Overcoming the Hindrances
A Practical Guide
In a companion essay, I explored why the five hindrances are such useful tools for meditation practice. This essay focuses on the practical side: how to recognise each hindrance and what to do about it when it arises.
The five hindrances are: sensual desire, aversion, dullness, restlessness, and doubt. They’re familiar moods, arising both in meditation and in daily life. Before examining each hindrance individually, it’s worth understanding some general principles about how they work and how to work with them.
How the Hindrances Work
The hindrances don’t just distract us; they actively weaken our judgement, making it hard to see the way out of them. They can be weak or strong, and when weak they’re harder to spot but much easier to deal with - like a small fire before it becomes a raging inferno. This is why being prepared in advance is so valuable.
The hindrances have three aspects: a mood in the mind, thoughts that arise from it, and physical sensations. The mood is the essence of the hindrance. It generates thoughts that reinforce it, which in turn strengthen the mood, creating a vicious circle. Both mood and thoughts also affect the body.
With some hindrances, certain aspects are more noticeable than others. We’re all familiar with the mood of anger, for instance. We know what rage feels like, and also what mild irritation feels like. With doubt, by contrast, the thoughts are what we tend to notice first, whilst the mood itself can be quite elusive.
What matters is that we can work with any of these three aspects. Sometimes it’s easier to deal with the thoughts directly, sometimes with observing the mood, and sometimes by being mindful of the feeling in the body.
The Basic Strategy: Don’t Feed Them
The Buddha said that hindrances only persist if they are nourished. If we stop feeding them, they die away. They arise and strengthen through inappropriate attention: when a thought arises and we keep focusing on it, dwelling on it, letting it build. The thought itself isn’t the problem; all sorts of thoughts arise naturally, some wholesome, some unwholesome. It’s the continued attention we give them that feeds the hindrances.
This is the core strategy for working with all the hindrances: don’t nourish them. When a thought of irritation comes into your mind, if you just note it and let it go, there’s no real problem. It will soon die away. But if you start brooding on it, within minutes you can work yourself into a fury over something that happened weeks, or even years, ago.
A Note on Method
There are many different meditation methods, but for simplicity’s sake I’ll assume we’re doing mindfulness of breathing, aiming to calm the mind and strengthen mindfulness and concentration. The basic method is simple: put your attention on the breath, and when you notice your mind has wandered, bring it back.
An important thing to understand: your mind wanders through lack of mindfulness, but at the point you notice your mind has wandered, it means mindfulness has returned. So rather than being discouraged when you notice your mind has been wandering, recognise this as a cause for celebration: “I’m back. I’ve remembered again. Now I can go back to the breath.”
It’s not a disaster if two seconds later your mind has wandered again, and you don’t realise it for another ten minutes. The important thing is that you actually make the effort to return to the breath whenever you notice. If you think, “I’ve drifted off, but let me just carry on with that train of thought because it’s rather interesting,” you’re not training your mind to return to the breath, you’re training it to follow distractions.
Initially, improvement shows itself in shorter periods of distraction, not longer periods of focus. Later on the attention stays put for longer strethes, and this is when the meditation really improves noticeably. So aim to sustain your attention, but don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t happen at first.
If it’s that simple, why learn about the hindrances? That’s what the companion essay explores. For now, let’s assume you’re convinced they’re worth knowing about, and examine each one in turn.
Sensual Desire (Kāmacchanda)
What It Is
Sensual desire ranges from subtle wanting or a slight sense of discontent to powerful greed or lust. This isn’t limited to obviously sensual thoughts like food or sex. When your mind begins to calm in meditation, you often get pleasant streams of thought wandering here and there. You feel fairly content. If you indulge in those thought-streams - just enjoying the process of thinking - that’s kāmacchanda too.
More precisely, the Pali term means consent to sensual desire. The problem isn’t so much that desire arises - that’s natural - but that we agree to it, that we give it permission to continue.
How to Recognise It
Thoughts: You find yourself thinking about meals, loved ones, plans for later. You may notice, but then think, “Let me just finish that thought, it’s quite useful, I need to think about it for tomorrow.” Those brilliant ideas that arise in meditation are tempting you away from the practice.
