I just wanted to see if anyone has experienced the sensation of almost shitting themselves as they drift into a deeper meditative state?

I have had this happen to me several times; basically I feel myself drifting deeper into it then all of a sudden I get that feeling (that I can imagine almost everyone has felt and knows) I am about to shit myself, but thankfully I have always caught myself before anything happens.

When it happens it triggers this quick reflex/instinct to tighten up and catch myself.

Its similar to the feeling when you have the big D and you try to let a little fart out but all of a sudden you realize that there is more on deck so you instantly tense up to save your drawers.

Has anyone experienced this, seriously?

I feel as though its a good sign, but I just wonder if its abnormal.

Interested to hear everyones thoughts and experiences, thank you.

It's very easy for things to get to me and annoy me and most of time I end up bottling everything up untill it just burst out into either tears or useless arguments with other people. I do not like to talk to other people or vent about these emotions. So I need to find another way to control them. Is meditation good for this? It would be wonderful if it is. I never gave it a fair chance.

Hello.

I am quite new to meditation and today embarked on a slightly longer practice. However, after around 20 minutes i noticed my hands had partially closed and I was unable to open them much. I picked up my phone to see if this was normal but it was hard for me to control my fingers enough to even type in my passcode. I ended the meditation there and shortly after I can control my hands and fingers again. I just wanted to check if this is normal. I know that some people experience numbness and tingling but I had not heard about loss of motor control.

Thanks.

Here is the previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/s/z4nkOkcQCC

After people asked me some questions, my own question became clearer to me. My question is:

Is there any medotation that can help prevent burnout or congnitive fatigue or is there any meditation that can help recover from it super fast? I am talking about mental burnout that arises from solving mathematics problems.

Off course meditation is very broad, are there special kind of meditations that aim to only stopping the world/inner monologue?

Who is impelling your senses to operate (to see, to listen and so on), impelling movements in your body, impelling you to think? What is the power attracting you to something and distracting you from something?

It is not to find some explanation for the impelling power (I am doing or God is doing is also an explanation)-but to just note the impelling itself. There is no one impelling. There is nothing behind impelling. There is  only impelling.

Totality is realised.

I am pretty new to meditation and usually do a session right before bed. Normally it gives me a much better night of sleep, but this time it totally shook me up. I ended up having a fucking horrible dream right after, and I am trying to make sense of it.

In the dream, I suddenly felt like I was on a circuit board or more specifically like a bolt of energy moving through it. I was the energy moving itself, but I became conscious inside of it, and it was terrifying. I was stuck on a circuit repeatedly doing the same thing, passing energy or letting it go through me. It felt like falling from a great height over and over again. You never get used to the terror because every single fall feels like the first one. What made it so nightmareish was that I was conscious of the cycle and felt like I would never leave it, just trapped there in perpetual fear.

Eventually, the loop shifted and I felt trapped inside my physical body instead. I could not move at all and was completely disconnected from it. At the same time, I was somewhat satisfied just lying there motionless because I was soaking wet with sweat and just needed to catch my breath.

It felt like I was faced with a decision. I could either get lost in the disconnect and never reclaim my body, or force myself back into the driver's seat. During the circuit phase, my ego, family, and memories were completely gone. But as I sat there in that body paralysis, my memories started trickling back. I fought so hard to reclaim them because I did not want to forget who I was. Everyday life suddenly felt like a massive pleasure compared to that monotonous energy loop.

I fought hard, got back into my body, and woke up. Right after that I got physically sick, and I have been slowly piecing myself back together ever since.

Has anyone experienced anything like this after starting meditation, or do you think it was just a strange coincidence? How do you make sense of this?

I had significant conflicts with management and collegues in my previous workplace which feels traumatic , they constantly replay in my mind , increases my anxiety and makes it difficult to move on.
Any meditation mantra or sloka to get past those issues.?

Something awful happened today which is leading me to lots of overthinking and arguing with my own thoughts. I understand the concept of just observing your thoughts but I address them automatically in my head.

I don't feel empathy towards pretty much anyone, not even my mother. I am not able to understand the emotions of other people and everyone just seems to get overly emotional over unimportant things. I was reading the book "What the Buddha taught" and I've heard it mentioned a few times so I'm wondering rn.

Sorry if the title is confusing.

I stopped meditating because after a couple of months, I found it harder and harder to maintain awareness. At first I used a mantra and it was surprisingly easy to be there, to contemplate my inner monologue and let go of it. However, I then started to notice that while I kept repeating my mantra and doing that, my inner monologue continued running wild on a lower level. I then moved to focusing on breathing, and the same thing happened eventually. Counting breaths seemed to be a solution, but at the end it was integrated by this multi-level chatter too.

So I basically start focusing on my breathing, examining my flow of thought, suddenly get absorbed by a thought or a memory, hardly distance from it, notice I am still noticing or counting my breathing, noticing there's another thought below the first one, listening to whatever earworm is with me that day, seeing some scene playing with my eyes closed, counting breathing, getting absorbed by a third thought, coming back, noticing a memory has been there the whole time, and shaking my inner head at all this mess. And it is more like a simultaneous experience than a sequence.

