Mlog 3/24 @ 7:10-7:33 - No meditation, just quiet time this morning

Grumpy, grumpy, ugh, nope. That was my brain this morning when I sat down to meditate. I'd skipped yesterday (intentionally, more on that in a different post), but I don't think the reason today was difficult was because I was "out of practice" or anything. I think it was just brain weather. And that's going to happen sometimes.

I still felt more centered and refreshed when I decided to stop though, so the quiet time with myself and in my body was still good. It was still worth it to sit down and try to meditate.

I sat down and immediately noticed how uncooperative my brain was. It felt like my thoughts were made out of sticky gravel. They clumped together and had hard edges. They stuck in the flow of my thinking and I couldn't really disengage with them. Even though my meds had already started to kick in, there was still the grumpiness and the attachment to thinking about stuff (in this case, thinking about a FB post I'd made yesterday and all the comments friends had given me in response to a question I'd been afraid to ask in public.)

At one point as I struggled to center myself, my cat wandered over and touched my hand and scared the ever-living shit out of me. I jumped and reflexively pushed him away and then I had the added swirl of shame (did I just hit my own cat?!) and the rapid heartbeat and adrenaline spike from the startle. 

But I still tried to return my attention to my breathing, my body, my posture, the top of my head, and I listened and felt for the heartbeat and noticed as it began to slow back down to normal.

Eventually I realized I had to bring out the "big guns" and I did two diaphramatic breaths, a minute or so apart. Those definitely helped. My brain felt much happier. Much more content. But there was still this sort of solid wall or solid floor between me and the meditative state I'd hit in my last two sessions.

So I just let it go. I accepted that today might not be the day when I meditate. And that's okay. I sat in my body, and felt my breath, heard the distractions, let my thoughts drift and only gently nudged my attention back to my body when I noticed my thoughts.

It became quieter, more calm, more relaxed, and my brain weather definitely shifted away from being grumpy. My mood became more content, and that was enough.

Eventually I started checking in with myself to see if I wanted to be done. It's funny how that check-in happens. I'll kind of mentally ask myself "do I want to be done?" and sort of listen to my body and listen for an urge to  move or an urge to open my eyes. I don't try to test anything to see how I feel. I just wait until it's almost like my hands wiggle on their own accord. They make the decision for me in a way.

And that's what happened. I asked, listened, and waited, staying with the pre-meditation experience I was having until I felt my hands flex gently, almost all on their own, and I began to stretch and open my eyes before finally standing up again.

And that was it. And it's okay that meditation didn't happen today. I still feel like I got recharged a bit and I appreciate how the time helped shift my mood. That part was especially nice.

So the lesson from today is that even when my ADHD brain can't meditate, it's still valuable to try. Still valuable to sit with myself, use a few tools, and pay attention to my body as best I can.

Mlog 3/22 @ 7:30am - 8:00am (ish) - Day two!!

 Day two of meditating daily went.... okay? In the end, I felt good, and much more centered, but it wasn't the same kind of experience as yesterday and also not to the depth and the level that I remember being able to get to regularly in the past. And that's okay.

I would say I reached what I'm going to start calling "Level 2" in my depth. As I get more experience with this and start noticing more patterns, I'll figure out how to define these levels for my blog but for now, I'm just going to go with this terminology more formally, but for now... roughly:

Level 1 or "Getting settled"

For me, this is the state my brain is in after getting physically settled. My awareness is still basically in a non-meditative state, but it's also not in the type of mental activity it is in when I am up and about.  

Level 2 or "Brain/body fuzziness and mild-centeredness" 

This is where I reached today, briefly, and it was also where I reached yesterday for a longer period of time.

Stuff I struggled with today:

Today, I had trouble getting into anything like a focused state even though I tried some of the same strategies from yesterday. I counted the different types of distractions (I counted 7 this time. Maybe 8. I kind of lost interest in this exercise. Thanks ADHD.), I dabbled in some of the same visualizations from yesterday (brain: "boring!!") and then grappled with feelings of irritation and discouragement.

The other major thing I struggled with was this awareness that my partner was going to come downstairs soon. It's a Monday and we both had work in a few hours, and I could hear movement and thumping from upstairs... it was this sense of "I'm running out of time". I did my best to just let that go, and just add that to my tally of distractions, but it was definitely a big one today.

I started to resign myself to the possibility that today might be one of the days where I couldn't meditate at all. I started to shift my thinking towards that being okay.

How I finally got settled:

Finally, I remembered something I had learned in one of my Mindfulness classes I took for stress and anxiety management. They taught us a technique for basically turning off our stress response in our body through what they called "Diaphramatic breathing" (which I guess is kind of a generic term, even though the technique is fairly specific.)

Basically, this type of Diaphramatic breathing is where you exhale all your breath, and I do mean ALL of it. Not slowly or quickly or anything. Just at a natural pace until you're at the very end of your breath. Then you purse your lips and really push and force out the last little bit of air. You can use a puff, puff, strategy or a groaning sound to help, but you really push everything out. You feel this little flutter in your belly as your diaphram sort of... not spasms, but kinda wiggles?  That's when you know you're done. Don't hold your breathe or anything. You just release and let go at that point. Just relax and let your inhale come back at a normal pace. Breathe normally for a bit. Then repeat two more times. The effect is a fairly strong calming sensation. I used to use this a lot as a kind of emergency-intervention if I was having acute anxiety. It's a really great tool for me for that.