The mood: A sense of wanting, of being drawn towards pleasant thoughts or sensations. Quite a pleasant mood. When your mind calms down a bit, you get streams of thought, and you’re fairly happy, but you’re indulging in thinking rather than staying with the breath.
Physical sensations: A pleasant, relaxed feeling. Perhaps a sense of anticipation.
The Trap
Sensual desire feels pleasant, so we naturally want to indulge. When the pull towards these thoughts—food, a loved one, that fascinating idea—becomes too strong, you simply can’t wrench your mind back to the breath.
You might think, “I can think about that later.” But you must trust that if it’s important, you’ll remember. If you have sati (mindfulness), which also means memory, you will remember when the time comes. If you think with mindfulness, “Tomorrow when I get home, as soon as I get in, I must do such and such,” then when you open your door the next day, the memory will return: “First thing, I must do this.” That’s what happens when you have sati. So trust the process: now is not the time to think about this or that. Those brilliant ideas can wait.
What to Do About It
Primary antidote: The classical antidote to sensual desire is asubha meditation—reflection on the unbeautiful aspects of things. This might sound peculiar, but it’s surprisingly effective.
The most well-known form is contemplation of the thirty-two parts of the body: “In this body there are: head hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones…” and so on. The exact number of parts isn’t important; it’s just a framework to focus your mind. Just as someone opening a sack and examining the contents might think, “Right, we’ve got mung beans, kidney beans, rice, lentils…”, in the same way, you just note what’s there in your body, neither attractive nor repulsive.
The outside of a body appears attractive to us; the inside, we tend to find unattractive. But both responses are forms of delusion. The practice helps develop a more balanced, realistic view.
We’re not trying to generate disgust or revulsion, but dispassion. That word captures the result well: you’re no longer fascinated by or feeling passionate about sensual pleasures. The mind simply calms. A kind of equanimity develops. Surprisingly, this meditation doesn’t only counter lust; it also reduces desire for food and sensual pleasures more generally.
Even occasional reflection on the thirty-two parts can help. It creates a little more distance, a little less urgency in our relationship with sensual desire. A number of years ago there was an exhibition that travelled the world and caused quite a stir - Body Worlds. That would actually be quite a good thing to contemplate. There’s even a ‘coffee table book’ that goes with it.
Supporting practices:
Guarding the sense doors: This means not seizing upon attractive features, not dwelling on beautiful details, not elaborating stories around what you see or hear. When something beautiful appears, you simply see it and let it go. If you don’t delight in attractive sights and sounds, if you’re not attached to them or welcoming them in, then that delight ceases to arise. Without delight, there’s no bondage. You’re on guard against these things, watching out for them like a doorman who knows not to let troublesome characters into the establishment.
Other reflections: Remind yourself that sense pleasures give little satisfaction but involve considerable drawbacks, and these far outweigh the enjoyment. That what appears pleasant now often conceals future suffering. The Buddha compared this hindrance to being in debt. Think of drug addiction, overeating, or eating unhealthily - we know that we have to pay for our overindulgence later, perhaps just in a larger waistline, or type 2 diabetes.
Moderation in eating: The Buddha advised taking food after wise consideration, not for enjoyment or pride, but only to maintain the body, avoid harm, and support the practice.
Ill-Will / Aversion (Vyāpāda)
What It Is
Ill-will ranges from slight irritation to rage and hatred. The faint discomfort you feel just before shifting your body in meditation: that’s aversion in a very mild form. You may not even be fully aware of it, but it’s there; otherwise you wouldn’t need to move.
At the other extreme lies road rage or fury. Yet it’s the same mood, merely stronger. The more you allow ill-will to develop, the stronger it becomes. What starts as mild irritation can escalate to rage.
A common pattern: you’re reminded of an incident that annoyed you slightly. A mild sense of irritation arises as you remember it. If you begin brooding on it, within minutes you can be furious about something that occurred long ago. It began as slight irritation and developed into full-blown anger through inappropriate attention.
How to Recognise It
The mood: Discomfort, annoyance, negativity. This is probably the easiest of the hindrances to recognise as a mood. We all know what anger or a bad mood feel like.
Thoughts: Negative and fault-finding. Your mind takes on a critical, grumbling quality, gravitating towards negative interpretations of events. When someone speaks, you tend towards the most critical way to understand them. In a bad mood, everything becomes annoying; the very same things that seem perfectly fine when you’re in good spirits irritate you when you’re out of sorts.
