Skip to content

Resource

Meditation to stay awake

Meditation asks for two things at once: a body at rest and a mind awake. Rest is easy to overdo. The head nods, a thought turns into a dream, and the meditation becomes a nap. It happens to almost everyone, and it isn’t failing. This page covers staying awake when you want to meditate, coming out of a meditation clearer, and what helps on a night when you’re awake and wish you weren’t.

One thing first: if you’re fighting sleep while driving, no meditation will help. Pull over and rest.

Why meditation makes you sleepy

The body knows one routine for slowing down: lie down and fall asleep. Meditation slows you down too, so the body reaches for the routine it knows. Dr Joe Dispenza calls the nod of the head, while you sit upright, a good sign: you’re slowing down, and with practice the body learns to stay upright while it does. Sleepiness has plainer causes too: a short night, a full stomach, a warm room, the end of a long day.

Quiet and clear can feel a lot like quiet and dull. If you’re not sure which it is, ask: am I resting in awareness, or losing it?

How to stay awake while you meditate

The Buddha counted dullness and drowsiness (thīna-middha, often translated “sloth and torpor”) among the five hindrances, the states that get in the way of meditation. When his student Moggallāna kept nodding off as he meditated, the Buddha gave him a list that still works: let go of the thought you were following when drowsiness came; recall a teaching, or say it aloud; pull your earlobes and rub your arms and legs; wash your eyes with water and look up at the stars; attend to light, as if it were daytime; walk back and forth; and if none of that works, lie down mindfully, and get up as soon as you wake.

Another of his teachings, the Fire discourse, turns the usual advice around. A sluggish mind is like a small fire: smother it with calm and it goes out; give it dry fuel and it blazes. So when the mind is dull, the time is for looking closely, energy and joy; calm, stillness and equanimity are for a mind that’s racing. Mindfulness, he said, is always useful.

In a modern room, that comes to this:

  • Sit up. Upright in a plain chair with your feet on the floor, or on a cushion with your hips above your knees. Beds and recliners are where bodies sleep. If you need to lie down, keep one forearm upright: if you drift off, it falls and wakes you.
  • Open your eyes. Let them rest, half lowered, on a spot a few feet ahead.
  • Choose your time. Soon after you’ve properly woken is easiest; straight after a meal is hardest.
  • Let in light and cool air. A brighter room, a window open, a splash of cold water first.
  • Be interested, not forceful. Instead of trying harder, make what you’re attending to vivid. Where is this breath easiest to feel? What changes between its beginning and its end? Or follow a voice: a guided meditation keeps giving you somewhere to put your attention.
  • Stand, or walk. If it keeps coming back, meditate standing, or walk slowly and feel each step.
  • And sometimes, sleep. Nodding off every time can mean you need sleep more than meditation. That’s worth listening to.

Meditating to feel more awake

Some people want the opposite from a meditation: to come out of it clearer. There’s a little evidence for that. In two experiments in 2018, beginners who listened to a 10-minute guided meditation did better on attention tests afterwards than those who heard a control recording, though the effect varied from person to person. What meditation doesn’t do is replace sleep: a clearer ten minutes doesn’t make up for a short night.

When you’re awake at night

Sometimes the trouble runs the other way. It’s the middle of the night, and trying to sleep is what keeps you up. Sleep comes by itself, and focusing on it, or trying to make it come, gets in its way. Michael Singer puts it simply: you can’t fall asleep at will.

Sleep therapy has a practice for this called paradoxical intention: stop trying to fall asleep, and let yourself stay awake, at ease. In a 2022 review of ten trials, it brought large improvements in insomnia compared with no treatment, and moderate ones compared with other treatments, though the authors ask for stronger studies.

That’s the idea behind Allowed to Stay Awake. It tells you there’s no need to sleep tonight, lets you rest awake, and keeps you company, saying less and less. It’s a way of resting, not a treatment: insomnia that lasts is worth talking over with a doctor.

In these meditations

For sitting up, awake:

For a night awake:

Further reading