How To Get Unstuck: Cultivating Relaxed Awareness

Normalizing Stagnation

First, let me say this: being stuck happens to all of us. Sometimes we think we're stagnant when we're not, and sometimes the opposite is true. Most of us know the feeling though—that resistance to showing up on the meditation cushion. If we don't address this stagnation, we can start to resent meditation and even quit altogether. I want to offer you some techniques and ways of working with stagnation that can help before you reach that point.

The Power of Relaxed Awareness

Today's focus is on cultivating relaxed awareness, which has become one of my main ways of sustaining a meditation practice. I've found that stagnation often comes from pushing too hard—trying to get somewhere specific, having goals about what I should feel or experience, or chasing after a particularly pleasant meditation from the past.

Maybe you had a mind-blowing opening experience a year ago and have been chasing it ever since. In my experience, holding onto these moments isn't helpful. It's wonderful to appreciate when something nice happens, but we shouldn't grasp at it. One remedy is learning to let things be in meditation—cultivating that relaxed awareness we're discussing here.

Effort and Baby Steps

Relaxed awareness connects to an attitude of "whatever comes, comes." We're working on growing our connection to our minds, understanding reality, and cultivating compassion and love. This involves ongoing effort through baby steps. Sure, sometimes we take larger leaps, but most progress happens gradually. We often undervalue these baby steps, but they're actually responsible for most of our growth over years of practice.

So what does effort look like when it's more at ease and relaxed? First, I recommend exploring guided meditations on grounding into the body and finding calm—these are important preliminaries for relaxed awareness work.

What Relaxed Awareness Actually Means

Here's something that might surprise you: relaxed awareness doesn't mean you have to be relaxed. It means applying a kind of effort that's relaxed. We're not pushing, not trying to squeeze concentration or force awareness. If we lose awareness, no big deal—we simply recognize it, reconnect, and keep going. Think of it as an attitude, an intention, a way of being with practice.

When the body is grounded—settled in our feet and seat—the speedy energy calms down. Without anxiety and overwhelm, we can simply rest with awareness in the body. Various breathing practices and grounding techniques can help facilitate this ease as we practice.

The Long View

We all want to make progress in meditation, but what does that mean? In Buddhism, it means cultivating a view—the view of awakening. We meditate to discover this, to let go of the reification and clinging that keeps us stuck in suffering and a stagnant way of being in the world.

The Buddha taught clearly: we meditate to become more free, awake, enlightened—for the benefit of all beings. With this long-term perspective, we can approach practice sustainably.

Relaxed effort means bringing our best while maintaining sustainability. We bring right effort, joyfulness, and diligence, but in a way that allows us to grow without burning out.

Finding Your Sustainable Pace

We don't all have the same speed limit with this work. For me, what really serves my practice is allowing awareness to be light, keeping that connection gentle, and clicking into awareness throughout the day. I might cultivate more intensely during formal meditation, but throughout the day, I simply try to grow familiarity with awareness—not trying to get anywhere specific, just building that connection.

Before discovering this approach, I used to get really tense in meditation. I'd push toward some idea of what I thought I should feel or accomplish, which actually made things worse. My anxiety increased, my body felt tense, and my practice didn't improve.

Open Awareness Practice

Then I discovered open awareness meditation, or shamatha without support. These practices encourage a sense of being without blocking. We don't have to put ourselves in a box or shut out the world. We learn to incorporate everything—sounds, sights, smells, sensations, even thoughts.

Here's a key insight: thoughts themselves aren't the problem. The problem is thinking—getting caught up in rumination that pulls us into the past and future, taking us out of awareness. But a thought arising? That's just like a sound arising. When someone honks their horn outside, we hear it, maybe feel startled, but it arises and falls away. The same applies to thoughts.

Understanding Awareness

What do I mean by awareness? It's this quality of mind that not only knows what's arising but knows that perception is happening—a "double knowing" or knowing that knowing is happening. You've probably already experienced this through mindfulness practice. I think of it as bearing witness, a kind of watchfulness or observing—though not a cold observation. We're with the experience while simultaneously knowing it's happening.

When we practice this in a relaxed way, we're not pushing the awareness. It's simply natural—we click into it, remember it, and strengthen our connection to it. Awareness is already there; we're all born with it. We're just strengthening our connection through meditation.

Awareness vs. Focus

It's crucial to distinguish between focus and awareness. When we're focused on a task—working on the computer, listening to music—our attention becomes narrow and concentrated. We develop this focus throughout life, especially to become skillful at tasks. But focus isn't awareness. Awareness is much broader—a bigger watchfulness that encompasses everything.

In practice, we click into that broader awareness and stay with it gently. Of course, we'll lose it—getting hooked into thinking and rumination. Then at some point, we realize we're caught. That "oh, I'm caught" moment? That's awareness returning. Once that happens, we're already back in meditation. We simply sustain that awareness gently.

The Benefits of This Approach

This practice has been invaluable for getting unstuck. It helps me feel at ease in my body, cultivate more awareness for all dharma practices, and let go of the pushiness that comes from being too attached to what I should achieve or feel.

For me, it creates sustainability. Day by day, it helps me feel more joy in meditation. I look forward to practice—not because it's easy or always feels good, but because I know I'm cultivating wholesome mind states sustainably.

Moving Forward

I hope this exploration of relaxed awareness offers you a helpful way forward when you feel stuck in your practice. Share what resonates with you and what helps you get unstuck when you feel stagnant in your meditation.

Remember: meditation is a marathon, not a sprint. Relaxed awareness offers a way to stay in the race joyfully, sustainably, and with genuine progress over time.