These negative thoughts reinforce the mood, and the mood generates more negative thoughts. They feed each other in a vicious cycle. The chain of association can be remarkably trivial: a broom leaning against a wall reminds you of yesterday’s sweeping, which reminds you of something someone said, and very quickly you’re genuinely annoyed about whose turn it is to sweep.
Physical sensations: Anger produces quite strong sensations. You feel it in your throat, your chest. There’s tension in the body.
The Trap
Brooding feels satisfying. There’s a perverse pleasure in rehearsing grievances. But it worsens your mood. It’s the worst thing you can do.
When people are angry, they sometimes don’t even recognise it. You might say, “You’re getting annoyed,” only for someone to retort angrily, “No I’m not!” When the hindrances are in the mind, they convince us that following the mood is actually the right thing to do. We want to tell that person exactly what we think of them.
What to Do About It
Primary antidote: The classical antidote to ill-will is mettā meditation: loving-kindness. This works remarkably well, especially if you’ve developed a mettā practice. It’s like a magic bullet. If you can generate the feeling of loving-kindness, the ill-will simply vanishes.
If you sit down to meditate and notice irritation, try switching to loving-kindness meditation for a few minutes. The change of focus usually softens the mood quickly. Once the ill-will has faded, you can return to your breath meditation. It can be tricky, though, if you haven’t practised metta before, so it’s well worth doing this kind of meditation regularly alongside your usual practice. The Buddha also spoke of many other benefits of loving-kindness—better sleep, a peaceful mind, even becoming more likable and easy to be around.
In everyday life, if you notice yourself becoming annoyed or angry, it’s far easier to address these feelings when they’re just starting than when they’ve intensified. If you arrive home from work and realise you’re quite annoyed, do some loving-kindness meditation. The principles work identically whether you’re formally meditating or simply going about your day.
The Buddha also taught meditations on compassion, sympathetic joy (happiness at others’ good fortune), and equanimity, all of which counter ill-will. You might find compassion easier to generate than loving-kindness, for instance.
Reflection on kamma:
Anger is like grasping glowing coals or a heated iron rod to throw at someone else: you’re the one who gets burnt. Or it’s like throwing a handful of dirt against the wind. It simply blows back into your own face. It harms you more than it harms anyone else.
In daily life: When strong negativity is present, simply knowing you’re irritated can be half the battle. In daily life, recognising you’re in a bad mood provides crucial distance. That awareness alone makes you less likely to lash out or respond with irritation.
Dullness (Thīna-middha)
What It Is
“Sloth and torpor” is the traditional translation, so you may come across that if you look the hindrances up elsewhere. We mean dullness of mind. It feels exactly like sleepiness, but there’s a crucial difference between actual physical tiredness and this mental dullness. Much of the time when we think we’re tired, it’s actually the mind in this state, without any physical basis. Think about when you’re doing something you really enjoy - you have plenty of energy. But when you’re bored, it’s very hard to keep your eyes open, even though you don’t actually need sleep.
It’s very difficult to tell physical tiredness from mental dullness. Having a regular sleep routine helps, so you know whether you’re genuinely short of sleep or not.
How to Recognise It
The core problem: When you’re dull, you don’t know you’re dull because you’re too dull to realise it. Have you ever been nodding off thinking, “I must turn the television off and go to bed,” but you’re too tired to do it? There’s only the vaguest awareness: “I need to stop this. I need to get up and do something else.” But you’re too dull to actually act on it.
Thoughts: “I want to go to sleep.” But often you’re nodding off before you even form that thought. Thoughts come slowly and are disjointed.
Physical sensations: Drowsing, nodding off. Drowsiness after meals is a common trigger. Heavy limbs.
This is one of the easiest hindrances to recognise. Not at the time, but in retrospect.
The Trap
Here’s the critical thing: when you’re nodding off, trying to concentrate on the breath is the worst thing you can do. It’s like counting sheep - a technique for falling asleep, not for waking up.
This is where understanding the enlightenment factors becomes useful. The Buddha taught seven enlightenment factors: mindfulness (which is useful in all situations), three energising factors, and three calming factors.
The energising factors are: investigation of states (dhamma-vicaya), rapture (pīti), and energy (viriya).
