“I Can’t Meditate.” Why Meditation is a Collective Struggle

“I can’t meditate.” It’s said all the time.

“I can’t focus on my breath,” is a runner up.

People say this with embarrassment, frustration, or quiet defeat. They aren’t lazy. They want the peace meditation promises—but when they sit, their minds explode with noise.

Meditative ability is crucial for the process of emotional regulation and personal liberation. If we want to regulate our nervous system from flight/fight (or a low but persistent anxiousness) toward a calmer state, we need to practice observing our thoughts.

When we stay aware of the quality of our thoughts—and choose whether to act on them, edit them, or let them go—we make clearer decisions and enjoy life more. When we learn to see an idea arise without judgment or attachment to being right or wrong, we create space to learn, grow, and flow.

Why is meditation such a collective struggle?

Three reasons.

First: neurotypical approaches may ignore neurodiversity.

In my 8-week Self-Love course we practice different forms of meditation, such as metta (loving kindness), Emotional Freedom Technique (tapping on meridian points on the body), and havening. In every group, at least 1 person shares that it’s too hard to close their eyes and focus. Their thoughts are racing to escape or plunging into self-attack.

Many have ADHD or other neuro challenges and fidget during the meditations.

Others have had so much exposure to mental stimulation and/or trauma that slowing down is too hard. It’s not just being in complete quiet that’s hard; even with guided talking, slowing down their thinking is too hard.

I understand. I have compassion.

Roughly 20% of the global population is thought to be neurodiverse. Being born neurodiverse isn’t bad—there are many gifts. But when sitting meditation is taught for neurotypical minds, neurodivergent people may feel they are failing. I often adapt practices for various neurologies, sometimes making them more active—for example, speaking faster or spending less time lingering in bodily sensations.

Others find intentional whole body movement easier than sitting. Tai chi, Qi Gong, and other movement forms encourage meditative minds. Gabrielle Roth, the founder of 5Rhythms movement meditation, philosophizes, "The fastest way to still the mind is to move the body."

Second: unhealed, compounding trauma.

Approximately 17% of adults in the USA have an Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) score of 4 or more, indicating high exposure to childhood trauma. An ACE score of 4+ is strongly linked to increased risks for chronic disease, mental illness, and social challenges. Research shows that nearly two-thirds of adults have experienced at least one ACE. (Thanks to Dr. Nadine Burke Harris for seminal research on this.)

For folks who’ve had difficult experiences with their hearts and breath, we can use other meditation objects to practice, such as the lines of the palm or a candle flame (like yogic tatrek practice).

Because for some people, focusing on the breath is activating, not calming.

We carry collective trauma around the freedom to breathe and to live. He was traumatized with getting hit in the mouth, or her mouth was forcibly covered to prevent yelling for help. Black people have struggled to breathe, Jewish ancestors had to breathe quietly to survive, and all shades of people have present-day and historical memories of oppression (often by whites).

Also, there seems to be more pervasive ongoing psychological trauma now than 1,000 years ago, which leaves long lasting effects on the nervous system’s inability to regulate back to calm. While in pre-modern history people struggled primarily for physical survival, we are struggling today for neuro-survival.

Because trauma is partly,

“What happened to you,”

but more so,

“Who was there for you?”

When we have support, a potentially traumatic event isn’t traumatic–- or we recover faster. But nowadays in the USA, our extended families are fragmented. Many relatives are scattered, transient, too-busy, and sometimes uncompassionate. In our communities, the answer has become,

“Not nearly the number of kind adults I needed.”

And for some kids, the answer is,

“Not even one.”

People want a free breath. But it can be laced with pain.

Third: Our Shrinking Attention Span

“I just can’t stay focused.”

Meditation =

choosing a focus (breath, mantra, object or other anchor) and keeping that focus with the intention of training the brain to stay aware of mental activity and let go of thought trails pulling us into absorption elsewhere. When the mind wanders, we bring it back to the present.

Some people will set an intention to come back to their meditation object but 20 minutes pass without realizing they’ve left focus. The mind races around, echoing the rapid shifts it’s learned from screens- even without the screen there.

