Meditation Information & Practices
Despite the growing popularity of meditation, there still seems to be a lot of confusion around what it is and why developing a consistent practice is worthwhile. One way to understand it is as mind training or internal training. Just like you would train your physical body through cardio, flexibility and strength, meditation trains different aspects of the mind such as concentration, awareness, and cognitive flexibility.
Whatever transformation you’re looking for, whether it’s calming the mind, improving focus, or you want to pursue loftier spiritual goals, there are practices to support you. Each practice is designed to develop a specific aspect of the mind, with each offering a huge range of depth depending on how much time you invest.
There’s an entire inner landscape available to us, so take your time to explore and experiment until you find something that resonates with you. Connecting with the right practice is key for developing a consistent practice, and finding the inspiration to go deeper.
Why Meditate?
Most of our days are spent repeating the same habits, emotional reactions, and thought patterns that we’ve developed and reinforced over many years. On top of that, with the constant use of the internet and social media, many people struggle with fractured attention. The more time we spend lost in thought, multitasking, or scrolling social media, the more difficult it is to have a focused and peaceful mind. Meditation—which has been used successfully for thousands of years—is a way to intentionally reshape the patterns of the mind.
For example, by repeatedly bringing our attention back to an object of focus like our breath, we train our ability to stay present and keep the mind on task, rather than constantly shifting focus or getting lost in thought. Other practices can develop awareness of physical sensations like heat or tension, which can be early signs of negative emotions like anger or fear. Learning to notice these sensations as they arise can help us relax and let get of the thoughts and emotions before we’re consumed by them.
Our minds are far more malleable than we realize. Setting aside some time each day to practice meditation gives us a chance to step back from the busyness of life and intentionally cultivate these new patterns. With the right effort and practices, it can have a profoundly positive impact on your well-being, and on your relationships with the people around you.
Starting a Practice
Like forming any new habit, starting a consistent meditation practice can be tough, especially when your mind seems completely out of control the moment you sit and pay attention to it. For most people, it’s the first time they’ve ever tried to follow their breath or observe their mind. As thoughts flood in and you can barely track the breath for more than a few seconds, the initial reaction is usually to assume you’re bad at it, but this is where everyone starts. The untrained mind is chaotic, constantly pulling you into thoughts, worries, and daydreams. With practice, over time the mind gradually settles, becoming more stable, and the frequency and intensity of thoughts subsides.
Our minds have been shaped by years of conditioning from our home life, school, work, and interactions throughout the day. Shifting those patterns takes time, effort and patience, so the goal at the beginning is to develop consistency. Finding a few minutes each each day to sit down and turn inwards, can go a long way. Over time as you start to notice the benefits, finding time to meditate will become easier. Eventually, it may become a bigger part of your day, choosing longer meditations in place of other activities you used to fill your time with.
If you’ve never meditated before, I highly recommend starting with an app. You can find a few great options below, with each one offering a guided introductory course. They all offer a free trial so you can explore different teachers and approaches before committing to one. These apps also offer a large library of resources including daily guided meditations and additional courses to help take you further into your practice when you’re ready.
Headspace - App
Headspace is the most accessible of all the app listed here, and is great for anyone with no prior experience. “Meditation has been shown to help people stress less, focus more and even sleep better. Headspace is meditation made simple. We'll teach you the life-changing skills of meditation and mindfulness in just a few minutes a day..”
Price: 14 day free trial, then $17.99/month or $89.99/year
Waking Up - App
“Understand Your Mind, Step-by-Step: Learn the fundamentals of mindfulness from Sam Harris—neuroscientist, author, and creator of Waking Up—as he also guides you into the deep end of meditation.” Waking Up has a 28 day introductory course, new daily guided meditations, and a deep catalogue of lessons and conversations with some of the top teachers around the world.
Price: 5 day free trial, then $19.99/month or $129.99/year (Prices in USD)
*If you can’t afford the app, they offer a free subscription with no questions asked. Click here to request a free account.
Brightmind - App
This app was build with input from Shinzen Young, a well respected teacher and creator of the Unified Mindfulness training system. It breaks meditation into clear, structured techniques, and takes you along a progressive training path.
