Not great :( to the point where I’m questioning if TMI is the best method. I can’t tell if the singularly-focuses techniques of the first few stages is effective.

My struggles:

1. Sitting on the ground. Just can't get my legs to go down. The back pain has started to go away after a few days of sitting on the edge of a chair with my back straight, but yeah still having a tough time sitting on the ground.

2. Mental chatter is still near constant. It rarely turns to gross distraction or forgetting, but it makes me think I’m doing something wrong.

3. Eyes moving in head. My eyes seem to move around and follow my thoughts or look towards my nostrils when I bring it back to the breath.

4. Not being able to discern parts of the breath very clearly. This has been a struggle for me. It’s the main thing holding me back from being confident enough to fully dive into stage

5. It’s hard to observe thoughts and let them go when you are counting breaths. If I don’t count breaths I forget more, and if I do I don’t know if I’m getting the real benefits of meditation.

Hope that was somewhat coherent, I’m on my phone!

EXACTLY what happens to my head ( to the left, to the left) and I asked the same question a few months ago here! I'm aware that its happening and it seems to be linked to the deeper states of my sit, so I typically just let it be- which, of course, reads very logical after typing this.

Thanks for the inquisitive dog metaphor!

Have started to switch up my practice a bit - I meditate for a little while using Metta first before doing classic tmi style meditation. I’ve found it’s fantastic for cultivating and maintaining joy during my sits. I’m in stage 5.

Everyday I basically go through a purification. It’s honestly getting somewhat exhausting - I’m still excited to sit but the frequent purifications part is kind of tiresome but I’m just accepting them as they come. Previously there used to be verbalized thoughts and memories associated with them but now it’s basically just raw emotion and the body sensations (which manifest as a moving pressure felt around my head). If I don’t put my attention on the purification process and attempt to just let it pass in awareness, the tension basically seeps into my day and doesn’t leave. Anyone have experience with this? This wasn’t common before this week although I did have a few different life experiences happen (attended graduation, had a marriage ceremony and had my folks - with whom, I’ll admit I had a difficult relationship during my childhood but is quite good now, visiting me for 3 weeks during which time I rarely meditated).

Body scan practices still tire me out by the end of my sit, but I can hold more of my body in attention than previous so I know I’m making progress.

I know the territory, I'm there myself... My mood swings tend to be less frequent tho. This is what tends to help me:

Observe the meaninglessness as objectively as possible with attention (maybe even switch to noting for that) for a while. Maybe try to reduce your effort a little bit and emphasise awareness over attention. Immediately switch to 'nurture positive' techniques where you deliberately focus on the positive (relaxation/metta/pleasant sensations) when one of those negative mood swings is happening again. Cultivate compassion and forgiving for 'following your urges' and try to keep awareness up as much as possible while you act on or struggle with them. Especially feel into the pain they might be causing.

Dealing with addiction sucks. You probably spent years building them up, so they won't disappear anytime soon. But keep in mind that you'er making progress, even tho it doesn't look like it! All the best.

For the past two months before the holidays my practice has been weak. I got a new job and moved into a new place, visited family, and the distractions of life made me feel anxious about my practice.

Now that I’m back to work and settled into a new place, I had high hopes that things would be better, but now I’m finding my 6 year relationship is falling apart and I’m running into extreme gross distraction throughout my practice and also daily life. I felt guilty before for not keeping up, but now I just feel downright hopeless.

Sometimes this acts as a motivator and I’ll use practice as an escape, but the distractions are so great that I cannot see any progression... any advice on this? Maybe how to keep motivation while things in my day to day life seem tumultuous?

I'm finally out of Stage 4. My sits feel at least twice as long. I'm mostly working on fundamentals like expanding awareness and being vigilant about dullness, but have started the body scan too. There is some development of whole-body feeling but it's very weak.

This is definitely helping my anxiety. (It's probably more noticeable, but doesn't realy grab me anymore, although it's not perfect yet.) The "background radiation" of anxiety is almost gone, although reality is pretty vibrant and less dull. I just started a new job and I'm glad I restarted meditation before I did.

For whatever reason, it's going much better this time around. There's still a weird tendency to kind of rock my head back and forth, but hey compared to tremors and stuff I can't complain.

Unlike earlier this year, there's a growing sense of well-being.

Not as great as when I was consistent and could meditate more. I used to sit for 1h+ enter and recognise access concentration and also experienced (not sure it's the right verb) first Jhana. I started again few days ago after a break and can definitely tell it's different now and harder to sit past the 25 mins mark. So yeah, rusty. On the upside I booked a 10 days retreat for march, looking forward to it.

One question I have: is it normal that when I start body scanning I get more distractions?

Of course. Much more, because it's more difficult to keep attention on some parts of the body. Especially some blind areas and gross sensations (e.g. strong pain) are difficult to master. And you need to keep track of where you are and what approach you are taking (more variables).

I'm rarely able to do detailed body scan outside of retreats.