30 Days of Meditating: What is Meditation Supposed to Feel Like?
Originally posted on YOGANONYMOUS.
I’m back on the meditation train.
I want a break from thinking.
When I think too much I can’t feel anything.
My body has become numb like a dried up, crinkly leaf left in a gutter after a brutal winter.
Day 1. How long can I sit for?
I sat down a couple weeks ago with my phone and started the timer. I closed my eyes and did a few breathing techniques I knew from yoga and Thich Nhat Hahn books. I lasted 13 minutes and 20 seconds before the internal itch of anxiety forced my eyes open. Nothing really happened. I had maybe 30 seconds of peace, and I might have slept a little better but I can’t remember.
The next day, 14 minutes.
13 minutes the day after. I saw a beautiful face and she held a child.
I eclipsed the 15 minute mark for the next 3 days. I still couldn’t get more than 30 seconds of stillness. But through repetition I started to develop a technical process. I counted 5 breath cycles “In, 2, 3, 4. Out, 2, 3, 4.” During that time I had rapid and overwhelming thoughts. Mostly tracing stressful things that inhibited my ability to feel freedom – my businesses, money, relationships.
The thoughts came up randomly and each one pierced a different part of my stomach, pinched the nerve endings in my spine, and tightened the tissue around my heart. It was unpleasant but I was feeling something.
I moved on to “shining skull” breathing – forcefully exhaling out of my nose by way of pumping my stomach. I did 50 counts of this breath and repeated for three rounds with five normal breaths in between each round. Sometimes those five breaths turned into 10 or 20, or I forgot how many because I drifted so far and had to start over.
Over a week in.
I wasn’t getting ‘it’. Meaning, I wasn’t having some godly experience or feeling immediate peace, but I was building a practice and that practice became like a friend to me.
I’ve been on the road and in hotels almost 100 days already this year and the constant change of environment robs me of any chance of establishing momentum. There are no constants other than airplane rides. My diet has suffered, my posture has suffered, and my intimate relationships have taken new shapes in new bodies.
After the three rounds of shining skull breathing I tried to rest all the tissue in my body. In Kung Fu they taught me to lift my skeleton tall while letting all the soft parts of my body fall towards the floor. That included skin, blood, muscle tissue, and mental clinging. It’s supposed to represent the duality of all living organisms. You’re strong and supported but there is no effort. That releases innate sensation in the body. Where there was tension there was no circulation of blood or energy. If you could eliminate the tension you could feel more.
I sat this way for a few minutes – between three and 10 depending on how lost I got. I wasn’t controlling my breath at this point, just letting things circulate. It usually put pressure inside my head, pushing my brain to the inner surface of my skull. There was a great deal of light, usually white or blue and charged with a glow.
I became joyful because it implied the potential of unexplored power and the dimensionality of other worlds. I spent a few minutes after that trying to crack codes and tap into psychic behavior. Never successfully. Just lost the moments due to effort.
12 days in. I’m happy to have something to look forward to. Makes me a stronger individual.
Meditation wasn’t making me immediately happier but it was giving me company. In my hotel I adjusted my schedule and made decisions around my ability to make it back in time to sit on a pillow, close my eyes, and breathe. I was passing up on entertainment and socializing to work on something that felt a little more important.
I started falling asleep while sitting and would startle myself awake when my torso swayed off to the side. I made a decision to switch my meditation from before bed to first thing in the morning.
Along with those 15 – 17 minute seated sessions I was practicing strong yoga poses on my travel Manduka mat.
The next morning I got out of bed and walked a lap outside to give my head some space to interact with open skies and high bandwidth. I came back to the room and worked through a little Tai Chi before settling into some stretches. I sat down and breathed for 21 minutes. There was lightness and I saw my fingertips grazing thick milky smoke inside a glass mason jar. It tickled my nerves and released a chemical reaction in my body.
The next morning my hands worked their way inside my rib cage and began massaging my heart. 
I’ve been picking up on some pain lately. Some of it inherent, some of it as a result of the failures I’ve encountered. My mind was gently rubbing the red flesh inside my chest and again a sensation was released into my blood stream. It worked its way through my whole body and rode the hairs along the back of my neck. It was sadness, but I was feeling my body.
I started meditating morning and night.
I needed more.
I was carrying those new feelings with me for most of the day and when they went away I felt like I was going away. Tai Chi activated sensation in my body, more than yoga. I found ways to get outside and work through connected postures to create fluid movement under my skin. Each curling finger ran a channel through my body and into my brain. I could feel its path like a steel track being ran on by a train.
