When someone starts meditation, body pain and mind wandering start. Why?

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Mind wandering is easy to explain, in the early stages of learning how to meditate, your mind wanders. The only way to stop it from wandering is the one-two punch of regular practice and using an object. An object is merely something to focus on, such as the breath, or a candle flame. If concentrating isn’t what the mind is used to then it just won’t be good at it the first few times.

Body pain is the more obscure side effect. As one gets better at inculcating a trance state, attention is gradually removed from the outside realm, and moves through a transition zone where bodily sensations, along with the object, are the only things you can perceive.

Careful exploration of this zone reveals that these pains were always present, they were just obscured by surface things taking your attention away from them. The pains can be intense enough to force you to move and break the state. Other things that will happen are itches and a compulsion to move.

The answer to these things is the same as before, patience and diligence in using an object. The object carries you through the pain zone and into deeper trance. Another thing that may help is stretching and light exercise, which have the effect of calming the body down and stopping it from demanding attention. But this essentially is just a band-aid, if it’s not body pains that break your trance, it’ll be other body-related stuff. Again, practice and diligence with the object is what’s needed to push through this barrier.