1. Physical Sensations Related to Breathing and Energy
👉 Extreme slowing of breath: As meditation deepens, breathing naturally becomes so subtle that you may not even realize you are breathing. It may feel as though you are breathing through your lower abdomen (danjeon) or through the pores of your entire skin, rather than your chest.
👉 Sensations of heat and warm energy: You may experience a strong sense of warmth rising and falling along your spine, or a soothing heat spreading throughout your body as circulation reaches your fingertips and toes.
👉 Tremors and subtle vibrations (Pīti): A gentle, pleasant shiver flows through the whole body, or you feel a fluid energy as if every single cell is vibrating subtly.
2. Changes in Spatial Awareness and Weight
👉 Softening of body boundaries: The feeling of skin separating you from the outer space becomes faint, making it feel as if you are dissolving into the air or becoming one with the surrounding space.
👉 Polarization of weight:
= Weightlessness: Your body feels light as a feather, or you experience an illusion of floating gently in the air.
= Heavy grounding: Conversely, you experience a deep sense of stability, as if your body is rooted firmly into the floor like a heavy rock.
👉 Sensation of expansion or contraction: Even with your eyes closed, you may feel as though your body has shrunk to the size of a finger, or expanded enough to fill the entire room.
3. Autonomic Nervous System & Deep Muscle Relaxation
👉 Awareness and release of subtle tension: Subtle tension in the jaw, shoulders, eyes, or internal organs—unnoticed during daily life—becomes clear, and you feel that tension gently melting away with each exhalation.
👉 Reflexive involuntary responses: As accumulated stress and tension release from the subconscious, your body may twitch naturally, or deep sighs, tears, and yawns may burst out like a cough.
👉 Deep sense of recovery: Even after a short meditation, you feel a sense of clarity and lightness, as if every cell in your body has been reset, much like after hours of deep sleep.
4. Alterations in Visual and Auditory Perception
👉 Awareness of inner light: Despite having your eyes closed, you may see a soft bright light, blue light, or a tunnel-like light expanding from between your eyebrows (the third eye area) or inside your head.
👉 Internal sound: As external noise fades, you may perceive a low humming sound similar to the resonance of a singing bowl, the sound of ocean waves, or a high-frequency subtle sound of silence inside your ears.
It is said that people who have practiced meditation for a long time experience various physical sensations and changes, as described above.
Since I haven't been meditating for very long, I haven't had a wide array of experiences yet. In fact, I wasn't meditating to seek any specific experience in the first place, so I didn't even know that unique phenomena could accompany meditation.
However, as time passed, I began to have small, subtle experiences of my own. Occasionally, when I was deeply focused, I would feel chills or fine vibrations—just like what others had described. Now, I naturally feel them every time I meditate. About a month or two ago, I started feeling a subtle vibration like energy spreading behind my back. When I focused my mind on that spot, the vibration gently expanded across my back.
At times, as my breathing became extremely subtle, my body felt so light that it almost felt like floating. Moments like those brought me immense peace and a wonderful sense of calm.
Then one day, after finishing my meditation nicely, I went to bed and fell asleep right away. (As a side note, I usually sleep very well after meditating.) However, that night I woke up in the middle of the night, and when I checked the clock, it was just past 3:00 AM.
Since I was already awake, I used the restroom and tried to go back to sleep. But sleep didn't come easily, so I sat up and closed my eyes for a moment. The moment I closed my eyes, starlight unfolded across a dark night sky, and unexpectedly, a satellite appeared right in front of my eyes.
Surprised, thinking "What is this?", I opened my eyes and rubbed them with my hands. Thinking I must have seen something wrong, I closed my eyes again, but this time three satellites appeared.
I opened my eyes again, rubbed them, and carefully closed them once more. Yet, the exact same phenomenon repeated itself. I felt completely bewildered and terrified by this unfamiliar experience, unable to tell whether I was inside the universe or if I myself was the universe. In the end, I lay straight down, pulled the blanket over my head, and squeezed my eyes shut tight.
Only then did everything disappear. Perhaps because the fear triggered anxiety, I couldn't fall back asleep that night and ended up staying wide awake until morning.
Even now, I cannot forget that incomprehensible experience and the lingering image of cosmic space that unfolded before my eyes.
Since the room was dark, an afterimage of light could certainly look like starlight when I closed my eyes. But why on earth was it a satellite? No matter how much I reflect on it, it remains a truly ironic and mysterious event.
I do not know what kind of experiences await me in the future, but I hope that next time, instead of being afraid, I will have the courage to calmly observe it until the end.
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