Within the hypermind generation, some people can’t even focus on watching an action movie; they get bored just watching the movie and toggle between the movie and scrolling on their phone.

Many people may never try or even care about meditation. But some do. They crave peace, so they show up to try– and it’s mentally painful.

The age of technology has offered amazing connections, along with disconnection.

For example:

• the gay teenager in red rural America has access to support and sanity;

• a burned out mother gets empathy from a chatbot of instead of raging at her children;

• a brilliant poor person with a stellar idea can raise money on GoFundMe.

  
  

At the same time, any middle school therapist will tell you what online bullying, porn exposure and other internet challenges have done- contributing to low self-esteem and increase in youth suicide. Teens who stay alive often live with extremely high anxiety. (Check out the book, The Anxious Generation).

Small movements sprout up, such as Wait til 8^th (wait to give your child a smartphone until the end of 8^th grade to prolong health and delay psychological and academic problems). But where are our children headed? How many will end up in meditation centers, seeking peace, and finding that… they can’t meditate?

Sure, there’s a common teaching, “As long as you’re on the cushion, that’s meditation.”

Meaning: if you are trying to watch your thoughts or return to a focus object/subject, you are meditating. Even if the mind wanders 500 times, the practice is to return to awareness over and over again.

However, many minds have become so jumpy, so scattered, so filled with self-hate, that sitting on a cushion silently for 30- or even 15 minutes is unbearable. Their thoughts rip them away or shatter them inside.

So it’s not just children, and it’s not just the neurodiverse or traumatized who struggle to meditate.

It’s many of us.

One of my best friends spent the first 45 years of his life voraciously reading tomes. He had no internet. He also spent 25 years in regular meditation. Then after 10 years of cell phone scrolling, he now struggles to keep his mind focused on a novel. After a decade of social media, he lost the ability to follow a story without his mind jumping like a wild horse to other thoughts.

He had to detox to get his meditative mind back.

I can’t say I’m much better. While writing my book in 2026, I’m jumping in and out of email and other tasks, and have more trouble focusing than I did writing my master’s thesis 20 years ago.

We can’t change the traumas that happened to us, nor how typical or diverse our brains are.

But we can change one thing:

If we want to meditate more, we need to internet less.

I’m using “internet” as a verb, because internet use actively changes our brains. Books like Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, explains the enormous effects of the digital stimulation on the brain’s neurotransmitters.

Yet most of our lives are inextricably dependent upon the internet.

Giant questions dance.

1. Will our minds adapt?

Could our minds move past the quick-dopamine hit addictions into something completely new? Or will we depend on increasing medication to balance out the anxiety and depression amplified by our time on the internet? As of 2023, 18% of the USA population was depressed and 11% were on anti-depressants. 19% reported anxiety. Will we ever be able to regulate our nervous systems with screen-dependent lives that lack in sufficient connection with nature?

2. How can the deep seeker achieve deep stillness, to become a teacher of meditation?

Many meditative traditions believe that an expert teacher or guru is critical for the lay people or novice meditators to tap into the kind of brain states that long-term practitioners achieve.

Research on the minds of meditation practitioners shows they are able to access deeper brain states such as theta waves, which are most common in deep relaxation, daydreaming, and between sleep and awake. I wonder if we’ll be able to achieve theta waves or even alpha waves (a calm state) a few decades from now, when most of us have been rewired.

What will lose if we lose minds capable of deep stillness– that pierce through this plane of reality into another eternally true reality? Perhaps the children being raised in Waldorf schools, Montessori classrooms, and homeschooling families who opt out of the internet and chaotic hyper-busyness will maintain access to the inner steady light.

Even these children are exposed to screen time, stress, and anxiety.

If humanity’s contemplative traditions depend on lineages—as they have for over 2,000 years—we will still need teachers able to pass down silsilas, transmissions, and wisdom. Will some of our children be able to keep the universal essence of truth accessible for the rest of humanity to come?

The Sivananda yoga teaching says it only takes 1 teacher to keep the potential for awakening alive for the whole planet. Perhaps that gives hope.

3. How can the average human meditate today?

Many of us suffer mentally. The average human today is exposed not only to their own trauma, but also- via the internet– to continual violence, war, and crisis.

