This is a problem that almost everybody has. As soon as they sit down, they immediately fall asleep or shortly afterwards starting Sadhana. Some people don’t even know that they are sleeping; they think that they are in Samadhi! This is probably the reason when people fall asleep in front of mother when they are meditating why Mother says; Look they are in Samadhi!!:)
Samadhi is not Sleep and Sleep is not Samadhi. They are two totally different things and also you could say that they are opposites. Sleep is full of Darkness and Samadhi is all light. So as Darkness and light are opposites Samadhi and sleep are also opposites :)
To understand how to overcome this obstacle of sleeping while meditation because the purpose of meditation is not sleep but to get concentration, we have to understand what causing this dullness or in Sanskrit it is called TAMAS.
One of the first causes is eating. So are we supposed to not eat and meditate? No you can eat, but understand that when you eat much of the energy and blood in the body goes to the digestive system to digest the food. So its not available for concentration. So we are not supposed to Meditate right after taking a heavy meal. It will be very difficult unless we are very advanced in Meditation. You know people after taking heavy meals they feel like sleepy. So it’s not the time to meditate after meal. So if you plan to eat before meditation, eat at least few hours before meditation so there will be more energy available for concentration and the digestive system will be free from burden. Other thing is if you plan to meditate at the morning don’t eat much at night.
If you want to eat something at night eat fruits and Milk and not cooked foods. Since they are not heavy food they won’t be a burden for the digestive system. If you follow this you will see that you are more energetic and not sleepy at the morning and you can make it better by taking only milk as Dinner. It may not seem like any connection with eating food and meditating in the morning! But every person who tries to get early up and meditate knows there is a connection with this two. So it is from experience we are saying this.
Another cause of the Tamas is we are used to have a very active life style. We always want to do something every time (except for the lazy ones) and our mind and body is in that kind of gear or in that mode of Rajasic Activity. Our system will not understand what is going on if we suddenly sit down and start stopping every activity to meditate. So it falls down to the next lower rung which is inertia. Our mind goes from Activity to inertia. Instead of going up to the next higher rung or peace it goes down because our mind is not trained to Go to that higher levels and has no energy to go to that level. The only place it knows and goes is down that is into dullness or Tamas. How do we overcome this Tamas when we are Rajasic people or very active people? There are a number of things that the sages and our mother have advised us.
One is get sufficient sleep at night. But don’t get too much sleep at night. You have to find how much is needed for you and try to stick to that. For some people 5 hours is enough and for someone 7 hours is not enough. You have to find out, you have to play around with it and experiment with it. Nothing will happen if you sleep more by half an hour or less by half an hour, it’s not going to be the end of world or you are not going to stop yourself from self realization. So try to figure out what is optimum for you. Don’t sleep more than you need and don’t sleep less than you need. For Some people their health is not good so they need little more sleep. Don’t compare to others when it come how much you need to sleep.
Another thing is you should take shower in the morning. You should take shower in the morning before meditation because it washes out lot of Tamasic energy developed during sleep. Don’t take hot water for your shower. Even though you used to use cold water for shower because it feels so nice, if you wanna meditate in the morning and succeed in that try to bath with the possible coolest water you could bear. Actually even Amma does this, she always take the coolest water she could bear. Amma says a Sadhak (spiritual aspirant) should bath in the possible coolest water he could bear and that is good for Sadhana. infact Mother cannot be considered as a Sadhak but almost everything she does is as a role model for her children. So we should not use hot water unless we have health problems like rheumatism and arthritis or some problem like that. It is also good for your skin since, it will not dry out much. It’s good for the nervous system also. And like that we should try to meditate in a cool place. Don’t turn up the heat to many degrees in your room. Open the windows and don’t wear very warm clothes.
- Swami Paramatmananda puri
- Swami Paramatmananda puri
