When stillness feels unbearable; Why meditation can be hard.
For some, meditation is a refuge, for others it can be torture.
My cousin's apartment in Athens was right at the base of Mt Lycabettus, the heart of the city where ancient stones meet the rhythm of artists, musicians and creatives of all walks. This was the cultural hub. The mountain, 278 meters tall, offered views of the Parthenon and the whole of Athens sprawled beneath you. By night it was breathtaking.
My cousin, a drummer, photographer and all round pretty awesome guy, had recently moved to New York to follow his photography dream, and had kindly given me his apartment to live in whilst I found my feet in Athens. I had moved to the city 8mths prior, in April of 2006, on a one-way ticket with a dream in my heart and a very light suitcase.
It was in the quiet hum of an evening in late December that I received a call that would alter the course of my life in ways I could have never dreamed. I was seated at his wooden desk on my computer, old school funk playing in the background on the turntable, immersed in making plans for my next yoga teacher training in Italy, when my brother’s voice delivered the news over the phone…
“Mum has stage 4 bowel cancer. It’s terminal”.
My heart broke. My body hollowed out with the weight of his words.
I had just begun to find my rhythm in this new city, in this new life.
Teaching yoga in a great studio by the sea, working as an aid and arts therapist in a Montessori preschool, living in a place infused with music, history and creativity.
I was finding my way, creating the dream.
8 words was all it took to make the bubble burst and my dreams shatter around me.
Sometimes our lives change in the blink of an eye, and we just have to surrender and let the tide take us.
The decision was inevitable, I had to go home.
Heavy with resignation, grief and disappointment, I searched for flights back to Melbourne. The cheapest flight was on NYE. Just before I booked, something in me hesitated. A small voice whispered, urging me to check the Dhamma Rasmi Vipassana Meditation Centre in Pomona, Queensland.
Prior to moving to Athens I had been deeply immersed in yoga, healing and the hinterland community on the Sunshine Coast in Australia, and Vipassana was something that I had always wanted to explore. It happened that their next 10-day silent retreat aligned perfectly with the dates of my return.
A threshold and pause before the plunge. I booked it without hesitation.
I arrived at Vipassana on the edge of the new year, carrying only a small overnight bag, two white pairs of fisherman pants that I picked up in one of the local stores, some clean singlets, earplugs, my toothbrush, a journal, a light woollen blanket, and a heart raw with sorrow.
I flopped onto my single bed, in my shared room, and silently prayed.
’Please help me find a way to be back in the city I never wanted to return to, to care for my dying mother, support my grieving father and hold myself through all that is to come.’
Daily, at 4am the gong chimes, calling us into stillness. We silently wake into our morning routine, making our way to the meditation hall for our first sit. 11 hours a day we sit, sensing, feeling, breathing. Except for the occasional cough, shuffle or sniffle, silence stretches through the hall like a vast open landscape. We eat, walk and sit in silence.
The days are long, the cushions thin and the floor, hard.
By the 4th day I noticed that the group had gotten somewhat smaller. 2 cushions were empty. By the 7th day even more. I learned later on that one person had literally run for the hills, jumping the gated fence in an effort to escape, whilst another left trembling with something she just couldn’t hold.
At the time I didn’t understand why. In my innocence and ignorance I had no idea that people would ‘want’ to leave. At that time, after the chaos of Athens and the impending journey ahead with my mother, sitting in silence and stillness with myself felt like a refuge.
Even though it was in no way easy, I struggled as much as any other person in the room, I saw it as a gift to myself to prepare for adversity ahead.
For others it seemed that it was like torture.
Knowing what I know now, I understand that meditation, especially the body centred practice of Vipassana, though a valuable practice and incredible resource, is a meeting. A pathway into the terrain of the self where all that has been exiled, avoided and buried arises to be seen.
For someone with underlying unresolved trauma, it can be unbearable.
To be able to ’sit still’ in meditation, especially for long periods of time, requires the capacity to ‘be with’ all that comes up in that stillness. To feel it all.
If the body is holding anything that is unresolved, you will, without a doubt, encounter it.
Why meditation can be so hard
Stillness brings up what we’ve been avoiding
We spend our lives in constant motion; filling the spaces with work, relationships, scrolling, eating, drinking, talking, anything to quiet the restless undercurrent within.
The moment we stop, truly stop, all the emotions, memories, and unresolved feelings and sensations we’ve pushed aside rise to meet us. This is trauma knocking on our door. It is a little like holding a basketball under water; the moment we loosen our grip, it shoots to the surface.
Meditation asks us to let go of our grip, to feel it all. But if we have never been taught how to meet this inner discomfort, how to be with our pain, how to slowly remove the ball from our depths, we stop and turn away from what feels unbearable.
Meditation becomes hard.The nervous system needs safety to settle
If you’ve experienced stress, trauma, or prolonged emotional distress, your nervous system is likely in a chronic state of dysregulation. It may also be wired for hypervigilance, always scanning for danger, even when none is present.
