Why Can’t I Meditate?: How to Get Your Mindfulness Practice on Track

267 Pages·2016·1.41 MB·English

by  Nigel Wellings

Praise for Why Can’t I Meditate?
“Why Can’t I Meditate? is, as far as I know, the first in-depth and pragmatic analysis of a key issue that
bedevils many people who undertake the practice of meditation. It is not at all uncommon for someone to
encounter a deep resistance to meditation even though they are sincerely committed to it. This important
study is an invaluable handbook that provides practical guidance and advice for anyone who strives to
understand and overcome the obstacles that prevent meditation from becoming an integral part of one’s
life.”
—Stephen Batchelor, author of Buddhism Without Beliefs and Confession of a Buddhist Atheist
“I am very happy to finally see someone writing about why people can’t meditate. I’ve known Nigel for
many years; he’s a sincere practitioner who has been thinking about how to untangle the blockages in the
human mind for some time now. We had a lot of discussion together about the ideas presented here and I
think his book will be very useful. It’s helpful to know the underlying causes of meditation problems—this
book shows how to work with them.”
—Tsoknyi Rinpoche, author of Open Heart, Open Mind
“People learning mindfulness often ask, ‘I know mindfulness practice is helpful; how can I best establish
my meditation practice?’ Now I can recommend this wonderful book. Nigel Wellings offers insightful,
compassionate, and eminently practical guidance, based on his extensive personal experience as a teacher
and practitioner and interviews with some of the most accomplished mindfulness teachers in the field.”
—Willem Kuyken, professor of clinical psychology, University of Exeter
“Insightful and helpful. I really like the discussion of the different selves within us and how one can be in
conflict with another and that people who are fearful of unknown parts of themselves, their shadow, are
going to struggle with compassion, becoming caught up in conflicts and struggles in contrast to observing
them as ‘nature’s mind at work.’”
—Professor Paul Gilbert, PhD, OBE, author of The Compassionate Mind and Mindful Compassion
“I especially appreciate the explicit kindness and compassion part of the book; it’s a beautiful chapter and it
unpacks very nicely the threats that people feel when they give themselves love. As we say in the Mindful
Self-Compassion program, ‘When you give yourself unconditional love, you discover the conditions under
which you felt unloved.’”
—Christopher Germer, PhD, clinical psychologist and author of The Mindful Path to Self-
Compassion
“I would rate this book as essential reading for anyone who already has a meditation practice or for
someone wanting to begin one. Reading it is like being in deep conversation with the author—an
experienced and helpful person who really understands the process and pitfalls of meditation—and also
with many others who share their experiences with refreshing honesty. The text offers the reader details of
the practicalities of meditation, such as how to explore motivation to start, where and how to sit or walk,
and how often, and it also offers a deep understanding of the difficulties that can be encountered in a way
that is compassionate, easily understood, and helpful.”
—Elizabeth Wilde McCormick, psychotherapist and author of Change for the Better