Price: 7 day free trial, then $11/month or $129.99/year (Price in USD)
The Way - App
“The Way is a meditation training program for anyone who wants to deepen their practice. It’s the only app with a single, long-term pathway going deep into the teaching of millennia-old meditation traditions. Guided by a beloved Zen Master, Henry Shukman. A step-by-step journey towards understanding the mind, the nature of the self, and the possibilities of truly unconditional wellbeing.”
Price: 12 free guided sessions, then $14.99/month or $119.99/year
Mindfulness Daily by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield - Web Only
“Mindfulness Daily brings you an online 40-day training in mindfulness meditation with two of the world’s most respected meditation teachers, Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. To create this program, Tara and Jack distilled their extensive body of work into the 40 essential sessions you need the most. Each daily 10–15 minute lesson includes a short talk and guided meditation designed to assist in establishing a meditation practice.”
Price: Free
Concentration and Absorption States (Jhanas)
Developing a strong concentration ability is one of the core pillars of meditation practice. No matter what the object of focus, being able to hold our attention in place for extended periods of time is the basis for a lot of other aspects of practice.
This typically begins by learning to focus on our breath at the tip of the nose or on the rising and falling of the abdomen. Most people when they start aren’t able to keep their attention in place for more than a few seconds before they’re dragged off into thoughts. It’s a slow process that requires constantly bringing our attention back to the meditation object. Over time, the process of recognizing you’re lost in thought and coming back to the breath starts to happen automatically. As your mind gets more stable and focused, more of your cognitive power is able to be directed to the object of focus and you’ll begin to notice progressively more subtle sensations that were previously unavailable to you. What used to be a vague cloud of sensations becomes crystal clear and detailed, giving your mind even more to anchor to. This creates a feedback loop, allowing you to strengthen those concentration pathways even further.
There are a few reasons to develop a strong concentration ability. In our daily lives it will directly translate to your ability to stay focused on any given task. We train with the breath, but it’s teaching the mind in general to hold attention on something and recognize when attention is straying. In the world of meditation, developing a stable and concentrated mind helps us to “unify the mind”, it improves our abilities in noting and insight practice, and it helps us get to “access concentration”, which is the key to accessing deep concentration states.
Concentration for Noting and Insight
Noting is the act of mentally labelling or simply noticing the sensations that make up our experience as they arise. Having a highly concentrated mind helps you notice and move between these sensations quickly, without distraction. If your mind is being pulled all over place, your experience becomes vague and muddy, making it harder to see what’s actually happening in each moment. The same goes for insight practice where you’re intentionally trying to deconstruct aspects of your experience. A stable mind is the solid ground to stand on while engaging in all of these practices.
Unifying the Mind
This is one of the major goals when working with the book The Mind Illuminated. There are multiple chapters dedicated to this, but I’ll give a simple overview. What we refer to as the mind is actually made up of many “sub-minds,” including one for each of the five senses, along with thinking, emotional, and narrative sub-minds. Throughout the day these sub-minds all compete for our attention depending on what information they’re receiving. By repeatedly training your concentration and returning to the meditation object, the sub-minds gradually learn to stop competing for your attention. When this process goes far enough, the mind becomes unified around whatever task it’s given, making it a highly refined tool that can effortlessly shift focus without getting distracted.
Access Concentration
I can’t remember where I heard the phrase “slipping into a groove” but it’s my favourite description for the experience of access concentration. While practicing, initially you may be using quite a bit of effort to maintain awareness and to keep your mind focused on the meditation object. After practicing with that stabilized attention for some time, your mind may feel like it slips into a groove. Suddenly there’s a lot less effort required to maintain your mental qualities. Your mind is settled, your concentration is locked in, and your body is relaxed. You can’t drop your effort altogether, but it’s as if a large portion of the practice happens on its own. This state is really important if you’re interested in working with the Jhanas.
Jhanas or Absorption States
This is where meditation gets interesting, and a little more esoteric. The Jhanas are eight distinct mental absorption states that can be accessed through deep concentration. These states have been reliably accessed since the time of the Buddha, and some people view them as the beginning of true meditation. In the book Right Concentration by Leigh Brasington, the Jhanas are taught as a progression where you must first develop the ability to consistently get “access concentration”. From there, you direct the mind toward a specific sensation or aspect of consciousness until your entire mind and body are fully absorbed into that sensation. Once you’ve entered into the first Jhana, you can learn to move between the others.
