Is sitting still the end all, be all of meditation? What I don't like sitting still? What if I can't sit still?! Whether or not you're neurodivergent, today's episode offers some interesting inquiries for you!

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In this episode, I discuss:

• 01:08 - Check In and Grounding Practice
• 05:16 - Historical Practices
• 07:33 - Expanding Ideas of Meditation
• 10:47 - Invitation to Practice

Resources:

• -⁠⁠Embodied Movement Meditation⁠

Episode Show Notes:

".....It is still October, if you are listening to this right away in the feed, which means it is still ADHD Awareness Month. And today, I want to chat a little bit about sitting still, and why it can suck. But also, why is it considered sort of the pinnacle of meditation practices? Or is it?

But first, let's check in. How are you doing? How are you feeling? Let's take a moment to check in with body, check in with breath, coming into this sense of grounded presence. And if you experimented with me a little bit last week, maybe you found some good information about whether focusing on the body works well for you, and whether focusing on the breath works well for you, or whether there's some other way that you could ground yourself and check in at the beginning.

So if you are walking, maybe start to bring a gentle awareness to the physical connection of your feet to the earth. Feel your feet, feel your connection. If you're sitting down, maybe you feel your feet on the floor, your glutes in your chair.

Or maybe there's some other physical sense, maybe rubbing your palms together, or rubbing your palms on your thighs, or if you're outdoors feeling a little breeze or dampness or sun on your skin.

If it doesn't work for you to bring an awareness to the physical sensations happening in your tissues, how else could you bring that sense of grounded awareness and connection to your experience? Allow your thoughts to settle there for a moment.

And then bring a subtle awareness to the sense of your breath. Noticing the sensations of your natural inhale and your natural exhale. Or if focusing on the breath is not ideal for you, maybe keeping your awareness focused on the physical sensations in the body, or maybe focusing on something you can see, or something you can hold.

How else could you find that focus in on the present moment? Stay here briefly, without expectation or judgment. Notice when the mind wanders, come back, come back to your point of focus.

And then begin to expand your awareness outward. If you naturally closed your eyes or softened your gaze, reopen those eyes fully, scan your surroundings, reorient yourself to your space. If you're sitting or lying down, do a little wiggle shift, readjust, maybe shrug the shoulders, point flex the ankles.

Ah, how you feeling? How you feeling? How you feeling?

So I would invite you, if you want to dig a little more deeply into the physical question of meditation, sitting still versus not in other options, to dive back into any of the episodes from September of this year, episodes 16, 17, and 18.

And today, I just want to touch briefly again on this idea of sitting still.

What do we do if we don't sit still?

I am a fidgeter.

I have a very hard time sitting truly still.

If I am in a meeting, I am tapping a toe, or I am clicking a pen, or there is some other little sort of movement to keep my body engaged.

When I am sitting in a seated meditation, like a zazen, Zen Buddhist meditation, I can sit still.

But I am able to stay more present when I allow my body to have the space to move.

So for me personally, something like a gentle yoga is going to be much more accessible for me to stay with for 60 or 90 minutes than just sitting in stillness.

And interestingly, if you look at something like Zazen meditation, it is punctuated with periods of Kinhin, walking meditation, because in order to sit, we need to get up and move the body around and get the blood flowing and get the wiggles out.

So, if we look at some of the traditional lineages of yoga that have a component of movement, the description of the purpose of that movement is to allow the body to sit in meditation.

So often in today's world, we see these images in the media, and again, I hammered on this last month, but it's someone sitting still in the lotus position, their hands on their knees, in a mudra, and as an aside, they're probably really thin and white and wearing workout clothes.

But I invite you to really expand your idea of what can constitute meditation, and even if we are doing a mindfulness practice or a guided meditation, do we need to be sitting still?

So a few ideas that I would offer to you is if you are choosing seated meditation because you enjoy it or because you're in a place where that's what is happening, like at a Zen center, could you create a little space to have a little fidget for yourself?

Could you have a little worry stone or could you have a little mala or could you have something to just kind of keep yourself in that sort of little grounded practice there of just a little bit of a repetitive movement?

And could you allow yourself to readjust your shape as needed?

In some Buddhist traditions, there is this idea that you absolutely do not move.

If you move, you might even get hit with a stick.

And could you create a little more softness and space there so that if your leg starts to go numb, you move?

If your back starts to hurt or you get a cramp in your glute, you move and have that be okay?

If Sita meditation is not something that you're doing, it's not something that works for you, could you move while you meditate?

So could you do a mindfulness meditation as you're walking slowly on a familiar trail?

Or could you do a moving meditation?

So these are practices like Qi Gong, Tai Chi, some forms of physical yoga, where the mindfulness is really keeping your present awareness on the sense of your body moving.

And when those distractions come up, coming back to the movement.

And then even expanding beyond that, are there other physical activities that you could do that allow you to get into flow?

So flow is this idea that we are so focused on whatever activity we're engaged in, that everything else sort of falls away.

The mindfulness happens naturally.

You don't really have to try to create it.

So this could be something like ecstatic dance.

Can you just be so embodied in your movement that you're not thinking about anything else?

So if you are one of those people, neurodivergent or not, who can't sit still, can't get comfy sitting still, can't sit still for long periods, doesn't want to sit still, doesn't find that interesting, again, how could you sort of start to push the boundaries of what we think is meditations or to experiment with some of these other types of practices and create that space where you can have a sense of staying present to whatever's happening in the moment, even as you move.

So that is all I have for you today.

Super short and sweet.

Rather than practicing with you today, I'm going to invite you to go out and move your body.

So finding one of these practices that is a little bit interesting to you, playing around with that.

I am also going to put a link in the show notes to a little moving meditation video that I did a while.

If you want to try that one, that's a fun place to start.

And as always, as you experiment with these, take some time to notice, notice, reflect.

What are the reactions?

What are the responses?

What is working for you?

What creates resistance?

What are the things that are maybe kind of working, but you feel like maybe you could tweak it a little bit next time so that you can really continue to build this practice that works for you?

And as always, check in, let me know how it's going for you, and I will see you next time....."