The calming factors are: tranquillity (passaddhi), concentration (samādhi), and equanimity.
The Buddha said that if the mind is agitated, it’s not a good time to try to develop the energising factors because it’s very difficult to calm the mind through energy and rapture. But also, if the mind is dull, it’s not a good time to try to develop the calming factors because it’s difficult to arouse energy using tranquillity, concentration, and equanimity.
When you’re agitated, counting your breaths can be helpful—it gives your mind something to anchor to. But that same technique is the worst thing when you’re dull. You need to know which hindrance you’re dealing with.
What to Do About It
The first thing the Buddha advised is to change your meditation object. Whatever you’re meditating on is sending you to sleep. Switch to something else.
for instance you could focus on sounds or body sensations instead of the breath when you’re dull. Anything more stimulating than that quiet, gentle rhythm of breathing.
Specific Suggestions:
Body sweeping: It’s a more active meditation and doesn’t send you to sleep as much.
Loving-kindness: This is energising.
Recollection of the Buddha, Dhamma, or Saṅgha: Bring to mind their qualities. Again, it’s more active, and if you have a lot of faith then just thinking of these is uplifting, and therefore energising.’
Walking meditation: Be conscious of what is before and behind you, with your senses turned inwards, your mind not going outwards. Walking meditation is used a lot in monasteries for this reason.
Chanting and reciting out loud: This can help rouse energy.
Physical actions: Get up and move around (briefly). Or go to somewhere brighter.
Establish the perception of light: imagine brightness filling your mind.
If nothing else works: Go to sleep, but do it deliberately. Lie down in the lion’s posture (on your right side), keeping in mind the thought of rising. When you wake, rise quickly. Don’t indulge in the enjoyment of lying down and sleep.
Motivational reflections can also rouse energy:
“I have to tread that path which the Buddhas and the Great Disciples have gone, but a lazy person cannot follow that path.”
“Today the effort should be made. Who knows if tomorrow Death will come?”
Find stirring recollections that work for you. The Buddha gave detailed advice on all this to Mahā-Moggallāna. See the link at the end.
Restlessness and Remorse (Uddhacca-kukkucca)
What It Is
Restlessness is agitation of mind. You can’t keep your mind on one thing. Note that the Pali term includes remorse, which points to why the Buddha said that virtue (sīla) is a prerequisite for meditation. It’s hard to calm your mind if you’re tormented by regrets.
How to Recognise It
Thoughts: “I want to do something else.” You’re thinking about other activities, other places. The mind jumps around from one thing to another.
The mood: Agitation, an inability to settle. Disatisfaction with being still and lack of desire to calm the mind.
Physical sensations: Your body feels restless. You want to keep shifting position. When sitting in meditation, you get the urge to adjust your posture, to move.
The Trap
When you’re restless, you want excitement. You want to keep shifting both your body and your thoughts. Indulging in this feeds the restlessness. Like all hindrances, restlessness weakens wisdom and tells us to do the opposite of what’s helpful. We want stimulation, but this only makes us more restless. At one extreme people can become ‘adrenaline addicts’, wanting the next exciting thing, which has to top what has come before.
This is perhaps more of a problem than in the past, as we all have the opportunity to distract ourselves at any time we wish through our phones, tabs and computers.
A scientific study that was done recently illustrates well how this hindrance makes fools of us. The subjects were asked to sit in a room for fifteen minutes with no phone, nothing to do. In one trial, they were given the option of sorting cards from one box to another - a task they knew was completely pointless. Most people preferred to do that than do nothing. In another trial, the subjects were instead given the option of administering painful (but not dangerous) electric shocks. About 40 per cent of subjects did so, simply to relieve the monotony!
The more we feed distraction, the more boring we find ordinary life. The more we indulge, the more painful it becomes to stop. But you have to stop at some point. When we do, it’s uncomfortable. That feeling is restlessness.
What to Do About It
Primary approach: For restlessness, there’s no magic solution like mettā for ill-will. The basic principle is gradual calming and not feeding the hindrance.
The Buddha gave an encouraging simile: it’s like someone who’s running. Rather than trying to stop dead, think: “I’m running. Why don’t I walk instead?” After walking: “Instead of walking, why don’t I stand still?” From standing still: “I could just sit down.”