The experience of each one is different, and they range from intense levels of happiness or deep peace to dissolving your sense of the body and mind into an expansive void. These states can be deeply profound, healing, and beneficial for other aspects of meditation practice. When you come out of a Jhana state, your mind is refreshed and clear, giving you a great place to work from for things like noting or insight practice.
Concentration Practices & Resources
The Mind Illuminated - Culadas (John Yates, PhD)
I found this book to be the best and most comprehensive guide for developing strong concentration, and a lot of people who have worked with the system seem to agree. It approaches concentration and awareness practice in an incremental way by giving you a specific set of instructions, and having you master them before introducing a new layer. The book is fairly dense but the actual stage by stage instructions aren’t too bad.
Stage by stage practice guides (coming soon)
The Mind Illuminated Subreddit - A large community of practitioners working with this book
Kasina Practice
Kasina practice is when you’re using a visual object as your point of focus. I’ve come across two great methods for this that can help develop stronger concentration. These practice don’t involve a progressive system, they’re something you can use at any point as a supplement or as your main concentration practice. I personally used them as a warmup before doing my main sit with The Mind Illuminated. Both practices are designed to keep your mind active, giving it a lot to focus on so you’re less likely to get dragged into mental chatter.
Kasina / Fire Kasina
The method here is pretty straightforward. Place a bright object like a candle flame or bright circle on a screen a few feet in front of you and gently stare at it for a while. Then you close your eyes and try to observe the after image behind your eyelids, staying with it for as long as possible. Once the image fully disappears you start the process over.
For further information and instructions click the link below or follow along with the guided video from Buddhist Geeks.
https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iii-the-samatha-jhanas/29-kasina-practice/
Candle Flame
In this practice you light a candle and sit it a few feet in front of you. Gently stare at the flame, and for the first few minutes you’re looking at and contemplating the colour of the flame. Then you switch to the shape of the flame, the movement of the flame, and finally the act of seeing the flame itself. The looking combined with an element of contemplation gives your mind a lot to work with.
For full instructions click the link below.
http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2010/12/nicks-current-candle-flame-kasina.html
Walking Meditation
Walking meditation quickly became one of my favourite methods for developing both concentration and awareness. It’s a really nice change up from seated practice and I felt like it really helped me bridge the gap between formal practice and daily life. Rather than keeping your attention on the breath, in this practice your object of meditation is the sensations of your feet. You’re trying to anchor your attention on each foot as you lift, move, and place it. The most benefit will come from careful, intentional practice but once you get the hang of it you can start to implement it throughout the day, anytime you’re walking around the house or out on walks. You can find detailed instructions for this practice under the “Walking Mediation” section further down this page.
Right Concentration - Leigh Brasington
While this isn’t a book on how to develop concentration, It’s a great book to read if you’re interested in learning about the different jhanas, but until you’ve developed the ability to get into access concentration you won’t be able to put much of the instructions into practice. Learning about the different states was really inspiring for me when I was struggling with my concentration, so hopefully it does the same for you.
Meditation Training Systems
If you already have a solid understanding of meditation basics and want to take your practice further, I highly recommend exploring one of these meditation training systems. The teachers who developed them are well respected and have done a great job distilling Buddhist teachings into a modern and accessible format. They range in depth and style, but any one of them will give you a solid foundation for deeper practice. The three listed below also have a community component to them, which can be incredibly helpful for support, guidance, and connecting with like-minded people.
The Mind Illuminated
The focus of this system is on developing a stable and tranquil mind, also known as Shamatha. This is done through systematically improving your concentration and awareness abilities, and increasing the overall conscious power of your mind. This system is broken into 10 distinct stages, each with their own set of tools and stage-specific practice instructions. In-between each stage are chapters that explore various aspects of how the mind functions, helping you better understand your experience in meditation and in daily life. The middle to later parts of the book also dive into working with the body, and various insight practices. It’s incredibly in depth and uses neuroscience to back up a lot of the information and techniques.
TMI Subreddit - A large community of practitioners working with this book
Buddhist Geeks
Emily and Vince Horn at Buddhist Geeks have put together the most well rounded and accessible system out of the three I’ve listed. It’s not as in depth and systematic as The Mind Illuminated, but it covers a lot of ground and gives you some great information and guided instructions for a variety of practices. They encourage practitioners to really think about their motivation for practicing, and to use the combination of techniques that will help bring that forward in their lives. Along with their training guide, they have an active online community, and offer training courses and retreats.
