Innovative Meditation

An article that talks about exploring creative and unique ways to meditate.

 

Living day to day with the responsibilities and obligations of finances, family, career and self can be very overwhelming and anxiety-inducing. All of these life facets can bring us great joy if there’s mutual respect, harmony and progress present, but as adults who are obliged to manage our lives in such complexity of interpersonal relations, we can often lose sight of and the ability to develop ourselves or to find meaning and direction in our lives. Instilling the practice of mediation into our daily living can do wonders and there are many personalized and creative ways an individual can meditate in order to restore inner peace, solve problems and gain balance and self-assurance.

 

Innovation is what one must use when coming up with beneficial ways to bring mediation into frequent practice. This innovation will require a person to look at themselves honestly and to think openly. It’s rather easy to walk into a bookstore  to select a book or type in a  url online to follow a generic one-way-suits-all  manner of meditating but each person much meditate with purpose and in a way they can relate to which will be dependent on the type of clarity and release one specifically needs. This further requires one to look at the basic set of emotions that are plaguing them. These might be questions you ask yourself before you begin choosing a meditation method:

1. Do I feel anger?
2. Am I experiencing sadness?
3. Am I overwhelmed with frustration?
4.  Am I blocked by Indecisiveness?
5. Am I burdened with fear?
6. Is there something I need to tell someone but don’t know how?
7. Do I just need time to myself away from distractions?
8. Am I unsure about what I am feeling and need some clarity?

 

Do I need to become more comfortable with myself in isolation?

All of these and more are great starter questions to ask yourself. You will find that you will not use one form of meditation all of the time since each kind of meditation works best for certain emotional needs. I will introduce some forms of meditation that I use and that I’ve have creatively developed over the years.

 

If you are a rather kinesthetic person, you will find that using meditation that involves movement is best. Some types of meditation might be choosing to safely go for long and vigorous walks in a peaceful, scenic neighborhood setting, a local park or a hiking trail or walking path along a beach or mountain road with or without a music player. Other types of meditations might include hypnotic dance, punching bag boxing and Tai Chi.

 

Walking for me has always been a very therapeutic process and it’s one of my favorite meditative activities to indulge in. The activity makes me feel restored and centered and most of the time I prefer taking my iPod with me. I can listen to audio books, my favorite bands and artists or even downloaded podcasts shows. If I am just walking around the neighborhood or in a setting that allows dogs, I will take my dog with me because she makes a great walking companion and it’s the perfect way for her to get exercise.

 

On form of meditation that I do from time to time is something I call hypnotic dance. It is a form of meditation that involves dancing to very energetic and invigorating music non-stop for at least 30 minutes to an hour. In this activity, the objective must be to connect solely with the music and how your body moves thus paying no attention to being proper in form, technique or style but to dance excessively until you reach a state of acute euphoria. After the dance is over, you will most likely feel refreshed, purged and rejuvenated and will crave this form of release the more you do it.  There is an intrinsic state of freedom that comes with this meditation and you’ll get to appreciate and know yourself more kinesthetically. There’s no need to worry about being a great dancer or anything of the sort. Again the goal is to use constant and natural body movement and rhythm to reach a state of exhilaration.

 

Practicing boxing on a punching bag works much the same way. You’ll need to have access to a punching bag and related equipment either at home or at a gym where there are no classes in session at the time. This type of meditation is best for working out aggressive feelings or frustration. The body will be worked into a combative frenzy on an inanimate object and all of the stifled and blocked emotions will have a place and channel to be fully released and exorcised. Boxing as a meditation can help to facilitate better communication afterwards so that the system is less tense and charged. Most people lose the ability to communicate and direct their thoughts outwardly in a clear and concise manner when their systems are under stress from anger, frustration or irritation.

 

If you are a person who wants to excite the imagination, clear the mind or control certain emotions or states in a very artful way, then you will find the techniques of audio and image-guided visualization, developing, what I call, an imaginary sponsor and working on zoned creative projects very conducive. Some of these techniques will seem very esoteric and unusual but that’s the nature of being innovative in order to get the fulfillment you need out of meditation.

 

Audio and image- guided visualization is a very helpful process and it’s really nothing new but there are many distinctive ways that you can develop a specific technique in this brand of meditation. As a person with synesthesia, I enjoy the using music to trigger imagery. Music has the ability to excite the imagination and redirect our focus away from the outside world. It’s very similar to the process of lucid dreaming, where you consciously control what happens in your dream and gain some leverage of the events that will take place to further seek meaning.

