Emily Fletcher explains that nodding off during meditation isn't always sleep but a fourth state of consciousness where your body rests deeply while your mind stays alert. Watch for breathing changes: shallow breathing means you're still conscious, while deeper breathing suggests actual sleep. Beginners should accept these short episodes as part of the practice.
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I'll take over the interview. Like, hi, everyone, I'm Vishen Lakhiani.
Welcome to Mindvalley.
Did I fall asleep?
I love it. No, you weren't sleeping. I think you were transcending. Yeah, that was awesome.
So did you. Wait, did you ask us to wake up?
I did.
Okay.
That's awesome.
I'm gonna call that a big success. Okay, so that's maybe my favorite thing that's ever happened in an interview. So.
No, that was amazing. Let's keep all of that. No, for real. That's so good. And it's good. It shows people.
I thought you were kind of like, doing on purpose.
Yeah, it's great.
So obviously I'm embarrassed there. So I fell asleep. And even me, who meditates, like, all the time, I fell asleep on that one.
No, but that.
Honestly. So let's talk about this.
Okay.
This is big.
A lot of people think, especially when they start this style of meditation, they think that they're falling asleep. But actually what you are falling into is that fourth state of consciousness, where the right and left hemispheres of the brain are functioning in unison and there's an alertness, but your body is getting very deep breaths. There's no way you fell asleep in.
The three minutes that our eyes were closed.
And when I was watching, like, I would actually be able to hear. If you were to fall asleep, your.
Breathing would have changed and it would have gone.
But that didn't happen. Your breathing was still very shallow, which.
Means that your mind was alert, because.
Again, if we go back 10,000 years ago, nature won't let you be in blackout sleep state and resting as deeply as you were just then, physically at the same time, because you'd be an evolutionary liability. Basically, when we're sleeping, brain is chilling, so body has to be on guard. When we're meditating, body's chilling, brain is on guard. So what was happening right there is that you were actually quite alert, but.
Your body was getting deep rest, which is beautiful.
And probably just because you're used to.
Meditating for 30 minutes.
That was just the tip of the iceberg for you. You were ready to dive in. And yet I'm doing this for people who are starting a medit. Practice was a bit more abbreviated. But I actually think this is such a beautiful, happy accident because I think so many people are going to learn, right?
Because falling asleep is one of the biggest challenges that people have. So if people are falling asleep then you're saying it is.
Okay, well, I think what I'm saying is that in the beginning of a meditation practice, people think that they're falling asleep. What's actually happening is that they're falling.
Into this transcendence or this fourth state of consciousness.
So the thing to know here is that every time the brain transitions between waking and sleeping, you move through a 30 second window of transcendence that can feel very much like sleep. Sleep. So in the beginning, yes, give yourself full permission to just fall into that feeling and worst case scenario, you take a five minute little power nap and then you feel better afterwards.