Still, 19 days in and I didn’t understand what I was doing.
I had been closing my eyes, doing breathing techniques, and then holding on for as long as I could while thoughts and fears turned my organs inside out and scrubbed my fascia with steel grit brillo pads.
I missed one night meditating because I spent it with someone living on a cloud. I had a conversation with myself in the bathroom knowing I wasn’t going to have time to sit and breathe; it wouldn’t be congruent with the evening. I fought against the voice that said I was weak and easily dissuaded. I told myself that this was the richest form of living.
22 days in.
20 minutes in the mornings and 15 minutes in the evenings now. More small sensations appeared in my body like footsteps traveling through an empty house with wooden floors. Yesterday, I spent my afternoon meditating on the terrace in the sun. A few times during the day I took breaks to make sure I was alive. I’m questioning everything around “existence.” It all seems like fabric with small tears that could be pulled apart. Everything I thought I knew would be gone and replaced with something more meaningful.
I wanted to see the world behind the world I was living in; the movie I was watching wasn’t reaching the levels I needed it to.
22 minutes of seated meditation after a shower. So much pain welled up inside I just wanted it to come out. With my eyes closed the ghosts were spinning black smoke around my heart. I reached in to pull it out and we fought back and forth for a few minutes. I became detached. I identified it as pain so I stopped feeling it. I wanted back inside.
I’ve hurt some people and I started feeling their pain. I’m carrying it with me during the days and it’s comforting like the memory of a best friend that died when we were kids
25 days in.
I don’t know where this is going but I need it to go somewhere significant.
I’m running out of time going through the motions.
I have to live more, which means I have to feel more. When people talk to me I experience it the same way I experience watching a movie with two people talking to each other. I’m there, but I’m really not. I don’t want to miss this life; I think it’s sadly all we have. It could be beautiful but mostly it just hurts, or worse, feels like nothing. And somehow I have to meditate everyday or I might die. Maybe not literally but what’s the difference?
26 days in. What is meditation supposed to feel like?
I’m in a hostel and there are people in the rooms all around me but I see no one and hear nothing but the faint sounds of sheltered bodies peeking their heads into the hallway. I don’t know these people so I won’t say hi but I’m in my room alone and I’m breathing and nothing is stopping me from living more except for myself. I don’t want anything that isn’t original to me. I have to sneak up on myself so my brain doesn’t catalog and tell me how I’m supposed to react. I am leaving the robot behind and becoming the artist.
28 days.
20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening. Five and 10 minute refreshers spread throughout the day. It’s all I trust. I know how to get to the sensation now because I’ve created a pathway. I can drop into that feeling in less than five seconds. It doesn’t last long but I can come back to it frequently.
Darkness is my default and I still don’t know what I’m doing but I am rooting for myself.
I am becoming proud of how I’m spending some of my time. I’m working more on things that other people don’t know about or don’t see.
Day 29. I still don’t know anything but I’m going to figure it out.
It’s hard to sit at night because my spine is injured. It gives me the fearful sensation of an army of rioters looting my body.
I don’t trust people.
I don’t always make good decisions and because of that I don’t trust people.
Without trust I have no chance at achieving the depth I desire in relationships. They are always going to hurt me and I’m always going to hurt them. I just want to be honest about why and I want them to tell me what they are thinking so I don’t have to think about it.
30 days. I want to be a better writer. More honest.
I started saying my thoughts out loud because I’ve concluded that I shape my words and they are not as meaningful as they could be. I couldn’t even talk in a room by myself without feeling like I was giving a speech. I got angry, thought I was a fake. I kept talking. Eventually I was talking so fast that I didn’t realize the difference between a thought and a word, there was no time to manicure. A river had run through me and the sensation didn’t go away for over four hours.
I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m getting hints that it’s time to stop being fearful. Whether or not I’m confident enough to follow the push is another story that will be revealed in time.
I need the ocean – that is clear. I need to dance more – that will save my life. It’s in the movement and the honesty that I feel most alive. Dance is honest. It brings out insecurity, which is real. It makes you lie to yourself, that’s how real it is. Working through it is like treading through a muddy swamp where those more fearful than you are grabbing your ankles trying to pull you under and drown you for good.
But you have to go.
I’m not sure if I’m a better person or more calm after 30 days of meditating. At first I wanted to be peaceful. But I had to abandon that because it’s not my time for peace.
I am starting to see the first lines of a path and I’m guessing that it’s always “just the beginning” with a real meditation practice.
I want to be myself and I want that to be okay.
I have to figure out who that person is.
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