 

You can start by choosing a selection of music that is very rhythmic, detailed, instrumental, inspiring or cinematic; music that, for you, engenders ideas and visions. You must choose a place where you can comfortably play the music loud enough to become fully immersed in it. If not, then headphones will suffice if the sound quality is good, where all of the instrumentation can be crisply experienced. In this place of meditation, you must make sure that you are not going to be disturbed and that you have at least 30 minutes to an hour to spare. If you can lock your door and be away from phones, this is even better. If you live with others, make sure that beforehand, they know of and can respect your time for this meditation session by leaving you alone.

 

Once you have gotten yourself situated in a reliable and relaxed context, turn on the music and recline on a chair, couch or floor, take a few deep breaths, close your eyes and begin truly listening to the music. Allow your mind to visualize a place, world, setting, theme of patterns or shapes, event or person based on the sound of the music. Give these visions a story, a purpose or a premise if necessary. For example, you can associate certain images with bacteria, cells or viruses if you are ill. You can associate some visions with desires if you wish to accomplish a goal or make certain events in your life happen. Most likely, the first response to this method of meditation will be difficult if you’ve never done it before. You will find yourself trying to keep concentration, take it seriously and to stay focused internally, but continue to reconnect and flow with whatever visions materialize and throw yourself completely into your images and/or associations. At some point, you won’t realize how much time has gone by and your body’s systems will slow down.  As you practice this brand of meditation more often, you’ll feel a greater degree of control, motivation and confidence in some areas of your life that you’ve chosen to focus on. You’ll also find that your ability to turn inward is much stronger and reactive. You can time your meditation sessions by how long your music selections last as a whole, or you can set an alarm.

 

Several years ago, I came up with the term imaginary sponsor and decided that this concept would be great in developing a new form of meditation and self-therapy. There’s a long story behind the motivation of the invention and I’ll eventually talk about this in another article. Imaginary sponsors are very much like imaginary friends; however they are imaginary people who take the place of real people in your life. They are intangible but animate representations of unsent letters who help you to cope or to express. If you are dealing with troubling or conflicting emotions that relate to someone in your life but you are having a hard time confronting this person for whatever reason, you can create an imaginary sponsor.

 

This sponsor will become the target of your confessions and feelings.  This is a rather personal and sensitive form of meditation because it requires a spot of isolation and secrecy where you can act in freedom, confidentiality and comfort. If you can find a place like this, begin by pretending that your imaginary sponsor is in the room with you. Imagine what they are doing and what they look like. They can look like the person in your life or they can look totally different. Are they sitting down next to you facing you? Are they standing across the room waiting for you to say something to them? Whatever you imagine them doing, make sure you can see them in your mind’s eye in a projected manner. Once this is done, begin talking to this sponsor, openly and out loud, as if they were a real person. Eradicate all feelings of shyness and silliness and seriously interact with your sponsor. You might find it better to even imagine what the sponsor is saying to you so that you can respond back. You’ll begin to see this meditation as not only a form of writing an unsent letter but also as a style of acting. This type of meditation will allow you to learn how to express yourself better, work out your emotions that involve feelings about or for other people and to even confront them at some point in confidence and preparedness.  You can always include more than one imaginary sponsor in your sessions, thereby creating a group to interact with.

 

Engaging in creative projects is a great and productive way to channel your mind and energy.  Many people might not consider this as a form of meditation but I do place it in this category because it is a self-therapy method which can easily be used as a way to balance energy. Obviously the project that you engage in will involve something that you enjoy doing. It can be an hour of drawing, free-form writing, working on pottery, sculpting, coloring or cooking a recipe out of a cookbook. The way in which you interact with these activities must not be intermittent which is typical of the workflow in casual creative projects. You must completely center yourself in the activity and focus thoroughly on it and let the creative process of the activity soothe you. This is what distinguishes this process as a form of meditation because it clears the mind and takes you away from stress-related concerns. You learn how to compartmentalize and pour the emotions into something progressive rather than destructive. Essentially your coping mechanisms turn into healthy outlets.

