25/05/2024
Sleeping or meditating?! It's often hard to tell if we or other people are meditating or sleeping.
Take this picture – Max looks like he's meditating, but he's actually sleeping (or is he?!) 🤣
Deep meditation and sleep can be hard to differentiate because when we go deep in meditation, we move beyond thought into a place of inner silence where we're not aware of what's happening.
Because we're beyond thought, we can't have thoughts like "look at me, I'm beyond thought!", so our subjective experience can be similar to us having been unconscious or in deep sleep.
And we can appear to others as if we're sleeping as our head might be rested forward.
As a teacher, I tell students the sure way to tell if you're sleeping is if you're snoring or drooling!
The more experienced we become as meditators, the less we care about whether we were in deep meditation or "just" sleeping.
Either way, we're allowing our minds and bodies the deep rest they need. One is not "better" than the other and we get whichever one we need in that moment.
If your body is craving sleep and you close your eyes to meditate, you'll sleep. And afterwards, you'll feel in a much better position to tackle your day.