Meditation Guide
https://guide.buddhistgeeks.org
Virtual Trainings
https://www.buddhistgeeks.training
Online Community
https://join.buddhistgeeks.network
Unified Mindfulness
This system was created by Shinzen Young, an american mindfulness teacher and neuroscience research consultant. It’s designed to quickly get your meditation practice up and running. Through eleven short videos they introduce you to things like recognizing impermanence, developing concentration, and labelling sensory experience. It’s a great starting point for awareness or mindfulness practice, and from there you can try one of their paid courses or use the Home Practice Program to take your practice deeper.
Unified Mindfulness CORE Teachings to get a good foundation.
https://unifiedmindfulness.com/learn-um
Home Practice Program
http://homepracticeprogram.com
Unified Mindfulness / Shinzen Young Community
https://www.facebook.com/groups/shinzenyoungmindfulnesscommunity/
Awareness and Mindfulness
Awareness is our ability to know what’s happening in our experience as it’s happening. This includes being aware of sensations, emotions, thoughts, and activities of the mind. The goal for most awareness work is to rest as the observer of your experience, which means stepping back and watching how each moment is unfolding rather than being caught up in it. It’s a process that opens up gradually as we stabilize our attention and look deeper into our mind and body.
When you’re able to remain as an observer of your experience, you begin to see that the things showing up in your mind or body are not you. This is the beginning of a process of releasing identification with various aspects of the mind. For most people, this starts with the realization that they aren’t their thoughts. When you can rest as the observer, you see that thoughts just appear and disappear on their own. As your awareness expands, the same can be seen with emotional reactions to situations. You can see that these are unconscious patterns playing out in reaction to the current situation. It isn’t you choosing to act that way.
We can train our mind to notice these sensations as they show up in daily life. If we can stay as the observer, we can create a gap between our recognition and our reactivity. For example, you can begin to notice anger as it first appears in the body as tension or heat. With that clear recognition you can pause, relax, and respond differently, rather than be consumed by the emotion and act out the same behaviour.
When this work is taken further it starts to include deeper, previously unconscious layers of the mind. These increasingly subtle layers allow us to see clearly how our conditioning plays out in our lives, and how dependent our mental states are on external situations. As our identification with these things loosens, it creates a more spacious, peaceful and flexible mind. You’ll find that you’re less caught up in thoughts or emotions as you move through the world, and difficult external situations don’t have as strong an effect on you as they once did.
We can’t change what we aren’t aware of, so while this work is critical for deeper meditation practice, it’s also very helpful for personal growth or therapy work. We’re able to get a much better understanding of who we are and why we act the way we do in all situations in life. Then, if we choose, we can start to intentionally shift these reactive patterns that were being acted out unconsciously for most of our lives.
Expand the sections below for some brief descriptions of the various forms of awareness we can develop, as well as other terms like “attention” or “mindfulness” that are helpful in this work. Credit to The Mind Illuminated for help with defining these terms.
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The ability to select and pay attention to specific information and ignore other information arising in our experience. When we first start out our attention is constantly pulled in different directions, into thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations. With practice, you can learn to stabilize your attention on an object of your choice for extended periods of time.
Another facet of attention that can be trained is our ability to shrink or expand the scope of our attention. This could mean resting our attention on a small point on our nose, expanding it to include our entire body, or even further to a vast open awareness of all things showing up in our experience.
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The aspect of the mind that is continually aware of what’s happening around and within you. Unlike attention which is more focused on a specific object, peripheral awareness is more broad and expansive. This allows you to keep track of your overall experience while simultaneously resting your attention on a chosen object.
Some examples of what your peripheral awareness might notice while you’re focusing on the breath include: The sounds of birds or a passing car, the feeling of wind on your skin, subtle tension in your body, noticing a thought enter your mind. -
A panoramic view of the mind where the object of awareness is the mind itself. Unlike peripheral awareness which focuses more on the contents of experience, metacognitive awareness sees the ongoing activities and overall state of mind.
This type of awareness isn’t accessible to everyone at the start. It takes practice and the development of stable attention and peripheral awareness to be able to observe these more subtle activities of the mind.
Some examples include noticing where attention is being directed, watching attention shift between objects, observing how a thought affects your emotional state, or seeing changes in the overall clarity of the mind.
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This is a byproduct of developing both our attention and peripheral awareness. It’s a term that describes the optimal balance between the two. Developing continuous mindfulness is a key objective of meditation practice, allowing you to take your practice out into daily life and remain present in all moments.