We are simultaneously experiencing amped up nervous systems and the dullification of our mental hemispheres.

20 years ago in my graduate school, discussions about global injustice focused on the the northern hemisphere dominating the Southern hemisphere. That remains important. We need fair-trade and social justice movements . But we also have a problem in the hemispheres of our brain- we are overstimulated by endless digital input.

We might even research the injustice we cause to ourselves by watching too much violence on Netflix.

We unfairly trade leisure time for overstimulation time.

We don’t want to hide under a rock or shirk civic responsibilities to create a better world. Yet it’s overwhelming to decide where to put our attention and efforts, and when to “tap out” and turn off the news.

When we do rest, it often involves more screens.

What we need is more human contact and peaceful presence.

Many yoga retreats ban internet use in public spaces, knowing that high-speed image flashing and content are not conducive for meditation. If we are even able to unplug from the internet for the rest of our lifetimes, could we reset our minds enough to unwind the damage it has already done?

I make ongoing calls to my self to wake up and do everything I can to reduce time online. But many of us feel trapped by work demands that require significant amounts of time on email. Then we’re bombarded by ads, news alerts, and various updates and rabbit holes.

Meditation is a collective struggle because we are neurodiverse in a neurotypical world, overly traumatized, or addicted to flashing screens.

Where do we go from here?

We can do everything possible to stay human.

To start meditating:

• Start short: 5 minutes of sitting meditation a day.

• Start easy and pleasy (focus on a pleasing object: a rose, a plant, or something cute).

• Be prepared if distressing thoughts arise and have a plan (ex. a friend or therapist or self-soothing strategies).

• Try movement meditation is sitting does more harm than good.

To balance work needs:

• Schedule logistical meetings for the phone instead of Zoom if they don’t require facial expressions. Plan recurring, in-person meetings instead of long emails.

• Instead of typing, I draft my newsletters using a voice to text app while walking the prairie and connect to the native grasses and big open sky.

• Those of us in small business communicate constantly online. Can we afford to hire people for digital tasks? Can we afford not to, if we yearn to spend more time nurturing the channels of the heart, and strengthening our spiritual liberation?

For calmer, healthier weekends:

• Join me in a weekly 24 screenfast– turning off phone and computer. Let’s be present here and now.

• Find trauma-informed movement classes or neurodiversity-affirming groups.

• Create new opportunities for our communities to gather in person.

As a teenager, we hosted an annual Neighborhood Night Out where everybody was invited to go to their local park and play games like ring toss, and to share snacks and conversation. Imagine if this wasn’t once a year, but every weekend. We get together in person to connect and celebrate the gift of embodied life.

Because we’re so out of practice with respectful collaboration– and so used to competitive one-upping and dismissive behavior– we might need to have stellar games that elicit joy and goodwill from people, and a few community rules that remind us how to be together.

A couple of trained facilitators could help hold the space well.

This may sound extreme, but some folks don’t know how to be kind, curious, and balanced anymore. They struggle to relate with maturity. Some have arrogance about “being right.” Other people have extreme social anxiety about “doing it right and being liked.” Clients come to me asking, “How do I respond to this text? What do I say? I don’t know what to do to keep this friendship.” It’s shocking, but also not surprising if you consider the fact that comedy TV and movies often show people making fun of each other as the main form of humor.

How dire is it?

Through nonviolent communication training, I learned that life is a lot sweeter when we remove the word “should: and approach everything like a perspective and an invitation.

And yet, I might dare to say...

We need to get off the screen and into the wild,

away from the rapidification of mental reactivity and into the receptive engagement of calm.

If we want to preserve an ability to meditate, stay aware, and reach alpha waves– and hold hope for theta, where intuition and creativity thrive.

Would you join me?

Feel free to write to me:

Which of the “stay human” strategies have you tried– or want to try?

What is meditation like for you?

🌷 I'D LOVE TO INCLUDE ANY OF YOUR QUESTIONS. PLEASE WRITE ME. :)

© Shannon Gorres, 2025. Written by a human, not AI or chatGPT. Please contact me to request permission before sharing. I will give you permission to share sections of it when you include "by Shannon Gorres, www.DivineNatureTherapy.com"