What Does It Mean When Meditation Feels Horrible?

What does it mean when you have a meditation that feels horrible? Are you doing it wrong? Was it a waste of time? Short answer, no. You’re not doing it wrong, it’s not a waste of time, and meditation doesn’t always feel like bliss. Let me explain.

I make a lot of exercise analogies in explaining meditation because people can usually relate, even if they’re not athletic types, so let’s do that here.

When you go for a walk, even if your mind is all over the place, or it doesn’t feel good, it’s easy to understand that getting out and getting a walk is a good thing. No one ever gets back from a walk that was filled with stressful thoughts and wonders if they’re walking wrong.

The best way to think of meditation is that you’re working on your focus muscle. Every time you bring your focus back to your meditation, you strengthen that muscle. Period. No matter how it feels.

But there’s another important aspect of meditation, and it’s all about the impact meditation has on our cortisol. Most humans are stuck in the fight-or-flight response. 

We mistake someone being a jerk for an actual threat on our life. That bully may as well be a saber-toothed tiger. Our nervous system can’t tell the difference. Well, we can retrain that response, but that’s another conversation. 

Cortisol is a compound that has a long list of jobs in our bodies. When balanced, our adrenals release cortisol, which is broken-down as it does its job. Since our nervous system thinks there are tigers everywhere, it keeps pumping it out, so we don’t experience a reduction. 

Cortisol is essentially anger juice. Anger is a spectrum that goes from mild irritation, to frustration, then anger, and tops out at rage. Some people experience this as anxiety instead of anger. 

This means we have anger juice running through our bodies and it doesn’t get burned off by running away from tigers. That’s why some people who can’t sit still for meditation need to run to manage their stress. Though running isn’t as effective as meditation, it’s a lot better than nothing!

So back to the original question, why do some meditations feel completely unsatisfying? When we’re under extra stress, or it’s been building up for a long time, it can take a longer meditation, or a series of meditations to give the body enough time to work through the anger juice. 

This is a really important point, just because your meditation doesn’t always feel amazing, doesn’t mean it isn’t working. It is. You’re still reducing the anger juice and building new neuropathways. Also, you’re doing it right.

Here’s my tip. Consider doing a longer meditation, or really making sure you stick with your daily routine and don’t skip so you can get back into a more balanced place. 

I teach my students to do a ten-minute meditation, but that might not be enough for you. I usually do twenty minutes in my own practice, but sometimes I feel achy, stressed, and anxious. That’s when I bump up to forty minutes. 

Don’t go longer than forty minutes, even hardcore meditation retreats don’t go longer than forty minutes for a single sitting.

Longer meditations are harder. Here’s another exercise analogy, when you’re exercising you have this resistance. You feel like you should stop, that it’s too tiring, but if you push through, you move past that. 

Meditation can be a lot like that. In my longer meditations I feel squirmy, I want to get up and stop. 

I’m tempted to look at the clock rather than trusting my timer, my nose itches, I think of a million things I could be working on. And then you reach this point where it’s like you’ve gone over a hill and suddenly you’re coasting. It feels easier, the time flies by, and you’re glad you didn’t give in.

So keep going. Keep meditating. Some days are bliss, a lot of days are simply quiet, and there are days that feel like &%$#. It’s okay, it happens to all of us. The way to get what you want outta this is to keep going.

It’s not just you. 

*typos and errors are provided for your entertainment.