Meditation Sit June 8, 2026

Making Space for Dread

I recently identified this feeling in the center of my chest, I call it Dread. It’s the reason for my two hospital visits this year when I thought I was having a heart attack. It caused several months of random panic attacks with heart rates soaring into the 170s.

All the tests say I’m fine. It’s weird. Even though I had panic attacks while wearing a heart monitor, I’m still fine.

My Buddhist advisor suggested making space for Dread.

I felt consumed so immediately when I closed my eyes. It was just endless space for 40 minutes. I poked and prodded at the focal point, a soft lumpy mass above my sternum and between my breasts. I suppose the archetypical heart attack zone.

I felt pain but I can’t really describe it as pain. It’s like hunger, like an aching, like a great void in the gut. Pain that I almost want to destroy me.

I tried to make space but it made a lot of noise. I felt these strange searing sensations all about, like snakes flying through my chest. It made me dizzy and nauseous. It seemed to cloud everything from the heart to the edges. I only felt the coldness of my hands.

It threatened to make my heart race but I guess now that I see it, I no longer resist and so it simply makes warmth and pulse in the place that scares me. Maybe I was going to throw up and make a mess, what a scene I’d make in the meditation hall.

Then the teacher instructed to focus on the breath sensation, where it rises and falls. I felt the left and right bottom edges of the lungs expand and contract, and suddenly it took the energy away and a calm floated over me. I liked it very much, an island of tranquility here. Such craving.

But soon as I settled in peace, I sort of already knew, it would return. It came like numbness, vibrating back to life as a warm bath. A bath I really didn’t want to be in.

I rode the rest of the meditation in that middle state of grostesque. Then I saw my father and I cried for my dad, hugging him tightly. He was always working so late I rarely saw him. It seemed to respond to that. Then I saw myself abandoned at home at night, a child, watching television in a dimly lit living room. The liminal orange glow of the one lamp and the fuzzy television playing something familiar yet tasteless. I tried to hug that child and be with him but he just felt that awful pang through and through.

My mouth motioned a cry twice. I don’t know, I’m not even really sure why I’m so scared.

Then the gong rang loud. I shuddered and woke up.