 

A lot of people really struggle with toxic thoughts and fail to find ways to release their mind from negative energy. Toxic thoughts can literally become an obsession if we train our minds to stay tuned into them through long-term habituation.  This requires a cleansing and purging process so the choice of meditation must be something that helps to facilitate these actions. There are a number of ways to cleanse and refresh the mind symbolically. You can choose a form of cleansing meditation that is relaxing or intellectual. Some relaxing forms of purging meditation  that I use are taking baths to candlelight and incense, going for a swim, focusing on koans and riddles, cleaning the house or the environment, creating and using circle labyrinths and doing activities that are very repetitive in motion but stimulating. In each of these activities, the goal is to empty out the mind either through mindlessness (in a benign sense) or thinking (intellectualizing). For those who are interested in Buddhism, you’ll find some of these activities to be similar to Zen meditation practices, particularly when utilizing koans.  

 

 

A koan is a story or riddle that one focuses on to seek an intuitive rather than rational answer.  An excerpt from the book, Translating the Zen Phrase Book, describes the process succinctly by referring to a very popular koan:

 

Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?

— Hakuin Ekaku

 

"...in the beginning a monk first thinks a kōan is an inert object upon which to focus attention; after a long period of consecutive repetition, one realizes that the kōan is also a dynamic activity, the very activity of seeking an answer to the kōan. The kōan is both the object being sought and the relentless seeking itself. In a kōan, the self sees the self not directly but under the guise of the kōan...When one realizes ("makes real") this identity, then two hands have become one. The practitioner becomes the kōan that he or she is trying to understand. That is the sound of one hand." - G. Victor Sogen Hori, Translating the Zen Phrase Book

 

You can purchase a book of koans from any bookstore to help you get started.  Gateless Gate: The Classic Book of Zen Koans by Koun Yamada is a good selection. Focusing on koans works best in a meditation session that involves sitting down in a quiet area and concentrating. You might also want to look into Zen Buddhism and start exploring some of the meditative methods. Two books that I recommend are The Path to Zen: A Path to Inner Peace by Eric Chaline and An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D.T. Suzuki.

 

I love to take baths and take these more often over showers because in a bath I get to truly relax and sit with myself in thought. Water is very symbolic for me as well as the act of washing. I imagine the water being a symbol of fluidity and purification of mind and body. The act of washing further enhances the purifying association and I prefer taking a bath in dim relaxing natural light rather than to artificial light so I use high-quality, long-burning, scented candles and I sometimes additionally use short sticks of high-quality incense to burn. This sets the environment for me. During a meditative bath, I think about any thoughts that have been troubling me or that I feel conflicted about and I seek to answer and think about them deeply. I end the bath by washing up, extinguishing the candles and incense and then drying off.  For the duration of the bath, I don’t concern myself with washing off with soap right away because I want to be comfortable sitting for awhile, feeling the water against my skin and immersing fully into its warmth.  After that I apply some natural oils, creams or lotions to my skin all over my body to further pamper and nurture myself.  You can get more creative with your choice of colors and scents of candles, incense and even soaps. I prefer natural handmade soaps and these can be purchased from various beauty shops or health food stores. The bars are usually thicker and large in size, richer for the skin due to the natural ingredients and come in all sorts of alluring scents, colors and textures. Certain hues and fragrances of candles might stimulate you in specific ways sensorially.

 

If you do not have a bathtub or would like another way to use water as a form of meditation, then you can try swimming. If you use a public swimming pool, you might now have as much privacy as you desire but in most cases, public swimming pools aren’t usually too highly populated depending on the time of day you use them.

 

Cleaning your immediate environment which might be your bedroom or the entire house is a great way to clear your mind. A clean and orderly environment can definitely facilitate clear thinking and refreshed emotions. It’s as symbolic as water is when taking meditative baths or swims. The state that our environment often reflects the state of our minds so if you have a very junky and disordered looking room, then you can be that your mind might share that same context. Cleaning up is also a repetitive and physical activity. You allow the mind to clean out its thoughts through constant movement and arrangement. The act itself can almost be seen as a type of magical ritual that involves visual and physical guidance that revamps your mind.

 

Circle labyrinths or walk circles are rather obscure to the knowledge of most people.  The history of labyrinths can be traced back to ancient times in various European, Asian and Native American, and Northern African cultures. Labyrinths were used as maps for city-state structures as well as the construction of certain religious and governmental buildings.