Whether you’re driving to work, out for a run, or having lunch with friends, mindfulness helps you stay present in your experience, preventing you from getting lost in thoughts, worries, or other creations of the mind.
Awareness Practices & Resources
The Mind Illuminated - Culadasa (John Yates, PhD)
The focus of this system is on developing a stable and tranquil mind, also known as “Shamatha”. This is done through systematically improving your concentration and awareness abilities, and increasing the overall conscious power of your mind. The mid to late stages of the book also dive into working with the body, and various insight practices. It’s incredibly in depth and uses neuroscience to back up a lot of the information and techniques. The book can be a bit intimidating because of how much information is provided, but you only need to work with one stage at a time, and the instructions themselves aren’t too complicated. You can find a link to a subreddit with questions and advice from thousands of other practitioners working with this system.
TMI Subreddit - A large community of practitioners working with this book
Insight
Through meditation, as the mind opens up to us, we gain insight into how we think, react, and feel. These are more psychological insights, and while those can be extremely beneficial, they’re not the type of insight that meditation training is aiming for. In authentic meditation training, insight is about seeing fundamental truths about the nature of mind and reality. Experiencing these truths firsthand helps break us out of the normal ways we see ourself and the world around us. It allows us to begin to see things as they truly are, rather than through the many layers of conditioning that shape our perception.
One of the first insights meditators may experience is seeing that they are not their thoughts. When you can rest as the observer of your experience, stepping back from thoughts, you see they come and go all on their own. There is no “you” creating them, it’s just a mechanism of the mind doing its thing. As you move along the meditation path, these insights unfold in a progressive way, allowing you to see through deeper and more fundamental layers of your experience. It usually starts with deconstructing thoughts and mental activity, but can also include emotions, the body, the sense of self, our perception of space and time, and even awareness itself.
In a very real way, this work changes your experience of yourself and the world, both in meditation and in daily life. As you deconstruct different aspects of the mind, it creates a greater sense of freedom and spaciousness, like dropping a mental weight you didn’t realize you were carrying. Thoughts and emotions no longer have the same pull they once did. When your identity is wrapped up in them, they dominate your experience in each moment. But as your mind grows more spacious and lets go of these concepts and aspects of identity, thoughts and emotions are seen from a much more expansive place. They become a much smaller part of your experience, allowing them to come and go without much reaction.
Insight work revolves around a few main categories and I’ve given a brief overview of them below.
Emptiness
Emptiness is the understanding that nothing we experience in the world, whether internal or external, has any true independent existence or essence. It’s all the result of an infinitely complex web of causes and conditions coming together to temporarily create an object or experience.
For example, you can think of a tree. What we label a tree is made up of roots, branches, bark, leaves, and those are dependent on soil, sunlight, water, air, and time. There is no individual thing that can be called a tree, it’s just the label we’ve given that collection of constantly shifting elements.
By deeply understanding the “empty” nature of everything, including ourselves, we’re able to let go of our rigid ways of seeing the world and open up to a greater appreciation of the ever unfolding universe.
Dependent Origination
While emptiness points to the lack of a solid independent existence or essence, dependent origination explains how all phenomena come into existence. Put simply, this appears because of that.
An example would be your experience of reading this page right now. Without me creating this website, and you sitting there looking at the page, this experience can’t exist. To take it a few steps further, consider everything that had to happen for this moment to arise, like the creation of the device you’re using, the internet, and the life experiences that led you to this page. Now combine that with the years of causes and conditions that shaped my ability and interest to write it. What seems like a simple experience of reading is actually a beautifully intricate web of conditions all coming together to create this moment.
Contemplating this in your life helps bring you into the present, and just like with emptiness practice, it can help you appreciate the beauty and complexity of each moment.
The Three Characteristics
This is one of the core Buddhist teachings. The idea is that all three of the characteristics listed below apply to every sensation or experience in life, down to the most subtle levels of perception. By investigating how these apply to our moment to moment experience, we can start to see more clearly into the nature of mind and how it constructs our experience of ourselves and the world around us. Piercing through these illusions allows the mind to let go of its sense of identity with the sensations being observed.
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There is nothing we can point to in the mind or our experience that we could call a solid, stable self. All sensations of the mind and body are constantly changing.
