand when we get sleepy and choose the time for meditation when we feel energized.
How to Harmoniously Ignite the Inner Fire in Meditation
Another aspect of fruitful spiritual practice is having a harmonious inner fire during meditation. These are several helpful tantric techniques aimed at igniting the fire of the heart:
- Charging the moment of waking up. The moment we wake up is the moment when we give the impulse to our entire subconscious; the first thought that we have impacts our habit of waking up. As an example, if we wake up and close the eyes having a thought of more sleep, the subconsciousness learns to fall asleep right after waking up. To break the pattern and build a new harmonious habit we can program the mind to wake up with different and more beneficial thoughts. Such as, telling yourself right after waking up that you had enough sleep, you are fresh, full of energy and vitality. This approach should be repeated until the body learns to wake up at the right time with the right amount of energy. It is also very helpful to perform Nabhi asana after waking up, in an extremely peaceful and relaxed way to harmoniously ignite the inner fire, and feel more energized.
- Another way that helps amplify harmonious fire in the meditation is the sublimation techniques before the meditation. Such techniques include Uddiyana bandha, pranayama, shoulder stand and headstand, most yoga asanas, Qi gong, Taichi, etc. that create the feeling of moving the energy upwards.
- Sleepiness in meditation can relate to the energy blockages in the body, for example, in the pelvic area, diaphragm or head area. Paying attention to the place where energy is blocked and directing focus there during spiritual practices will help to release such blockages and improve meditation.
- The pattern of falling asleep during meditation should be conquered, even if it means having less deep meditations for a while but with a constant sense of inner fire during the practice. Later it becomes possible to go deeper with the spiritual practice keeping the sharp focus and strong aspiration.
- To ignite the fire, we can use the state of devotion, and have a clear understanding of why we meditate and remember it. It is suggested to have 2-3 minutes before or during meditation to reignite spiritual passion and devotion, to connect to the aspiration and the desire to discover who you are, embody the spiritual ideal, follow the higher purpose, and clear the impurities of the mind.
- For the physical support of the meditation, it is important to keep the back straight and hold a very firm relaxed posture during the practice. It is also very supportive for meditation to work on the navel chakra, heart chakra, and third-eye chakra, to ignite a fire in these areas and a state of lucidity.
By combating the sleepiness in meditation and by practicing the above techniques we will increase the aspiration and spiritual longing. Thus, we can use it to put a lot of heart into meditation, which will further help us to feel more conscious, confident, calm, focused, creative, and loving and to have even more enthusiasm and aspiration.
This article was transcribed and edited from the following video: