I’m so miserable lol. Emotions are confusing me and making me suffer. I know that they are transient, but their pull is too strong and I have a hard time dealing.
Meditation is the cure, I know it is. I have to have faith in that to keep on going.
But I skip many sessions and practice half heartedly because of my high levels of impatience and restlessness that I feel.
Is there anything I can do specifically to fix those issues, of restlessness and impatience?
Don’t blame impatience and restlessness for missing yoga. Start there.
Now, sit down and shut up 
[OM]
Don’t get caught in this vicious circle. To break it all you have to do is develop some discipline in your practice, which will allow momentum to form and carry you out of the hole.
So stop thinking, sit down and shut up - Dogboy 2015
Hi Reality 11,
You are stronger! Don’t let the emotions and thoughts win from YOU…
Ask yourself " why am I practice AYP"
What helped me in difficult restless times, yoga nidra & cosmic samyama. On the left side, key lesson 299.
It was before I found AYP, I had a guided yoga nidra which was very helpfull at those days…
Better days will follow, don’t be to harsh on yourself, practice with love…
Same advice from me, based on my own experience : life began to improve as yoga twice a day became a habit.
So, first you have to create a habit.
For me, using a simple app to monitor my sits was very useful.
Be kind to yourself reality11.
The restlessness and impatience are the results of events in the past that were not your fault. Probably nobody’s fault. Maybe they seemed a good way to react then, when you didn’t have yoga in your life. Now you do have yoga and things will slowly change.
Do your sits for the length of time you have assigned. If all you get during that time is restless and impatience, hold them in awareness. In loving awareness if you can. They are part of you and they deserve a hearing. For as long as they are there. Don’t fight reality, remember? What is, is.
And don’t forget those grounding activities. Self-pacing might be an issue too, if you feel rough outside practices.
All the best.
Thank you for the kind words. I practiced last night and this morning after not practicing for a long time and my mind feels a lot better already.
I have a habit of slowly slipping from good routines and going back to bad ones. I hope I have the strength to keep doing this.
Could it have been overload that stopped you from parcticing?
It’s better to do less, expect less, but keep the practice steady.
Very important to keep the meditation going. The energy cultivation side of things can wait, but the meditation will give you the inner silence that is the foundation of everything.
Take care.
I don’t think I overloaded. I just gradually became more attached to materialistic thoughts and lost my drive to practice. Now I am experiencing the consequences of materialism and my desire is back. I hope I never forget again of what happens when I indulge my thoughts.
You don’t want to suppress your thoughts, however. The point is to let them happen, and let them finish and pass.
Right, I hear and read that a lot. And it’s a bit confusing.
So let’s say I’m focusing on the mantra. Then a very strong emotion and a thought pops up. So I have a choice of redirecting my attention away from the pull of that thought and back to my mantra. But do I, instead, allow my attention to stay on that thought while simultaneously keeping my attention on my mantra, with the knowledge that the thought will eventually fade?
I read from previous posts that the general advice in this situation is to gently return to the mantra. But to me, this seems to be a form of suppressing the thought. Because the thought wants to blossom and take over, but I am redirecting my attention, albeit gently, and not allowing the thought to turn into more thoughts and more emotions.
Once you have gotten comfortable, slowly close your eyes. You will notice thoughts, streams of thoughts. That is fine. Just observe them without minding them. After about a minute, gently introduce the thought …I AM… and begin to repeat it easily and effortlessly in your mind. If your mind wanders off into other thoughts, you will eventually realize this has happened. Don’t be concerned about it. It is natural. When you realize you are not repeating the mantra, gently go back to it. This is all you have to do. Easily repeat the mantra silently inside. When you realize you are not thinking it, then easily come back to it. The goal is not to stay on it. The goal is to follow the simple procedure of thinking the mantra, losing it, and coming back to it when you find you have lost it. Do not resist if the mantra tends to become less distinct. Thinking the mantra does not have to be with clear pronunciation. I AM can be experienced at many levels in your mind and nervous system. When you come back to it, come back to a level that is comfortable, not straining for either a clear or fuzzy pronunciation.
Do this procedure for twenty minutes, and, then, with your eyes closed, take a few minutes to rest before you get up.
This practice is to be done twice each day, before you start your day and before you begin your evening activities. It is best done before meals, as digestion can interfere with the process of meditation. Make a commitment to yourself to do it for a few months. Give it some time… ‘Yogani’ [OM]
Edit: The only way is practice, practice, practice…every day with
I wouldn’t say ‘gently favouring’ another thought over the one that has just popped into your mind is suppression. It really depends how much emotional tension accompanies a thought - if the mind is not hang up on it, then it is easily replaced by a new though (the mantra). If you have to force yourself to repeat the mantra while impatience and irritability are building up, then yes, that is suppression. In that case you follow the instructions in lesson 15, 4th paragraph:
“Sometimes physical discomfort can happen during meditation. This is usually a symptom of the release of obstructions in the nervous system. If it interferes with the easy process of meditation, then pause with the mantra and allow the attention to be drawn to the physical discomfort. Just be with it for a while. Usually, this will dissolve the discomfort naturally. Once it does, go back to the mantra and continue your meditation until your time is up. Count the time you spent with your attention on the physical discomfort as part of your meditation time. If the sensation does not dissolve, lie down for while, until the sensation subsides. It is a good thing. A big obstruction is going. Let it go easily, naturally. The same procedure applies if you are overcome with a barrage of overbearing thoughts, which may or may not be accompanied by physical sensations. If you can’t easily go back to the mantra, just be with the thoughts until they dissipate enough so you can easily pick up the mantra again. Remember, meditation is not a fight with physical or mental activity we may have.”
Hi there,
A couple of things I can suggest. I too have had my fair share of emotions in the last few months and I can understand the pull. The hardest thing for me was to disconnect - from the emotion, from the issue, from the person, from the situation. It was really, really hard to disconnect from it all. But once I did (with a lot of persistence) it changed everything. And the emotions, well they would still rise up if I fed them, but I don’t. I can see it all more clearly from a distance. It’s easier said than done to ‘disconnect’ but is very effective.
With the meditation, I’ve seen this saying going around (not this exactly, but something to this effect):
Meditate every day for 1/2 an hour. If you’re too busy to meditate, meditate for an hour instead.
It’s totally ok to feel restless and impatient. It really is! It is normal! So perhaps instead of trying to fix it, just sit in your meditation, give yourself half an hour when you have permission to not have to solve your problems, and just sit there. And if you feel restless or impatient, that’s ok too, just observe it and come back to the focus of your meditation, whatever that may be.
If all you can manage is half-hearted, that’s ok. I believe the main thing is showing up for the meditation in the first place. What happens in the session is of lesser importance.
Wishing you all the best.
Thanks everyone. I guess I’ll just have to have faith that I am making progress, even if my 70% of my session consists of getting lost in my thoughts and losing the mantra.
I do feel much much better today than a couple days ago though. I’m really glad I picked my practice back up.
Hey reality11. I have the same thing every now and then. I feel clarity slowly slipping away.
What’s helpful is to do some routine activities that I usually do (vacuuming, washing up, or whatever) and take some breaks in that. I’ll stop for a minute or two and take some air in, maybe do a couple of asanas.
Can do it with a lot of activities; not all, mind you 
Pleasure is not the goal of this, is it?
Yesterday during spinal breathing, I started feeling orgasmic feelings. I was gasping and couldn’t breath normally and it felt really good. But once that’s over, my mind was still distracted and I still felt the emotion of dissatisfaction with my life.
I never felt that type of pleasure during spinal breathing before, and it was like a milestone for me. But will that type of pleasure help me, or might it actually hurt me by making me crave for it?
No attachments. Let them go like passing clouds.
Hi reality11
You may want to review Lessons 78 and 94:
http://www.aypsite.org/78.html
http://www.aypsite.org/94.html
Thank you. I wasn’t able to reach that same pleasurable state in my next few sessions, and I can’t help but feel disappointment, but like the lessons said I shouldn’t be seeking them anyway.