As you develop your awareness and stable attention, the scope and subtlety of what you can observe expands, and anything you can observe is not the self. -
All sensations, whether they’re thoughts, emotions, or external events, arise for a time and then disappear. Insight work shows you how things that seemed solid and stable are actually made up of many different sensations, all quickly appearing and disappearing in each moment.
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Despite the impermanent nature of all things, the mind is almost always trying to hold on to what feels good and push away what feels bad, even in very subtle ways. This creates a constant sense of dissatisfaction with the present moment. Insight practice helps you recognize clearly what it feels like when the mind is subtly grasping at experience. With time you can learn to relax, let go of grasping and craving, and stay present.
By actively noticing and contemplating these three characteristics, we’re able to see that all of reality is in a constant state of flow and there is no solid separate self that is observing it. There’s nothing permanent anywhere that can be held on to, and it’s the minds attempt to hold on that causes most of our suffering. We try to hold on to our positive emotions, experiences, our aging bodies, fixed ideas of who people are and how they should act, and we create this solid “self” that’s holding on to it all. All things appear for a time and then disappear, including the sensations that make up our sense of self, it’s all just a flow of sensations happening on its own, with no one at the centre of it. The more you can perceive this flowing change, the more you’re able to let go of control and let the universe unfold without resistance.
Insight Practices
Working With the Three Characteristics:
Start your seated practice as you normally would, and give the mind some time to settle. Once you’re ready, begin to investigate your experience and notice how these three characteristics apply to anything that is showing up for you. This can be thoughts, emotions, sounds, the breath, or the feeling of your body. You can be flexible and shift between all three characteristics, or focus on only one.
For example, during one sit you could focus on the impermanence of bodily sensations. Notice any tension or pain as it appears. Notice the beginning, middle, and end of the sensation. Is it in a fixed spot or is it moving? Does it have a shape? Is it hot, cold, neutral? Is that shape or temperature changing? Dig in, try to really soak your awareness into the sensations. What at first may have seemed solid, can be seen to be a cloud of constantly changing sensations.
Seeing that Frees - Rob Burbea
Seeing that Frees focuses on a different dimension of practice than most meditation books. It’s packed with “Insight” exercises that help you begin to deconstruct the many ways we grasp at experience and create suffering throughout the day. Whether you’re seated on a meditation cushion, out for a walk, or sitting on a bus, he offers a wide range of practices that you can bring into your daily life.
The practices in this book are designed to disrupt your normal patterns of perception by deconstructing your experience so you can see things as they truly are, rather than seeing through your conditioning. As you shift away from your conditioned ways of seeing the world, your mind begins to hold less tightly to ideas and experiences, allowing it to feel freer and more open as you move through the world.
Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha - Daniel Ingram
Daniel Ingram clearly lays out the core Buddhist teachings, the techniques required for deep practice, and the stages a meditator may pass through on the path of awakening. His work has inspired a new generation of practitioners, myself included, who appreciate the transparency that he presents this information with. He speaks openly about the highs and lows of this journey, the transformative power of these practices, and all the strange territory in-between. If you’re interested in taking your practice deeper I highly recommend this book. Daniel lays the entire meditation path out for you, inviting you to walk it and experience everything for yourself.
Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha - Free Online Version
Daniel Ingrams Personal Website - PDF Download, E-reader Download, Audiobook
Adverse Effects of Meditation
A wide range of adverse effects can arise for some practitioners, but they’re more commonly seen in people engaging with intensive practice, such as sitting for multiple hours per day or going on retreat.
In more extreme cases, these side effects can last for weeks or months, interfering with daily life. When this occurs, it’s commonly referred to as the “dark night”. This term is used in some meditation groups to describe the difficult psychological and existential territory meditators can encounter. It’s commonly triggered by deep insights into the nature of impermanence, or from seeing through the solidity of the self. This territory is not exclusive to meditators, some people find themselves there after a psychedelic experience or any kind of spiritual and contemplative practice.
During this phase of practice, the normal sense of self and the seemingly solid ego structure is starting to change. Your psyche is in a transition phase where the old self-image dissolves but a new sense of self or worldview hasn’t fully formed. This process can bring up a lot of psychological content or unresolved trauma that has been repressed for years. It can feel like the mind and body is clearing out old patterns to make room for a more open and present way of being.
