One of the things that I've noticed from my practice, studies and research is that we get more hung up about the types of meditation than we do the stages of meditation. There is a very valid argument that the stages of meditation depend on the individual and it's for each person to find their own way, but I think this can inadvertently act as a barrier to people who want to meditate but can't establish a healthy habit, so that's where these "Into Meditation" articles come in.
We often have unrealistic expectations of what we should look like while meditating. Even AI gets it wrong as the image below demonstrates.
I'm going to break down the stages of most meditations into stages for you. How much time you spend in each step really depends on the type of meditation you're practising but I suspect that these steps are things we do in pretty much all types of meditation; we just spend more time focusing on certain stages more than others.
(Because this is best experienced, I have recorded this article as a Podcast which is included at the bottom of this article. There is a guided meditation from about 10 minutes in.)
Something we do throughout any meditation is consciously raising and shifting our awareness. This simple act of observing our thoughts, sensations and emotions rather than processing our experience can be profound for the first time, but it goes hand-in-hand with removing judgement at the same time. It's a difficult thing to articulate and is therefore best experienced. An easy example of this is labelling emotions just as you would watching actors on a stage. If you saw a character come on stage and start shouting, rather assigning an opinion or construct around them such as "i don't want them here" or "that reaction upsets me", we could just say, "that's anger" and observe when that character has left the stage again or changed into a new character such as Remorse or Guilt or Joy; literally anything else. :)
But you can apply the same labelling technique to thoughts and sensations. So if you experience pain is on the stage, look at who else is on the stage with them. Are there any thoughts on the stage when Pain is there; do they need to be there? It's your stage. You can send those thoughts away until Pain has passed. Or you can invite a new thought to enter the stage, or change the background. (I typed this sat in a minor injuries unit with a suspected broken ankle so I practiced as I wrote it. It's not magic, but it definitely helped.)
The point that I'm making is that you're removing judgement from the experience. You're in effect consciously refreshing your awareness, focusing on observing the experience rather than processing it as we normally do.
You might be thinking, "well, this just sounds like Mindfulness". And it is, but mindfulness, or being consciously aware of your experience is something that you can do throughout the day. It goes further than having a dedicated time of the day to meditate. Meditation is an activity you take time to complete ideally at a regular time of the day, whereas Mindfulness is something you can do between meditating. The two go hand in hand. Meditating helps us practice Mindfulness throughout the day. And practicing mindfulness helps us drop into our space and get the most out of each meditation.
Shifting your awareness as you do with Mindfulness and Meditation can be especially difficult if you have a neuro-divergent condition just as ADHD or ASD. You don't have to be neuro-divergent to understand this, but I like to make my meditations work for someone who has problems with their awareness as I hope then it'll work for more people overall.
ADHD usually means that you get distracted easily and when you try and silence any internal noise, your brain just decides at this point it's going to think of EVERYTHING. You don't have to have ADHD to get this; we all do it. It's just how brains work. But if you have ADHD, you'll probably find this even more difficult. And with ASD, you can be over-stimulated by lots of things happening at once; noisy environments for example; so being consciously aware of everything probably sounds like Hell On Earth, however, it doesn't need to be. It's a skill that takes practice. Folks who have ASD can often develop their language skills much later than someone who doesn't have it; it doesn't mean you can't talk good; you just have to find a technique that works for you and try to be as consistent as you can with it. The only thing that should ever hold us back are the labels we give ourselves to help us process our experience. I truly believe that anything is possible.
I have ADHD and I have a regular meditation practice. It's hard to stick to a routine; so I set reminders and even then I still sometimes forget. Sometimes, I don't feel like sitting, so I'll make my meditation practice be about yoga or playing my drums or going for a walk and consciously observing the world around me. Not doing anything one day doesn't make you a failure. Forgive yourself and come back to it. But if you can make an adjustment so that you can meditate then I believe that's better than not meditating at all. And over time, those gaps will disappear, you'll drop into it easier, you'll get more out of it and when you don't meditate and you notice that you need it again; that's when you learn that it's more important to be consistent with your practice than to beat yourself up if you struggle or don't do it every day.
I'm going to give you a few different ways of shifting your awareness in a mindful way before including a guided awareness-based Meditation below.
Awareness of the world around you. This involves sitting outside. It doesn't really matter how busy it is; it just needs to be somewhere outside where something is going on. If you have a phone and you have a timelapse setting in your options, now is the time to check it out to see if there is an option to set a speed (60x is a good interval), otherwise, take a picture every 10-15 seconds if you don't have a timelapse setting.
Start the timelapse/ start taking your pictures and observe the clouds, the people, the shadows, the light etc. Do any patterns or shapes emerge? Notice how your environment changes in that time. Notice how you feel in your observations. Notice your breath, any physical, mental or emotional changes that become evident. After 10-15 minutes, you should have enough pictures/ timelapse to look back and see if anything extra has materialised.
2. Again, outside, this is one for when you're out and about. While walking, notice the texture of the ground beneath your feet. What do you see, hear, feel and smell. Are their any tastes in the air? If there is a breeze in the air, try holding out your hand to a branch of a tree, close to it but not touching and waiting for the breeze to take the branch to your hand. Yeah, it probably seems a little nuts at first but I've done this with my kids to calm them down and it absolutely works. Who wouldn't love having their hand shaken by a tree?
3. Guided meditation for when you have 15 minutes at home. Vipassana (body scans) and Anupanasati (mindful breathing) are two classic types of meditation where awareness is front and centre. I'm going to show you the latter in the recording because it works really well alongside some phrasing I use to help shift your awareness.
If you're interested further in Anapanasati, there is a wonderful book by Ajahn Sucitto, called "Breathing Like a Buddha" who talks about this in more detail and by translating the source text on the practice into English. I have formulated my own wording which resonated with me, that I regular practice and share with others and this is what I share with you below to hopefully help you experience how you can change your awareness to help your meditation practice.
This article is available as a podcast. Skip to 10 minutes for the guided meditation which lasts about 12-14 minutes.
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