When this is the case, silence is not necessarily peace.
Sitting still in meditation can feel threatening rather than relaxing. Instead of the calm that is promised, your body may respond with restlessness, anxiety, or even panic. When unresolved emotions begin to surface, the nervous system may interpret this as unsafe, triggering an instinct to turn away, shut down, or abandon the practice altogether.
It’s not that you can’t meditate; it’s that your body needs to feel safe enough to allow what arises. The key is in growing internal resources that help you stay present with yourself when this happens.We expect the mind to be instantly quiet
One of the biggest misconceptions about meditation is that the goal is to experience a blank, still mind. That peace, is the absence of thought. But the mind, by its very nature moves. It processes, thinks, remembers, and analyses.
The real practice of meditation isn’t about stopping thought, but in watching it and all that it sets into motion, without becoming entangled.
Learning to stay. To listen. To feel. To soften and open to direct experience. When we expect instant silence and don’t get it, we often judge ourselves as failing, when in reality, the very act of noticing our thoughts is meditation itself.
Meditation isn't about feeling peaceful right away; it is about ‘being with’ what is. For some, that can feel overwhelming.
Looking back, I now completely understand why some people left that Vipassana retreat in distress. Their system was overwhelmed, they had gone into flight mode, saying this is too much, too soon.
This is unresolved trauma in action.
In my work as a somatic trauma therapist, I see many people on a path of growth who struggle with meditation for this very reason. They may find comfort in styles that incorporate visualisation or mantra, which disconnect us from the body, but when it comes to sitting with their direct experience, without distraction, it often becomes too much. The natural impulse is to escape, to disconnect from the discomfort that arises.
I’ve worked with many individuals who have a dedicated spiritual or contemplative practice, yet unknowingly use it to bypass the body. What I have come to understand in the therapy room, and in my own personal practice, is that learning to sit with the body, truly staying with it and all of its fluctuations, requires practice, patience, skill and deep care.
What we are cultivating is the ability to meet and ‘be with’ ourselves fully, and all that we’ve been avoiding; our grief, fear, anger and rage.
If the nervous system does not feel safe, it will resist. It will avoid. And this is why meditation can feel so hard. Not because we’re failing at it, but because our system is protecting us from what feels overwhelming.
And for many, that can be the hardest thing to do.
Mum took her last breath on November 17th, 2007. I was seated at her bedside, holding her fragile hand as her breathing laboured. Some say that in our last moments we meet the light, and transcend all fear of the threshold we are about to cross. I have come to believe this is true. In Mum’s last moments, after days of shielding her gaze behind closed eyes, she opened her eyes fully. Bright. White. As luminous as the full moon.
She fixated on a point in the upper left hand corner of the hospital room, a look of surprise, awe, love and hope in her eyes. I’ve always imagined that she was in the presence of something divine. That something called her from her weary slumber, inviting her to open to the next life.
And in a heartbeat she was gone.
It was a breathtaking moment that I will carry in the folds of my heart until my last breath.
That first Vipassana wasn’t easy for me. It challenged and stretched me in ways I wasn’t prepared for, and yet it also served its purpose at the time, forming a foundation that carried me through my mother’s final year, her death and all the holding I needed to do for my father in the aftermath.
It also birthed in me a love of quiet contemplation, a refuge that has walked beside me for years. It hasn’t always been an easy road, nor a linear path. There have been seasons of deep commitment to my practice, following many different pathways, and like many of us, times when it has gently fallen away. Yet, even in those moments, something remained, a quiet thread pulling me back.
Often we turn to meditation as a tool to help us feel better.
We seek freedom from suffering, connection to our inner self, control over our emotional responses and a pathway to inner peace.
Over time, through my own practice and my work with others, I have come to see that the royal road to the peace we seek arrives through the body, resting on our ability to listen to the language of sensation, tension, and emotion, without turning away.
This is where we truly find home.
For many years, I was unknowingly using my practice to escape from my pain. Practicing to feel better. But what truly liberates is the act of leaning into it.
Getting better at feeling.
Our healing is not about escaping what is difficult, but learning how to meet it, to hold it, and in doing so, beneath the waves, discovering the stillness that has been there all along.
If meditation feels difficult, know that you’re not alone.
You’re not broken, and you’re not doing it wrong.
You’re simply meeting yourself, perhaps for the first time in a way that truly matters.
And that, in itself, is the real work.
Warmly,
Maraya Rae Rodostianos
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So beautiful and honest. Sitting with myself can be excruciating! As you say, getting better at feeling is the way and I'm sure it's a lifelong journey too.
This is a very honest and grounded read, Maraya and reflects my own journey with meditation.
While it started as a quest for calm and inner peace, it slowly became a safe space for big emotions to surface and processed. It sure is tough at times, but with time and practice it becomes as a welcoming field.