The waves of pleasure that you feel during meditation might not always be limited to sensations of calmness and tranquillity or a relaxed atmosphere in your body and mind. They can also turn out to be disturbing and very uncomfortable, and more so because the common notion of meditation that is usually provided in schools, meditation classes or elsewhere does not make you aware of these unfamiliar sensational turbulences that might appear in beginners as well as advanced meditators. You can feel these sensations or waves of pleasure during meditation when you slowly begin to immerse yourself in a deeper state of the entire process or when your subconscious emotions begin to come to the surface or suppose when your muscles begin to relax. You are usually prone to feel these weird sensations during these phases of your meditation.
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Types of feelings during Meditation
You can name and explain some of these waves of pleasures or other such sensations or feelings as the following:
Floating Feeling during Meditation
Feeling like a balloon floating in the air, lightweight as a kite flying in the air is a super positive sign during meditation. This floating sensation indicates that you have entered a much more intense state of meditation whereby you quite successfully reduce the speed of your brain waves. While meditating, our brain waves slow down due to the relaxation and therefore shift from beta waves that take place in an alert state to alpha waves that take place in a relaxed state. As your brain further slows down and you enter a more profound state of meditation, it starts experiencing theta waves (lower in speed as compared to alpha waves) and this is primarily associated with the floating sensation that causes us to lose awareness of our body parts. Don’t ever get scared when you experience such a feeling because it implies that your meditation practice is turning out to be very effective.
Feeling waves of energy during meditation
During meditation, you might sometimes feel waves of energy flowing through yourself, that something is moving or flowing, that something is in a fluid state. This happens primarily due to the fact that while you meditate, you acquire a quality for that particular period of time, to detect even the subtlest of movements and changes in your body. Another factor is that perhaps, you tend to open up a lot more during meditation which allows the energies of your body to flow more freely than while you are working or reading or performing some other circadian activity. Feeling waves of energy while you meditate is actually a very natural experience. Minutely observing your energies and acknowledging and feeling them lends them a deeper dimension. You should try and avoid becoming hyperaware of these energetic waves as far as possible and concentrate more on treating them as thoughts- allowing them a natural flow. Do not try to manipulate them!
Feeling the energy in your hands during meditation
It has been commonly acknowledged that we feel a kind of energy in our hands while we meditate. Now the question is, where does this energy come from? People say that if you chant the traditional “Aum” while meditating, it is likely that you will experience a kind of warmth or heat escaping from your hands. This feeling of the wave of pleasure is attributed to the connection of human beings with the macrocosm(universe) and this is a sensation of satisfaction and pleasure indeed. This can also be felt while you practice yoga asana.
The feeling of energy during meditation is very easily felt and one very convenient exercise to experiment with involves your hands where you hold them a few inches apart with the palms faced inward. In that very position, try moving your hands closer and farther away from each other and this may give rise to a feeling of energy between your hands, either in the form of heat, electricity or pressure. An advanced phase of the exercise can also include moulding that energy by curving your fingers and placing the palms perpendicular to each other. Initial efforts might not yield wondrous results but never lose hope, with consistency comes progress.
Feeling heavy during meditation
Feeling heavy during meditation is not a very ideal concept as it is generally believed that any valuable and actually beneficial meditation, leads to a feeling of lightness and relaxation as opposed to heaviness or a sensation of burden. However, you might feel sapped on certain occasions while meditating and this has been interpreted with various theories.
Scientific explanations argue that when your body relaxes, the tension in the muscles is completely undone, they relax and tend to drop a fraction. Proprioceptors in the body signal this drop as a heaviness. Other simpler theories also include being physically unfit or overeating before a meal leads to this sensation of heaviness. An overdose of stress or fatigue may also relax your muscles too much leading to a feeling of heaviness consequently.
Crying during meditation
Many people have experienced a sudden desire to cry in the midst of their meditation. This is representative of the fact that too many suppressed emotions have been preserved in your subconscious for a long time. When you meditate, these emotions are invoked and this acts as a psychological trigger for you to cry.
When this happens, the best idea is to not suppress them any further and work your way out of these feelings by allowing yourself to feel and be stirred by these emotions strongly and deeply. Holding them back would only mean adding to the negativity that resides inside you, which in turn will hamper your meditation journey. It’s advisable that you vent out every bit of negative energy that’s there inside you and cry for as long as you don’t feel free, for as long as you don’t feel relieved of the burden. If this urge to cry continues in your journey of meditation, it is a fantastic idea to talk to someone, someone whom you trust and can share all your insecurities and vulnerabilities with, someone who you believe can help you come out of this situation as a much happier and positive being.
Feeling Hot During Meditation
You might feel very hot during your meditation practice. Sensing excitement cascading through your veins is something very common. You can also sweat when you undergo this process of relaxing your mind and body but this is nothing to be afraid of. The mind, body and spirit unite together to create a unified front while you meditate and this gives rise to a feeling of Chi where you feel the universal energy flowing through your body. Being surprised at first is quite justified but you should be aware of the fact that this warmth indicates that your body is undergoing a spiritual cleansing resulting in an energy release.
Another explanation provided to feeling hot states that meditation causes the energy points or the chakras in our body to release electrical activity through our nervous system. This is instrumental in creating a magnetic field around your body that induces the feeling of heat or warmth.
Feeling fearful during meditation
If you experience feelings of fear during meditation, there’s a mighty chance that you are overthinking about the process and setting extremely high expectations for yourself out of the process of meditation; it is likely that you are taking the practice as if it’s some very important exam of your life. Perhaps you have set unrealistic goals for yourself by watching videos of yoga experts or professional meditation trainers. However, this should not be the approach. On the other hand, you should always remember that meditation is a skill that you master with time and practice, slowly. You can easily avoid these feelings of fear by affirming yourself that you would build your skills at your own pace and that there is no judgement towards your meditation skills. Everyone’s journey is different and very personal and no two people share the same journey. These same affirmations also work well to eradicate all feelings of anxiety during meditation, if you face any. Try shrugging off all negativity and relax while you meditate.
Feeling sleepy during meditation
Drowsiness during meditation is a very natural experience, especially in the case of people who have newly started meditating. A relaxed pose and concentrated breathing often induce sleepiness. Fatigue and a major lack of good sleep at night might also be a potential reason why you feel sleepy during meditation. This is a signal that you should be more attentive to creating a healthy sleep cycle every day and you will eventually get cured of your tendency to lie down or feel sleepy during meditation. The biological clock of your body might be disturbed. Having a calorie-filled and heavy meal can also lead to drowsiness because a too-full stomach often makes you feel bloated and you feel like dozing off. Consuming a lot of dairy products, fish and meat might make you feel sleepy because of the presence of the amino acid- tryptophan. You can avoid such a feeling in the long run by consuming melatonin rich products that help regulate the sleep-wake cycle. Meditation right after a meal can also be a reason for this feeling.
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Also read: How Long Does Meditation Take To Work
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Damayanti Dubey is a final year English major at Loreto College, Kolkata. She is a writer by passion and loves to indulge in languages, especially English, Bengali, and Urdu. She aims at exploring all of their intricacies and nuances. Damayanti is a disciple of Padma Bhushan Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty and is a national scholar of Indian classical music. She has always believed that a sound mind, free from the clutches of regressive and negative thoughts is the key to living a healthy life and makes efforts to promote mental wellness through the power of her words.
Damayanti believes in thinking beyond boundaries.