Feeling Heavy or Paralyzed in Meditation: What Is Here Beneath the Stillness?
The question comes quietly: why do I feel heavy when I sit in meditation? What is this paralyzed sensation—neither sleep nor movement, just the body, held fast in the hush?
What Does the Body Know That the Mind Ignores?
Sometimes, sitting still, the weight of the body reveals itself. Heaviness pools in the arms, the thighs, the chest. It is not discomfort—though sometimes it is—but a kind of gravity that asks for attention.
Feeling heavy in meditation is not a problem to be solved. It is simply what rises. The body, unburdened from its tasks, descends. Lighter thoughts scatter. Heaviness arrives, honest and present.
The Stillness That Feels Like Paralysis
And sometimes, the boundary between stillness and paralysis blurs. A tingling in the legs, a sense you could move but the wish isn’t there. The word 'paralyzed' arrives, but it isn’t quite true—it’s a silence, deeper than intention, where movement pauses of its own accord.
If the breath feels distant and the body unmoving, notice: no harm, just attention. Let it be. Witness the threshold between tension and release, effort and rest.
- The warmth of the floor beneath the body
- A heaviness that settles, quietly honest
- Limbs resting not from fatigue, but from letting go
- The breath still moving, slow and deep
Each Sensation Knows Its Own Time
Perhaps the body, given the rare freedom to be still, chooses to be heavy. Perhaps the mind—accustomed to doing—wonders if something is wrong. In truth, there is only presence, and the movement or the non-movement within it.
In this space, heaviness is not an enemy. The sensation of paralysis is not a failing. Each is a messenger, carrying news from the quiet places within.
Heaviness, stillness, and their kin are not alone in the landscape of sensations. Sometimes restlessness flares up, sometimes numbness or a distant disconnection is what’s here. If you want to understand the neighbors of this heaviness—why do I feel restless during meditation, or perhaps notice another quiet visitor—why do I feel numb or disconnected—sometimes the body simply asks you to notice, and let it move or hold as it will.
Now pause. Beneath the weight, what else is here?