How do you deal with that?

Hello friends. I guess I’m what you could call a hikikomori (22F) and I’ve been that way for about six years.

To give some background: I came back from studying overseas to my home country in the thick of Covid, and then a coup happened, so it was difficult to go outside.

In between, five to six times, I tried lots of things like going back to school or getting a job but it would always end up in the same way, me quitting. Two years ago it all came to a head when I finally suffered a breakdown.

Since then I’ve been doing much better after meeting with a psychiatrist. She recommended the Dhamma (predominantly Buddhist country so nothing unusual). At first I didn’t think much of it, but recently I’ve begun reading the suttas and practising Mahasi noting in my meditation and everyday life. And it’s really helped me notice things that I didn’t before.

The other day the thought occurred to me: “I should ask my mother for help in getting a job at her shop.”

Instantly I was wary because I sensed that it was the same kind of impulsive thought I had the previous times. And instantly I noticed all sorts of wild fantasies flying through my head—from this single thought!—“Oh life will be so much better…think about all the places you can go and success you’ll achieve and respect you’ll receive blah blah blah”

My mind was already off living in la-la-land before I’d even done anything. So I thought, this won’t do, and sat down to reflect upon my emotions and all the previous times this had happened and found something like this:

Fear-thought born“I should do X so that people don’t look down on me…”

↓

Fantasy-thought born “If I do X, I’ll finally be respected…”

↓

Impulsive decision made

↓

Fear-thought born “Why isn’t this turning out like my fantasy-thought…?…I’m scared”

↓

Fantasy-thought born “I would be so much better off without this”

↓

Impulsive decision made

↓

After a while cycle begins again

When I experienced this train of thought playing itself out in my mind in real-time, I was dumbstruck. I thought each circumstance had been different but it had been the same pattern wearing different clothes! Like this, how could anything I did have ended well? In the privacy of my own mind I made a decision born from fear; how could I have remained equanimous in the outside world?

And then there’s shame. I never thought I’d become the kind of person to ask their own family for a job.

A lot of stories of worldly misery involve people losing their fortune, so I feel ashamed for even talking about this. I have the exact opposite problem. When I came back I went from living a relatively normal life to living in excess. Even now I haven’t gotten used to it. There’s no way my lifestyle would have been sustainable without this. And my parents…sometimes I think it would have been better if they weren’t so understanding, but they are. And I feel so guilty because I know how lucky I am.

So how do I know if asking my mother for help is the right decision? Not one made out of fear or fantasy? I’m afraid of asking for help, receiving it and then disappointing everyone again. But at the same time, I can’t go on like this.

Everytime they say "breath in and hold it" nd then they start to slowly count to 10, I feel like dying. Also, I don't know who chose a piano as the main instrument to make "relaxing" music. Playing a random piano key every 5 seconds is not relaxing. It's actually more like a jumpscare that distracts you from your meditation... or is it just me?

I'm 16M, I've been going through alot recently.

My daily schedule contains around 8-9 of sometimes even more than that hours of study. BUT, I feel like the thr amount of study hrs I put isn't enough or effective. I'm planning to start doing meditation for 15 mins every day. I know it's going to be imperfect at the start, but I will do my best to continue it. I tried meditation like 2-3 months ago, and I felt very good, so why not try it again.

So the main question is, does meditation improve brain power?

Greetings, I have been meditating for many years. I usually picture certain places. Sometimes a wooded path with scattered buildings for specific purposes.

Lately I have been reading a lot of the Gnostic gospels. I read a meditation about consciousness being in the heart center, just left of the center of the chest.

The meditation is simply to breathe and recognize consciousness in the heart/chest area and not in the head.

The first time I focused on this i felt and heard a very loud "pop" on the right side of my chest. Has this ever happened to anyone? I was quite shocked.

Hi, I just wanted to share this in case someone finds it helpful. I noticed chanting om helps me go deeper into a meditative state, but the trick for me was letting the jaw loose while starting to chant the vocal, whatever the sound is, without worring if it sound like a or o or whatever, then slowly closing the jaw to reach the m and letting whatever sound it comes without trying to control how it sounds. I use to start it while following a video on youtube, then letting my own breathing rythm, with each om I can feel how my mind shuts down more and more. Just wanted to share ☺️

I am just a beginner. I know nothing about meditations. I just take deep breaths in morning first by alternating from nostrils and then from both for just a few minutes. My question is straight forward. This may be a dumb question. In that case, just ignore it.

I read a book about living in "easy world" that really resonated with me as I've been digging deeper into meditation/Spirituality.

Quite a bit of time has gone by and the more I reflect and the more experience I have, it seems like everytime I "try hard," I'm just wasting effort and stressing myself out for no reason.

Everything happens as it's supposed to all the time. All of the good things that have come in my life weren't because I brainstormed or because I put in a ton of effort.

Good things came about from the things I did thoughtlessly. Being generous, being kind, improving myself, just being myself, being mindful. I'm realizing now that all the time I spent trying to figure out complex things didn't help me at all lmao

On the contrary, my greatest revelations come when I'm literally doing nothing. Even when I try to sit and contemplate now, it's only when I let everything go that I feel a sense of clarity!