Nigel Wellings is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author who works within a broadly
contemplative perspective. He first attempted to practice mindfulness in his late teens and has been
engaged with the relationship between psychotherapy and meditation for the last forty years. With
Elizabeth McCormick, he has published several books, including Nothing to Lose: Psychotherapy,
Buddhism and Living Life. His essay “With Buddha in Mind: Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy in
Practice” was recently published in Crossroads in Psychoanalysis, Buddhism, and Mindfulness. He
lives in Bath, England, and is a teacher on the Bath and Bristol Mindfulness Courses.
www.mindfulness-psychotherapy.co.uk
www.bath-bristol-mindfulness-courses.co.uk
May this be a bridge, a boat, a ship for all who struggle with their practice of mindfulness.
Contents
Praise for Why Can’t I Meditate?
Title Page
Copyright
About the Author
Dedication
Foreword by Rebecca Crane
Preface
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Something on Buddhist Traditions
Introduction
Why Do We Want to Meditate?
CHAPTER 1:
Taking Our Seat
CHAPTER 2:
The Guardian at the Gate
CHAPTER 3:
Meeting Ourselves
CHAPTER 4:
Grabby, Grumpy, Sleepy, Jumpy, and Maybe
CHAPTER 5:
A Deeper Insight
CHAPTER 6:
The Damaged Heart
CHAPTER 7:
It’s Not All Pain
CHAPTER 8:
Final Words
CHAPTER 9:
Quick-Fix Chart for the Struggling Meditator
On Mindfulness and Psychological Trauma
How to Practice Mindfulness Meditation
Further Reading
Index
Foreword
T
his important book goes to the heart of a crucial area of inquiry for anyone
who aspires to bring mindfulness meditation into his or her everyday life.
All who have engaged with a personal meditation practice will know that there is
often a gap between the aspiration to do it and the reality of trying to practice it
each day: everything in our life and values points us toward the importance of
our practice, but there seem to be so many barriers that stop us from doing it.
In very skillful ways, Nigel’s book brings us back to the humanness of this
conundrum. It offers a gentle reminder that it is natural to find practicing
mindfulness challenging because it deliberately points us toward the awkward
and painful truths, the contradictions, of our existence. When we commit to a
daily practice, we find many moments when we waver between doing our
chores, taking a bath, having a glass of wine, hanging out with friends and
family, or choosing the seemingly crazy and counterintuitive option of sitting on
our meditation cushion and settling into sensing the immediacy of our—
sometimes painful—experience. How human it is to feel the strong pull toward
familiarity, comfort, and pleasure and to avoid what is painful, raw, and tender.
Yet through a mindful engagement with our experience, we can know the deep
relief that comes from learning to live in accord with the way things really are.
The deep, intrinsic sanity in the process of the practice returns us to what is
essentially true about ourselves and the world. This book beautifully unpacks
and explores this ambivalence and helps us to see it as the real territory of our
practice. These moments of hesitation and doubt do not mean that we haven’t
quite “got it”; they are the heart of our practice. Not wanting to meditate is not
something outside of the practice but a natural part of the all-embracing inquiry
that our practice essentially is. We mindfully include all our feelings, all our
uncertainties, our reluctance to really engage, and settle into our practice, day to
day, with a spirit of investigative curiosity.
This experience is true for all, including those of us who teach mindfulness-
based programs. Teachers have the additional external injunction of “good
practice guidance,” which requires us to have an ongoing, daily personal
mindfulness practice, interspersed with retreats for periods of intensive
meditation. This formal meditation practice gives us the space to see the patterns
and processes within us and the ways we inadvertently collaborate in creating
our own suffering. We see in ourselves all the times when we are judgmental,
nonaccepting, striving, critical, and angry. Of course, this contradicts our ideal of
what an embodied mindfulness-based teacher should be like. Yet how could we
possibly offer this practice to others unless we were engaged in our own ongoing
exploration of its joys and struggles?
Over time, the understanding that emerges through these insights becomes
part of the fabric of our being. Embodying mindfulness isn’t then an effortful,
self-conscious process but rather a natural expression of our being, moment by
moment—an implicit orientation within us that becomes explicit through the
visible and tangible expression of what mindfulness looks, feels, and sounds
like. Knowing this, embodying it within our life, we are able to teach
mindfulness authentically in the classroom.
Nigel’s writing, and the words of the practitioners and teachers who speak
through the pages of this book, help us to understand and find words for the
interior world of thoughts and emotions that our mindfulness reveals: a world of
emotional contradictions and conflicts that is usually hidden from view and often
harshly judged when seen. In so doing, he encourages us to look into our own
inner world in a fresh and curious way—supporting us to come back again and
again, with kindness and compassion, to who we are in each moment. This
supports us in our practice to form a clear intention, a sense of purpose and
direction, and then let the reality of what arises be just the way it is.
This book is easy to read and very accessible, and is delivered with a
lightness of touch and humor. Clear chapters that address specific points are
enhanced by the many accounts from people’s personal practices—these help to
normalize and universalize the processes that seem so personal and that give rise
to so much internal judging. It is tremendously reassuring to hear what is going
on behind the closed eyes of other meditators and to find that it is no different
from what we are going through. The book embodies kindness and generosity,
and shows that when we begin to bring to our practice clarity and a sense of
commonality with other practitioners, our self-judging and self-critical
tendencies naturally become quieter.
Committing to a mindfulness meditation practice is an ongoing process, not a
one-off event. As I read this book, I sensed anew the motivation arising in me to
settle into my practice. It is so helpful to be reminded in a fresh way of how, in
essence, my patterns and tendencies are no different from those of others, and to
bring to mind, with a renewed clarity, what it is that brings me to my practice
each day.
Rebecca Crane, MA
Director, Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice
Bangor University