Each more active state is replaced by something slightly more subtle. If the mind is very restless, rather than thinking “I’ll just go and sit now and watch the breath”—which doesn’t work—try doing something somewhat calmer than what you’ve been doing. Gardening, walking meditation, Tai Chi or Qigong—something meditative but still active. Things that bring the mind to a calmer state.
When sitting in meditation with a still active mind, perhaps give it something more to do. If doing breath meditation, counting the breaths gives your mind something extra to anchor to.
A very useful tip for posture: When you sit to meditate, allow yourself a few minutes to adjust your position—you might genuinely need to adjust it. But at some point within two or three minutes, decide: “Right, this is it. This is my posture for this session. It’s good enough. I’m not going to move again until the bell.”
Your mind may tell you “I just need to shift a bit.” That’s restlessness. Just as negative thoughts feed ill-will, shifting about feeds restlessness. Once you’re settled, don’t move, no matter how uncomfortable you feel. You’ll find that if you simply sit it out and carry on with the meditation, ignoring your body, you forget about it quite quickly. You probably weren’t actually that uncomfortable. It was just the hindrance.
All the hindrances express themselves physically, and how you respond with your body matters. This is particularly true of restlessness.
Doubt (Vicikicchā)
What It Is
Doubt is perhaps the most difficult hindrance to recognise because, unlike anger for instance, we tend to think of it only as a type of thought rather than also a mood. We think of sceptical thoughts: “Well I doubt that’s true.”
But like the other hindrances, doubt is fundamentally a mood, so the English word “doubt” doesn’t quite capture what the Pali word vicikicchā means. There’s a definite mood associated with doubt, but most of us have never noticed what that mood feels like.
I tell people to think about the feeling you got when you were doing a mathematics problem at school (some people may have to think back a long way!) and it just wouldn’t work out. You’ve done the sum and it doesn’t add up. You start getting really frustrated: “This doesn’t make sense!” That frustrated mood that overcomes your mind—that’s the feeling of doubt. A feeling of “It’s impossible. This just doesn’t work.” That frustrated, stuck feeling. The Buddha compared it to being lost in the wilderness. You don’t know where to go next.
How to Recognise It
The mood: Flat, dull, pointless, hopeless. Everything feels grey and uninspiring. The meditation that was going well suddenly feels completely lifeless.
Thoughts: These are often easier to spot than the mood:
- “What’s going wrong?”
- “The meditation’s gone wrong.”
- “Why? What am I doing wrong?”
- “This is a waste of time.”
- “This is hopeless, I can’t meditate.”
- “How can this be helpful?”
- “I’m no good at this.”
All doubting, questioning thoughts.
The Trap
Just like the other hindrances, doubt generates foolish thoughts. When you’re in the grip of a hindrance, the thoughts it generates aren’t wisdom speaking.
When you’re furious and thinking about saying something really nasty to someone, you know that’s not actually going to help, even though at the time it feels like a good idea. It’s the same with doubt.
You think “I can’t do this. This is pointless. This will never work.” The hindrance can make it feel hopeless to even try going back to the breath. It undermines your motivation at the root.
What to Do About It
Primary antidote: Recognition and not feeding it.
Doubt is best handled by recognising it for what it is and refusing to believe its stories. One of my teachers often says, “Don’t believe your mind.” With doubt, he suggests doubting the doubt. When you start thinking, “This is all hopeless, I can’t meditate,” recognise, “That’s just doubt. Ignore that.” You don’t have to believe those thoughts.
Indecision is a hallmark of this hindrance, so be decisive. Decide you’re going to meditate, and just do it. Simply recognising the hindrance can sometimes be enough if you don’t buy into the thoughts it produces.
I don’t know of any special technique for dealing with doubt other than sitting it out. You keep meditating and don’t believe the doubt. It doesn’t take long—if you don’t feed it, it fades on its own.
Even after recognising doubt, the meditation might still feel boring or pointless. But knowing what’s really happening makes a huge difference. The worrying is itself a form of doubt and only feeds the hindrance. If you can sit quietly with that dull mood without feeding it, it soon lifts.
The texts talk about studying the teachings and reflecting on them to build understanding and confidence, but that’s preparation—something to do before, not during meditation. The more confident you are in the teachings and in the Buddha, the less easily the mood of doubt takes hold. Still, even the most confident mind can be touched by it; it will simply find new things to question.
