When we practice meditation, we want to sit as still possible. Generally, the more our body settles down, the more our mind will settle down. And even when we are not implementing any particular formal meditation technique, just simply sitting still can often allow our deeper minds to process, untangle, and sort themselves out.
Such motionlessness is not something we encounter in most of the rest of our lives. If we look closely, we will notice that, when seated, we are usually regularly making little shifts, movements, adjustments, fidgets, and changes to our position to alleviate tiny aches, pains, and discomforts that arise below the threshold of awareness.
For most people, urges to move in a larger fashion also come up repeatedly during our meditation. We may feel a desire to change posture, scratch an itch, write something down, blow our nose, or check our phone. We may even want to get up to turn on/off a light, stop a dripping faucet, or escape the challenges of meditation altogether.
The invitation when meditating, however, is to notice and explore the unpleasant sensations that demand that we respond to them – without actually doing so. My main teacher Shinzen Young has often said, “A meditator is someone who fully feels an itch five times before scratching it”. We can find where in the body we feel agitation and impatience, and simply spaciously open to and rest our attention there while remaining motionless.
We can get curious about our fidgety urges: where are they? What do they feel like? Are they increasing or decreasing? How does paying attention to them affect them? Does their presence narrow and cloud our awareness, or are we able to stay spacious? How entangled or free of them are we? Do our urges seem to be more in the body or in the mind? How long do they actually last, if left alone?
You may not choose to try this yourself, but there are stories in meditation books of mindfully exploring what it feels like to be bit by a mosquito without swatting it away. And, it may sound gross, but I have had a powerful, growth-creating meditative experiences while just letting a runny nose do its thing, exploring habitual urges to use a tissue without obeying them.
If, after feeling a compulsion for a while, we do finally choose to move during a meditation session, it is helpful to do so slowly, quietly, and with mindful awareness. Most formal meditation techniques are able to be continued even while in deliberately precise motion.
The agitated feeling that “I’m going to explode if I don’t respond to this urge to move” can be misleading: such tension is actually often temporary, and will eventually pass from simply letting it be. And the more often we do this, the easier it gets; sitting still while meditating is a skill and facility that we can develop and extend with practice.