 

Circle labyrinths can be symbols of art and were/are often used as creative motifs for ceramic work but labyrinths today are referenced more as physical structures created on ground for personal meditation and group rituals and ceremonies. A map of a labyrinth is drawn and carefully constructed on ground. The labyrinth can be painted, drawn in chalk, carved as pathways or segments onto grass or illustrated on sand at a beach. The most accessible way to draw a labyrinth for most people is at a local beach.  You can use nearby stones to further enhance the pattern and use a long stick or stick-like figure as your drawing tool. There are many illustration references for circle labyrinths online and in books.

 

Labyrinths are said to enhance right brain activity when they are walked. In a circle labyrinth the goal is to enter the labyrinth through the mouth, which is both the starting and end point, and walk the path within the walls until you reach the center. Once you’ve reached the center of the labyrinth, you must complete the walk by walking back out and exiting through the mouth. Focusing on the path throughout the walk is said to help the mind clear and restructure itself. For others the ritualistic and meditative walk can help to stimulate thoughts.  Two great online resource websites containing a wealth of information and patterns for labyrinths are The Labyrinth Society and Awakenings: Tools for Psychological and Spiritual Growth. The first link is extremely informative and intriguing. The second link contains a large section on Labyrinths. Click on that area and explore the information that this site offers to gain more knowledge.

 

The most direct way to meditate is to just sit with the pain. This is very difficult to do because the body and mind immediately goes into self-protective mode. Self-protective mode is a self-preservation mode which gives way to our established patterns of coping mechanisms. The less aware we are of what our naturally inclined self-preservation reactions are, the more likely they are to be destructive. The mind has no value when it comes to choosing a way to help us deal with and function the world. As long as something makes us feel good or turns us off from any discomfort, then it becomes a way for the mind to establish a coping mechanism. If you can become aware of how you respond to situations, then you can control the ways in which you develop coping mechanisms so that they can be healthy and progressive. Sometimes, well need to train ourselves to just sit and feel discomfort rather trying to finds ways to numb it. By sitting with pain or discomfort, we can better understand the intricacies of our emotions and hear what’s going on inside. We also, more importantly, learn to develop higher tolerance levels to emotional discomfort so that the sensations don’t become so easily distracting to us and we can think more rationally while we are in discomfort. Sitting-with-pain meditation requires stillness and lack of movement. Find a place to sit or recline quietly and focus on what you feel. Let it runs its course. Let yourself bleed and let your instincts become more sensitive to the sensations of emotional pain and discomfort. Also pay attention to any sudden desires that you feel. Recognizing these desires will help you to identify what your natural coping mechanisms are and once you are aware of them, you can analyze whether or not they are healthy.

 

Overall, there are many creative and original ways in which you can meditate. It’s all up to you and there’s a world of ideas out just in your mind waiting to be explored. You can also seek inspiration for ideas through online resources, books and other people you know that might practice meditation. Meditation should not be seen as a daunting, intimidating, exclusive or mysterious practice. It’s multi-faceted and very easy to implement into your life. Be creative, open and innovative and you’ll start to see the benefits of meditation in no time.

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Nocturne]

Hi there,

An awesome article; it's well written and organized.

I chortled when I got to the quote part - the one about the one hand clapping. I can actually clap with one hang, fingers against the palm, so whenever I come across the mention of this quote, I am amused. I think I first saw it on a book on meditation which I own, How to Meditate by LeShan. It describes meditation as a feeling of coming home. Yes.

And this article really covers most of the best ways to start moving towards that inner peace. I think what really appealed to me in this piece was the wide range of activities that it offers, moving away from the stereotype that meditation has to be sitting somewhere and playing with breathing patterns. Other things like "Cleaning your immediate environment" are great ways to achieve inner peace, and I'm glad this brought them up.

A few critique-related thoughts. In a couple places, the sentence structure became a little convoluted/over-formal. For example, "Circle labyrinths or walk circles are rather obscure to the knowledge of most people." reads awkwardly because of the "obscure to the knowledge". I think rearranging the line could make it more straightforward.

Circle labyrinths or walk circles are less known methods of meditation. perhaps?

I'm going to leave off now, but I'm glad I had a chance to read this piece; it was a pleasure. Good luck writing.

Cheers for the read!
Naiya