Being familiar with the practice helps a great deal—knowing what to expect, and trusting the process. But once doubt has already arisen, trying to study or reason it away won’t help. At that point, the task is simply to recognise the hindrance, stop feeding it, and keep practising.
When Meditation Deepens: Be Careful
There’s something important that happens at a certain stage in meditation practice, and it’s worth being aware of it so you’re prepared. The hindrances don’t just disappear in a linear way. There’s a particular danger point that arises after you’ve made initial progress.
If you go on an extended retreat, even just a day of meditation, there’s a common pattern. First there’s agitation and restlessness. You’ve come from busy life, you sit down to meditate, and your mind won’t settle down.
When your mind calms down a bit you tend to fall asleep. The hindrance of dullness has become the most prominent one. But if you keep making an effort your mind wakes up. It may not feel especially calm, but if you’ve overcome the initial agitation and dullness you are actually in a much calmer, more powerful mind state than you were two days earlier. And this is a critical stage.
When you’re at this stage in your meditation, you have to be very careful not to let your mind go into negative states, into unskilful areas. Because your mind is more powerful, if you indulge in a hindrance now, it’s like it’s supercharged. It may not feel it, but it is.
If you start dwelling on negative things—the irritating meditator sitting next to you, the weather, the room that isn’t very nice—it can very quickly build into strong irritation because your mind is more powerful. You’ve got that power behind the hindrance. The same goes for focussing on pleasant things (the good looking meditator sitting next to you, the tasty food, etc.), which can lead to sense desire becoming stronger.
The Buddha compared it to a boy looking after buffaloes when the crops are in the field. He has to watch these buffalo very carefully because they want to go into the crops and eat the rice. If he lets them in, he’ll be in serious trouble. He has to be constantly vigilant, keeping them out of the field.
In the same way, a meditator has to be very careful to watch their mind, and especially their thoughts, and not let them stray in unwholesome directions. You can completely derail your meditation and, because of the power of the more peaceful mind, the newly arisen hindrance will be very hard to overcome. I personally have, through one instance of overindulgence in food, set myself back weeks.
Later, when mindfulness becomes stronger, you reach a stage where you feel needn’t be so anxious. You are quicker to notice unskilful trains of thought and nip them in the bud. Just as, after the crops have been taken in, the buffalo herder can afford to sit back and just keep one eye on the buffalo to be sure they don’t wander too far off, you have the confidence to know that If your mind does wander you’ll deal with it quickly. Your mindfulness is strong enough to say, “Oh no, mustn’t do that. Back to the breath.” But in those early stages after you’ve just developed a certain amount of calm, you have to be very careful.
Conclusion
“This mind,” the Buddha said, “is naturally bright and luminous, but is covered with defilements that settle upon it.” When the hindrances are removed, the mind becomes very powerful, very bright, very joyful. Happiness isn’t something we have to manufacture—it’s the natural state of the mind in the absence of the hindrances. And when the mind is powerful and wieldy like this, the Buddha said, whatever a meditator directs their mind towards, they can achieve it.
That’s what we’re working towards: not just the temporary suppression of the hindrances during a meditation session, but a progressive weakening of them that makes our minds more and more workable, more and more clear. Every step in that direction is valuable, whether we’re aiming for deep states of concentration or simply want to live with more clarity and less unnecessary suffering.
So don’t think of the hindrances as enemies to be defeated in battle, but as old habits to be understood and gently let go of. Recognise them, don’t feed them, and know that each time you do this successfully, you’re training your mind in a skill that will serve you both on and off the cushion, in meditation and in life.
Further Reading
From the Pali Canon:
- MN 10: Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (Foundations of Mindfulness)
- MN 19: Dvedhāvitakka Sutta (Two Kinds of Thought)
- MN 20: Vitakkasaṇṭhāna Sutta (The Removal of Distracting Thoughts)
- AN 7:58: The Buddha’s advice to Moggallāna on overcoming drowsiness
- SN 46:51-55: Various discourses on the hindrances
Contemporary writings:
- Nyanaponika Thera, The Five Mental Hindrances and Their Conquest (Buddhist Publication Society)
October 2025