Stop and come back to one solid thing before going on
If open awareness starts to feel unreal, flat or frightening, stop widening, open your eyes and bring your attention to one concrete thing in the room.
Why it works
Open monitoring asks attention to let go of any anchor, and for some people, at some times, that open field stops feeling spacious and starts feeling unreal, distant or flat, which can be frightening. Narrowing attention onto one concrete thing (the floor under your feet, an object in your hand, the names of things in the room) gives the mind an anchor again and helps the body come back to the range where you can feel something and still think. Widening further while frightened tends to deepen the strangeness rather than resolve it.
How to do it
- Stop the open-awareness practice now. You do not have to finish the sit, and you do not need to widen any further.
- Open your eyes fully and put both feet flat on the floor. Notice the pressure of the floor under them.
- Pick up something with weight or texture, like a mug, a stone or a cushion, and describe it to yourself: its colour, temperature and feel.
- Slowly name five things you can see in the room, out loud if you can.
- Get up and do something ordinary with your hands, like making a drink, washing up or stepping outside for a short walk. Over the next few days, keep to sleep, regular meals and time with people.
- Come back to open monitoring only once you feel steady, starting with a short focused-attention sit, and ideally with an experienced teacher. If the feeling does not ease, or it keeps coming back, tell someone you trust and read the next practice.
Evidence
Treleaven (2018) and Ogden, Minton and Pain (2006) are clinical texts that describe grounding and staying within a tolerable range of arousal. Siegel (1999) describes that range as a 'window of tolerance', the zone where a person can still think and feel at once. These are clinical texts, not trials of grounding during open-monitoring meditation. (clinical)
No source here tests this pause inside open-monitoring practice. The steps are general grounding practice from clinical texts and are not a substitute for care. If the unreal or flat feeling does not ease, keeps returning, or you do not feel safe, reach a person (see the next practice).
Sources
- Treleaven, D. A. (2018). Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing (foreword by Willoughby Britton). New York: W. W. Norton.
- Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy. New York: W. W. Norton.
- Siegel, D. J. (1999). The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience. New York: Guilford Press.
Common mistake
Treating the unreal or flat feeling as a sign of progress and opening even wider to get through it. Stopping is fine; the practice will still be there another day.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Open Monitoring Meditation, Made Practical
- Stop practising alone and reach a person
If the world keeps feeling unreal or flat after you meditate, or you have thoughts of harming yourself, reach a real person now.
- Choiceless awareness — resting without an object
Sit with attention open and receptive, letting whatever arises in experience be the meditation object — without choosing, pursuing, or rejecting any of it.
- Expanding to panoramic awareness
Deliberately widen attention from its usual narrow focal point to include the full field of sensory experience simultaneously.
- Witnessing thoughts — observing without being them
Watch thoughts arise and pass without identifying with them — you are the awareness in which thoughts appear, not the thoughts themselves.
- Meeting emotion in open presence
When a difficult emotion arises during open monitoring, stay in the witnessing position rather than contracting or escaping.
- Shikantaza — "just sitting" in the Soto Zen tradition
Sit with complete presence and nothing to achieve — no goal, no technique, no observer separate from sitting.
- Sequencing focused attention and open monitoring
Use focused attention to settle the mind first, then release the object and shift to open monitoring — this is the standard contemplative sequence.
Related concepts
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
The core MBSR practices, the mechanisms, and where the evidence is genuinely strong
- Noting Practice, Made Practical
Label, observe, return — the noting technique and why it changes your relationship to thought
- Breath Counting Meditation
The count, the restart, and why simplicity is a feature, not a limitation
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