Question: “If meditation makes me sleepy, does that mean I am doing it wrong?”
No. Almost every beginner will feel sleepy or fall asleep when they first begin a meditation practice. There are a couple of things you can do.
First, meditation is not restricted to just sitting down crossed-legged and trying to clear your mind. Meditation can be anything. The point of meditation, for now, is awareness. So you can practice walking meditation, or meditation as you cook, garden, fold laundry, clean dishes, or while doing a hobby. It’s about being present with yourself, being aware of your breath, your body and thoughts. We want to become experts of our own mind, so being aware of how our mind works, thinks and reacts.
Second, we need an object of concentration. Something that will help us keep our focus. Whether it’s a statue, an image, a rock, whatever. Find something to place in front of you looking down at about a 60 degree angle or so. Eyes should be only slightly open, just enough to see our object so that surrounding things don’t distract us if the eyes are open all the way. And for right now, we don’t want to close them all the way either for the obvious reason of falling asleep.
An object of concentration can also be our breath. The most traditional approach. Using the breath to concentrate is a great tool for several reasons. The main reason is that it’s kinda of a trap for losing concentration, because if we concentrate on counting our breath from 1 to 10 and while counting we lose count or get distracted, we will hopefully automatically become aware that we lost count, our concentration, and start back at 1 again. This article should help too.
Smile and be well!