This phase affects everyone differently. It all depends on your psychological makeup, personal history, what led you there, and the context and guidance you have. It took me about five months to fully move through it, but some people take much longer, while others fly through it. If you’re experiencing this now, know that it’s a normal stage of psychological and spiritual growth, and it will get better. To quote Jeanne Zadie, “After accompanying a number of clients through the dark night and out the other side, I have not met one who would have traded the experience and its outcome for anything. And yet, during the experience, it’s another story.”
The resources below give you everything you need to understand the dark night, and the tools and support to help guide you through. I also recommend exploring some of the Heart-centred or grounding practices which you can find in both the Heart or Body section, these can be extremely beneficial for people struggling with adverse effects.
Websites
Cheetah House - Resources for meditators in distress
For anyone experiencing adverse effects from meditation or other spiritual practice, this is the best all around resource. They’ve been working for years with teachers and students to gain an understanding of the wide range of effects people can experience during the Dark Night. The website offers an extensive symptoms list, and provide access to teachers, support groups, and other resources for people in crisis.
Jeannie Zandi - The Breakdown of the Mythology of Me (Article)
This article is intended for psychotherapists but I’d highly recommend reading it for anyone curious about spiritual awakening or spiritual crisis. Whether you’ve gone through one yourself, you’re in the middle of it now, or you’re just curious, I think It’s one of the most clear descriptions of the process I’ve come across.
Spiritual Crisis Network UK - Resources page
This website is less about meditation related difficulties and more about the connection between mental health crisis and spiritual transformation. On their resource page you'll find books and other web resources related to awakening, as well as some simple grounding and self care practices.
Dharma Overground - Online forum
Here you can find a wide range of discussions around the dark night. This forum is full of meditation practitioners who have traversed this territory many times, so you’re very likely to find discussions relevant to your situation.
Reddit Streamentry- Health, Balance, and Difficult Territory
The specific post I linked has a good overview of the dark night territory. It covers some of the difficulties people can face, offers some perspectives from different teachers, and has a list of relevant books and other therapeutic resources. This is also a very active community so if you’re ever in need of specific practice advice or other meditators to talk to, I’ve found it to be a very welcoming place.
Podcast Episodes & Books
Buddhist Geeks #301: Varieties of Contemplative Experience
A discussion on helping mindfulness practitioners through episodes of the contemplative Dark Night, how mental disease does and doesn’t get addressed in the community, and some shared characteristics of people that experience the Dark Night.
Buddhist Geeks #302: Mental Illness and the Dark Night
This is part two of the discussion linked above.
Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha - Daniel Ingram
Daniel Ingram offers an in depth description of the psychological states people predictably pass through during the Dark Night, explained from the perspective of the “progress of insight”. The link above will take you directly to a chapter in his book about these stages.
A Path With Heart - Jack Kornfield
Chapter 10 covers some of the difficult aspects of the meditation path.
Walking Meditation
If your seated practice is feeling a bit stagnant, walking meditation can be a great way to change things up. With any internal training, the aim is to have the qualities you develop on the cushion carry over into all aspects of your life, and walking meditation is perfect for helping to bridge that gap.
Walking Meditation Practice:
In this practice, rather than keeping your attention on the breath, your focus is on the sensations of your feet. It’s helpful to walk very slowly so you can keep your mind focused, noticing as many sensations as possible. As you develop your skill, you can begin to use this technique whenever you’re walking around the house or outside. This can help bring you more moments of presence as you move through the world.
Pick an area in your house or outside where you can get about 10-20 small steps before needing to turn around. Choose a foot to start with and notice any sensations as it lifts off the ground, moves through the air, and then lands back on the ground. Then shift your attention to the other foot and repeat. Each step can take anywhere from 5-10 seconds, or longer. You can do this practice for as long as you wish.
Whenever you notice that your attention has drifted into thoughts or distractions around you, pause, bring your attention back to the sensations of the foot and continue walking.
If you’re finding it difficult to keep your attention on your foot, you can add another layer to help keep your mind focused on the task. As you walk, say out loud or silently in your head “lifting”, “moving”, “placing” as you go.
With practice, as your mind grows more calm and concentrated, more of your mental energy is able to focus on the foot, and the amount of sensations you can feel will go up, making it easier to stay focused.
Alternate Walking Meditation Instructions:
Noting
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Grounding
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Awakening
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Discover More
Explore the pages below to learn more about meditation and other forms of internal work.