This is a trauma-aware low spoon meditation designed for folx who struggle with meditation.
A goal of these instructions are first, do no harm.
Our lives are already hard. Meditation can make living easier, via practicing kindness and gentleness.
If in doubt, kind it out.
(If anything causes stress or thought spirals, don’t do it!)
How much time?
I would set a timer for a low (what I think as trivial) amount of time. Sometimes I glance at my phone, or ask Alexa to set a timer for me. Sometimes I use a timer app. Sometimes I meditate until something (like if I’m standing in line, or waiting for something else to happen).
I have problems constantly checking the time, so I use a timer. Some folxs hate timers. Do whatever is kindest to yourself.
How do I sit?
I generally don’t worry about posture or what my eyes are doing. Sometimes I keep them open to stay grounded (sensations can become too much) or awake.
My base intentions
- To stay in the same spot.
- To let go of narration and thinking.
What makes meditation, meditation is learning another way of knowing, besides thinking. We are pretty used to thinking tho so … If you do these things, that’s ok. I say to myself:
“I moved, but that’s OK”
“I thought about something and that’s OK.”
“I want to do something else, but this is time I’m spending practicing kindness and that’s OK.”
"But don’t I have to do these things (remain absolutely still – never think) to meditate?"
Kindness towards our sensory universe is what we are practicing, it’s a cultivated skill, I don’t think we can get it all at once. Part of that is forgiveness, it’s OK to make mistakes, to learn, to grow.
But what if I’m not kind to myself?
That’s OK too. We are practicing.
We are practicing intending towards kindness. I feel it’s important to practice being nice to ourselves, and for these few moments, we want to lower our expectations, not raise them. A lot of folx expect a lot out of us, constantly, especially ourselves. Meditation is a place where we can really practice being gentle with ourselves.
- I gently invite myself to relax.
- I remind myself it doesn’t seem to help to expect anything.
What next?
I invite some awareness into my body. I view meditation as a pathway to cultivate self-compassion & self-awareness.
- If I’m calm, or happy, or relaxed. I just … melt into those things. I don’t seek anything else out. I stop and enjoy what is there.
If I’m not in a good starting place (my internal world is chaotic, or noisy, or loud) I find a part of myself I can watch and relax into. These places are called anchors. Think of it like finding a window during a rainstorm to look outside. You are safe inside, looking out onto the rain.
- Sometimes it’s the breath. I like to take nice slow breaths (it slows down thoughts).
- Sometimes it’s the mind thinking things. I don’t stop the thoughts, I intend to just watch them, like rain.
- Sometimes it’s body posture. I gently notice how I’m holding the body.
- Sometimes it’s emotions. I don’t try to control them, just watch them unfold.
- Sometimes it’s tingles or body sensations. I don’t try and control or even understand. Just watch.
If pleasant sensations (like calm, or happiness or relaxation) appear doing the above, I savor them, then I try and remember what I did to reach this pleasant state. The danger is thinking repeating the exact same steps works, every time. That’s what makes this practice, learning what works and what doesn’t with kindness.
A tremendous kindness we can give ourselves is … just knowing what’s going on inside ourselves. Judgement doesn’t seem to help, when I judge myself I say “that’s OK” and watch the judgement. Kindness heals judgement, not more judgement.
I wouldn’t push for force myself, kindness doesn’t arrive via force, we are not trying to overpower the mind.
I remind myself that if what I’m doing is making my meditation worse, I shouldn’t do it. I pick other things to do.
Mantras
When I find it’s too hard to observe, or I notice my thoughts are speeding up, I try and ground myself in a mantra, which is just an intention I repeat over and over again. One of my teachers said it’s like casting seeds, sometimes we may need to cast a lot of seeds, and that’s OK.
I never repeat a mantra I don’t agree with. I don’t want to lie to myself. Pick one (or a few):
- May I enjoy spending time with myself.
- May I enjoy practicing kindness with myself.
- May I practice self-compassion.
- May I let go of expectations.
- May I judge myself less.
- May I let go of perfectionism.
- May I enjoy being vs doing.
- May I forgive myself for not understanding.
- May I forgive myself for not being able to forgive myself.
- May I hate myself less.
- May I learn to trust my own sensations.
Additional Mantras: Foster’s Mantras
Ending Early
Sometimes I end my meditations early, they are too hard. That’s OK too. I usually end a meditation early if I can tell it’s making me worse, faster. Sometimes afterwards I want to immediately meditate more, so … I’ll just repeat these instructions.
v1.4 - Last edit 8-July-2024
This is work dedicated to the Public Domain via CC0 1.0