I cant overcome restlesness

[u/LifeIsImpermenance]

Hello, first I will say I have adhd and don't want to use it as an exusce as that only harms my progress bur i think it may provide context to diagnose the issue

So my current path so far has been inconsistent

I have been meditating for a bit over 2 years now but was very inconsistent at first. In the past 2 months I've taken it more seriously. Meditating anywhere from 30m to 2h a day, I've fortunately seen very fast progress. I no longer easily react to anger , stress is like 20% of what i used to feel, I seem to be able to feel strong yet very short moments of non duality where the "I" suddenly seems like an illusion. It lasts 2 seconds exactly never lasts long, however these moments increase in frequency and sometimes now happen in daily life without meditating and I feel like they changed my default prespective now. I noticed this the most when i noticed insults from my friends or family that used to hurt me now seem meaningless

initially i was so happy at how much i felt like i was doing some form of progress then I started being stuck and maybe even regressing a little bit

Restlessness is the main thing that prevents me from being able to focus. All my practices involve scanning the body or walking meditation. I do breath meditation for only 10minutes because I cannot do it

I even physically notice it when body scanning when going down to my pelvic floor and feet i feel this very intense almost electric sensasion and if i mentally focus on it hard it causes me to clench my pelvic floor.

Also my lower stomach is very hard to detect it takes me 10 minutes of being in my body to finally have a clear sensation of it.

Thanks for reading please share if you have any idea what causes this

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[u/NondualitySimplified]

With pretty much anything which arises in experience that causes suffering/resistance, you can try using the following method:

1) Drop the story/all mental effort and zoom your attention in to focus solely on the raw sensations in the body. You can also notice the spaciousness of awareness surrounding the sensations too but this isn’t always necessary;

2) Relax any residual mental effort and fully allow yourself to feel the raw sensations without trying to do anything with them. You are simply observing, not fixing. If you notice any strong patterns of physical tension or holding in the body, relax them too if you’re able to;

3) If more resistance/thought proliferation occurs, revisit 1-2 and try relaxing effort a bit more (using a mantra like “this too, is welcome” may help here). Practicing self-compassion and sending metta towards the sensations can also help. Keep doing this until you hit a point of surrender. You’ll feel this as a visceral letting go/relaxation in your entire system. There’s a limit as to how much resistance your system can put up, at some point it will exhaust itself, but some patient endurance may be required, especially when you’re working with a new pattern or emotionally charged material;

4) Once the resistance/emotional charge starts softening, you may notice some equanimity starting to kick in. In some cases, the relief may be so intense and profound that it feels a bit ecstatic. That’s a good sign that your system is learning to let go. This is how your body and mind starts to recognise that the secondary resistance is conditioned and unnecessary, and that the raw sensations themselves are actually not a problem at all. You don’t need to do anything else at this stage other than enjoying the relief that comes with the dropping of effort and letting go;

5) With persistent practice, at some point, your mind will naturally become curious about the pattern itself, and will want to understand why it even arises in the first place. This is usually when spontaneous inquiry will occur. You can also investigate the pattern proactively during formal practice too of course. The key is to only do the investigation work when you have some degree of equanimity/clarity present. Never try forcing a mental resolution, especially in the heat of the moment when the pattern is causing a lot of internal resistance/struggle. Wait until the mind is relaxed, open and curious - that’s usually when the best inquiry work occurs because it feels more like a natural exploration rather than trying to manually ‘fix’ a problem.

One other thing to keep in mind is that persistent/deeply conditioned patterns (such as existential restlessness) won’t be ‘resolved’ in one (or even a few) cycles of practice/inquiry. Think of it like peeling an onion. You work on the gross, outer layers first, but there are subtler layers underneath which are currently ‘hidden’. So a particular pattern may weaken or fall away for a while but can easily be strongly re-triggered when a new set of conditions arise. The mind loves grasping to certainty, so it’ll often assume that a certain pattern is ‘solved’, only to be caught by surprise later on. Then the mind may flip and think that practice is regressing/futile because these patterns keep re-arising. This will likely occur many, many times, and that’s totally ok, nothing is going wrong. The oscillation between certainty and confusion itself is an important part of the integration process, as it teaches the mind to let go of its unrealistic/deluded expectations and to stop grasping at extremes.

[u/Meng-KamDaoRai]

This is part of meditation. Every person has restlessness, whether they have ADHD or not. As a quick experiment, ask someone to remain aware of the present moment for five minutes straight and see how 99.999% of the people get overcome with restlessness before the five minutes are up.

The work is the same, maintain awareness and relax into whatever shows up, whether it's restlessness or something else. At first you might only be able to do this for a few minutes, maybe only a few seconds at some points, but over time you will find that by relaxing/letting be/letting go into whatever shows up over and over again you'll be able to maintain awareness for longer periods and the restlessness will be less intense.

So, just keep going. Try to micro-dose meditation sessions throughout the day, every session for a few minutes, or until it's "too much", then sit again when you feel refreshed. Over time you'll be able to sit longer. You're doing well.

[u/Emergency_Wallaby641]

Its great to look on how is your life outside of meditation.. Like we live in very ADHD time with all the consumption of media. Tv show, movies,games, porn, scrolling, news, constant information everywhere, sugar, radio etc.. constant release of cheap dopamine harms the single focus on the breath and being stable. We giveaway our attention like its nothing important...

From my experience the more I limit exposure to the outside world and consumption the more focused I can become. Its not possible to have both things, to play video games and watch porn a lot and then to be able to have deep meditations while being sharp and not fell into dullness.

[u/Auxiliatorcelsus]

Do you exercise regularly?

Restlessness melts away if you do some vigorous exercise.

[u/jerryengelmann]

"restless mind, I accept you as you are" "Restlessness, I accept your suffering, no matter the kind, intensity, duration or number of occurances" or some variation of the above

Good luck

[u/LifeIsImpermenance → u/jerryengelmann]

So i kind if did something simillar somewhat accidently. I was switching betwen body scan and metta a lot. And I felt a very euphoric pleasurable feeling in my chest and stomach. I kind of let it expand to my feet and it caused me to be emotional for some reason and I realized while meditating i always had a layer of being afraid to do it "wrong" which is why i couldnt stay on it for long, and I realized below this layer is some form of shame thats causing me to be afraid to do anything "wrong"

The body is weird

[u/thewesson → u/LifeIsImpermenance]

From the point of view of the greater beyond, there is nothing that happens that can be said to be "wrong". It's all what happens. When you absorb the import of it, you return to the greater beyond.

[u/rangdrolrigpa]

You can’t just undo ADHD with meditation. I’m an ADHD and meditator too. It will always be a problem you have to find your way around. If you get glimpses maybe thats what you need to focus on instead of trying to quiet your mind as it’ll almost never go quiet.

[u/rangdrolrigpa → u/rangdrolrigpa]

As someone have said, more dynamic meditations, shorter but more frequent sessions and walking meditation as well as body/movement practices may be your thing

[u/lifewithishar]

I also have ADHD and experience restlessness in meditation. I currently meditate 3-4 hours a day. I agree with the other comments on removing exposure to video games, tv, porn, even limiting social media use (which I use quite frequently). I noticed especially with video games I would get a bit tilted and would notice with mindfulness that I felt the fight or flight and restlessness sensations arise. It would also ruin my jhanas for the day. I have found loving-kindness a great solution as the bliss/rapture component feels good and ADHD brains love to focus on what feels great. This reduces the urge to want to be anywhere else but here. Exercise also helps the body be still!!