This feels like such a big joke lol I think back to all the things in my life that caused me a great deal of stress that I wracked my brain over. Only to always see that none of it was ever up to me. Things unfolded exactly as they needed to for me to learn a lesson.

It's extra hard because I am such an overthinker/control freak. I know I should just let go, but it feels so ingrained in me to want to "keep tabs on things" but it's so silly in reality because I don't have control over things!!

I think also because it is such an unnatural way of living compared to how we are conditioned. Idk I think part of me is never sure "how much" I should be involved. But I guess the answer is "you should be involved however much you feel like you should be involved because it doesn't matter anyway" lol

Meditation has definitely helped me calming my mind, thinking slower, and thinking more positively. However it has also made me more sensitive to too much stimulation.

I can’t listen to loud music, if I do it’s once-twice week. Only thing I can handle is slow piano music. When I listen to loud music it’s sometimes without headphones.

I am an avid music listener and would listen to music during any sort of walk (I walk a lot, commuting, walking to the park, going food shopping and so on)

I also tend to need some time to stare into the distance and either just empty my mind by thinking of everything and anything, or getting into a meditative state where I think of nothing.

It’s become quite annoying as I can’t handle too much stimulation such as being in a loud office (I do not work from home sadly)

Can someone explain this?

So I’ve been dealing with constipation my entire life and as an adult, it’s gotten far worse than just the nerves of having to poop while traveling. I have a tense pelvic floor and I feel like I may have chronic muscle guarding, which started when I was a kid. Basically I believe my body has trained itself to not feel the feeling of needing to go to the bathroom and keep itself in a tense state. I’m wondering if anyone else has this issue and /or if you can recommend meditation (ideally free??) apps that would be good to relax those muscles and be more in tune with my body’s responses. Thank you!

Every content creator I know talks about "being awareness"

"Not attaching yourself to an identity"

"Being nothing".

But for real, I found an identity and I'm sooooo much attached to it.

This identity gives me the will to practice meditation for hours.

The will to sort out the thoughts I receive, sort out the emotions I receive

Eradicate "instant gratification.

Calming my nervous system.

Putting me in alpha/thêta state of mind easily.

Not falling into scarcity or impatience.

Healing my heart. Etc.

This identity is the identity of PATIENCE.

I SWEAAAAAR

Being someone PATIENT is the KEY, THE WHOLE FREAKIN KEY

Without this IDENTITY I'd take SOOOOO BAD DECISIONS.

This is through this identity that I found that emotions doesn't come from me.

Thoughts doesn't come from me.

I don't generate them.

I can only watch them and get rid of them (yes I can, through a practice, no need to name it, it's part of my beliefs).

When I get rid of them, this is where the LIGHT CAN SHINE.

This is where I can receive GOOD EMOTIONS, GOOD THOUGHTS, GOOD INSIGHTS, GOOD INTUITIONS, GOOD IDEAS.

I swear, without this IDENTITY OF PATIENCE, I couldn't stay alone for 30 minutes to watch my emotions/thoughts and proceed to heal my heart.

Now, I just say to myself "I'm someone patient, so I put a timer for 30 minutes, and do the work." (Be/Do/Have)

GO.

Maybe I'm sooooo wrong, but since I attached my identity to this, I'm so much aware, my life is going better every day, no more impatience/frustration, or when it's coming, i remember that I'M PATIENT and DO THE WORK.

This also helped me to get rid of bad habits.

What do you think about that??? Is it good or... not good?

Like when i sit quietly for 5 minutes, focus breathing, focusing surroundings etc. My whole body starts shaking strongly, every breath in and out i shake strongly and then i almost/start crying? It feels sad or something im not sure

or better yet. are distractions part of the meditation as long as you manage to acknowledge them and return to open awareness?

are the most experienced practitioners able to go thru a session (say 15 min) in the "stare at nothing" open awareness state ?

Can a practice be considered successful if one is pushed out of open awareness state either by thoughts or focus on an object or a sound 20 times during a practice but he/she is able to return briefly to 10s of just sitting state ?

Does anyone get mentally exhausted from mindfulness practice? Because I almost always do.

For the record, I suspect I might have ADHD, so I have to bring my attention back to the present moment a lot. I understand that thoughts come, you observe them, and then you bring your attention back. But this act itself is terribly exhausting for me.

I'm also someone with intense anxiety issues. Without mindfulness or meditation, I have a high chance of having a mental breakdown in public, so I feel like I somehow have to make it work despite how mentally draining it is.

I also realized how much I fake being okay in front of my parents so they don't get worried about me. They worry a lot, and it can even lead to them becoming overprotective, which I really don't want. Right now I'm staying with my parents, so I'm constantly doing that.

I know all of this might be contributing to my mental exhaustion, but it's getting severe and honestly feels like it's getting out of my hands.

Has anyone else experienced mindfulness itself becoming mentally exhausting? Especially if you have ADHD, anxiety, or both? How did you deal with it?