Happy foggy Saturday! Let’s talk about meditation. Or, alternatives to it. A lot of times, that word comes with a lot of expectations. We have an idea probably coming from the stock images of someone sitting cross-legged in a beautiful, serene environment, with their eyes closed and a smile on their face which says “do this, and you too can smile like me. That’s all you need to do.” We look at that and think “jeez, I can’t do that.”

Well, that may be the standard of meditation for some. For me, it looks different. I’ve always had a hard time sitting. I blamed my implementer mind for a while. And I thought I couldn’t meditate. But I like movement, so yoga became my moving meditation. Then, when I went through my trauma-sensitive yoga training (TCTSY), there was a lot of emphasis on interoception, i.e. sensing the internal state of your body, a.k.a tuning in. That’s probably why I fell in love with the practice of TCTSY! After a session like that, I feel recharged. But I digress…

So coming back to moving meditation. If you’re like me and you can’t sit still, this might be an alternative for you. And there are more like that:🚶🏻‍♀️Walking 

🏃🏻‍♀️Running

✏️ Doodling/coloring/journaling 

💃 Dance (dance yoga, ecstatic dance) 

🐎 Riding horses 

🏊‍♀️ Swimming

Anything that gets you in touch with your Self. 

Time! Oh, time is interesting…it feels like we never have enough of it. But what if we reframe it to say that time is all we have. It’s our most import currency. We trade time for everything. So, could we trade time for our Self? 

We’ll put a pin in that for now and let’s just say you only have 5 min, you don’t like to sit with you eyes closed and hum, and you know what, you don’t even like to focus on your self, not today. But you’d like to try meditation. I hear you! Okay, then here’s something that you could try: a sound map. 

My favorite time of the day is before everyone wakes up. That’s because that’s when it’s the most quiet. I’m not a morning person, but thanks to jet lag, I woke up at 6am today and stepped outside with a piece of paper and a pencil. I sat on the front steps and drew an “X marks the spot” in the middle of the page. That’s where I was. Then for the next 5 min I paid attention to the sounds around me and marked them where I thought they came from. No fancy drawing, just stick figures. I heard (lots) of crows, a blue jay, cardinals, cars, my neighbor’s AC unit… It helped me get in touch with the nature around me, especially after being away for a while. 

And then, guess what happened. My kiddo came and she wanted to participate. So she did the same thing for about 2 min. But then she upped the ante and on her own, she decided to add what she saw. And then, she decided to add to this map what she was thinking about. It started as an exercise of connection with nature and re-entry into our environment and it ended up being an opportunity for connection with my kid. 

For us, it turned into over an hour of being outside before we even had breakfast! So, I’m sharing this with you, if you want to give it a try. If you do, I’d love to hear from you.