How to Overcome Sleepiness in Meditation

Nayaswami Padma shares an excerpt from Swami Kriyananda's autobiography The New Path, the chapter, "Work vs Meditation." For most of us, sleepiness creeps sometimes into our meditation practice. How do we keep ourselves from falling asleep?

Transcript

Nayaswami Padma

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Nayaswami Padma, and I'm here today to bring you the excerpt from the original teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. In this case, I'm still reading out of Swami Kriyananda's autobiography, The New Path, in the section where he writes about his years living with Yogananda.  And this is still in the chapter called Work Versus Meditation.

What to Do About Sleep in Meditation

The excerpt says that "For some time during my first year at Mount Washington, I was disturbed by periods of almost obsessive sleepiness during meditation. I no sooner sat for meditation then the nodding began. One day, I felt particularly joyous inside and was looking forward eagerly to the evening’s meditation. But to my immense disgust, the moment I started to meditate, drowsiness descended on me again like a thick fog. I was furious."

“Since you insist on so much sleeping, I scolded my mind, I'm not going to let you sleep at all. I stayed up all that night, typing letters, walking about the grounds, drinking tea, anything to beat down my insistent craving for sleep."

"When daylight came, I went out and worked hard in the garden. By the following evening, my mind had become so submissive, terrified, I imagined, lest it be abused, with sleeplessness a second night, that my meditative drowsiness ceased completely, never to bother me again, for many months.”

This is a very important teaching for those of us who meditate. I know for myself, well, and I'm sure for most everyone that I know. There is always a test that comes at some point, with drowsiness with sleepiness. And how do we keep ourselves from falling asleep during our meditation nodding off?

I can tell you so many meditations, I sit in even to this day where I, you know, when you open your eyes, even briefly, you see your friends just sort of nodding off. And it's the nodding that's the sure clue to the fact that they're inwardly asleep and not alert with the wide awake energy and attention that meditation requires.

And so, I know for myself, I didn't go to the extreme that Swami Kriyananda went with telling his mind that it wasn't going to be allowed to sleep, lest it falls asleep during meditation, again, sort of speaking to the mind as if it's another person within us, and certainly sticking to his guns. But for myself, I promised myself that if I become aware of the fact that I'm starting to feel sleepy, that I would rather stop that particular meditation and try again after having been rested than to create the habit of falling asleep during meditation. It's a deadly habit. And it is so very hard to overcome that particular habit.

Of course, ideally, we're not ever falling asleep during meditation, but most of us deal with periods of that at some point or another in our meditative lives. And so, feeling okay about disciplining ourselves in whatever form it takes rather than allowing the habit to persist. Because what happens to most people who have actually fallen into that habit they're no longer aware of the fact that they're sleeping during meditation, and if somebody prods them awake, they think, how rude is that I, you know, why are they nudging me during my meditation? I wasn't sleeping. Not aware that it was the nodding off that surely gave them away because the habit had become so overpoweringly consistent in their lives that it took over; it became meditation. And, of course, being asleep is not meditation.

Yogananda would sometimes before his lectures that he would give it come running out and say, how feels everybody? Awaken and ready. How is everybody? Awaken and ready. It takes that kind of alertness, awakeness. In fact, if sleep is a challenge that you're dealing with, why not try that? When you sit down to meditate, ask yourself that question, how feels everyone? You feel like you're talking to yourself, awake and ready. It's worth it.

Whatever it takes, find your own solutions to it. But as I said, it's better to stop a sleepy meditation than it is to continue creating that sleepy habit for ourselves. I remember there was this one story I heard if I can try to recollect it, but it was a young disciple of Yogananda who came down to breakfast. And he said you didn't sleep today. I mean, sorry you didn't meditate this morning; you didn't meditate today. And she said, oh, but Master, I meditated a full hour. And he said you were inattentive in your meditation, and therefore you weren't actually meditating.

So that's such an important thing to remember that when we fall asleep in our meditation, it does not count as meditation time. It does count for sleepy time. And so finding ways to maybe have shorter meditations, maybe having different times of the day that we're meditating, finding those ways in which we can remain alert, awake and ready, fully conscious and focused during our meditations.

Joy to you. And we're starting this week to have these programs on Tuesdays and Thursdays of every week only. And so, I will see you again on Thursday. Blessings, bye-bye now.