This morning I just did one diaphramatic breath just to see if that would be enough to settle my brain. And yes, indeed it did. I felt calm, more centered, and I could begin focusing on my breathing and my body.

Body scans and breathing:

There are a bunch of different ways I do "body scans". Basically all the visualizations I mentioned yesterday are a type of body scan in a way... if you widen the definition of a body scan to basically anything that prompts you to bring your attention to every single place on your body in a methodical, thorough way as a way to relax and center yourself, then yeah... any of those things can be used for this. 

Today I did a version of it that had me focus my attention at various points on my body. Kind of like a chakra metaphor, or maybe like if you imagined large acupuncture pins placed in you in important spots. I also paid attention to my breathing, and noticed that I felt more in touch with my breathing if I held the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth. It made paying attention to my breath easier because it was more interesting, or novel, or something. Maybe another coping strategy for my ADHD brain while I meditated?

Slipping into "level 2":

And then, at some point between one breath and the next, there was something like a small "slipping into place" sensation, or like the click of a light switch or something, and my brain kind of "opened up" and I was in that space I'd reached yesterday where time becomes irrelevant, my body becomes kind of "fuzzy" and there is a kind of mental distance between "me" and "my thoughts". I was still having thoughts, but it was more like something I was watching with curiosity and not directly interacting with. It's a really pleasant place to be. I was aware that I wanted to name this state of mind so I could continue to analyze my experience, and because I was also aware that I've reached "deeper" states of meditation than this before. So I made a mental note to start referring to this as "level 2" and I watched the gentle half-formed thoughts about how I'd write this blog post kind of drift in front of me.

I don't know how long I stayed in that space. I don't really look at the clock when i settle down, and I don't really look when I'm done. But at some point I started to just kind of check in and see if my brain and body wanted to be done, or if we wanted to stay in this space more. I checked in maybe three times before finally I felt "satisfied?" for lack of a better word and I opened my eyes and slowly began moving my hands, my arms, my legs, my ankles, working alertness back into them. 

The rest of my day so far:

I am writing this post on my lunch break, so I've had a few hours of day since I meditated, and I have to say that I really believe this is helping my brain. It's making me feel more like "an adult". I've done a lot of work on some "adulting" work that I've been meaning to do, and I've also been on top of the employment-work tasks today as well. I feel less scattered. I feel more comfortable in my experience with myself today. Not manically optimistic or energetic... just calmly present, and feeling capable. It feels good today. It's motivating me to keep going with this experiment and appreciate how it might be helping me.

One lesson I'll take from today is this: even if the meditation was shorter, less substantive, or felt kind of "half-assed", it still "worked". It was a moment of intentionality that seems to go a long way towards setting me up for having a mindful and intentional day. And that's important. And will be important to remember on those days where maybe I can't meditate (I know that will happen at some point).

Mlog 3/21 @ 7:45-8:20am (estimated): first meditation in a year or more

This is the first post in what I hope will be a regular and major part of this blog: a log of reflections and thoughts I have in response to the regular meditations I practice.

This morning was the first time I tried to meditate in a long time. I don't know if it's been a year or two years? But it's been a while. I decided to try and get back into it because these past few weeks have been challenging in a specific way that I recognize is one of my dysfunctional ADHD patterns: I will go through periods where I neglect the "work" of managing my brain and doing my regular brain-maintenance practices. I've stopped using my bullet journal, stopped being intentional with my time (read: I've been binge-playing videogames), I've stopped being mindful and "honest" with myself, and as a result noticed that on my days off from work, I am just too tired to do any of the important adulting activities. It's a set of symptoms and experiences that I know really well. And the answer to this pattern is always the same: get quiet with myself, get honest, notice and acknowledge what my brain is doing and try to reconnect with what I really want (whether that's what I want in my life, or who I really want to be, or whatever).

Sometimes that has meant journaling and reflecting in words. Sometimes it has meant going for a walk. Sometimes it has meant listening to music. Sometimes it's meant talking about it with my therapist (who then reminds me that my best tools are usually writing, journaling, and mindful physical movement.)

This time it's led me back to meditation. And, also, this blog. 

And this morning's meditation was hard. Because I'm out of practice and oh, right, I have ADHD. But I did it anyway, and feel good about how it went. 

So here's how my ADHD meditation went this morning:

The first thing I did was I took my medication. My brain was very noisy this morning and I knew today was not a good day to "accidentally" skip my meds. Besides, I thought, hopefully it would help me focus and be present as I sat down to meditate.

I sat down and I tried to get comfortable. I experience chronic pain due to an old back injury that affects the nerves in my legs and hips, so this was a little difficult. I was distracted by the physical sensations, the discomfort, and also my cat coming into the room to poke and nudge at me, confused about what the heck I was doing sitting on the floor...

I started to get irritated. I started to get discouraged. This wasn't going to work. This was a dumb idea. There were too many distractions. I started to get mad at my cat, mad at my ankles, mad at the sound of a truck outside, mad at the sense that I was running out of time before my partner woke up and came downstairs.  There was no way I would be able to find the quiet and centered place where my brain is all moving in one direction.

The thing I was trying to focus on was the sensation of my breathing. Physical feeling of breath going in and out of my body, through my nose, or my mouth, into my lungs, the feeling of my chest expanding and contracting. I wanted to use that to give me a way into finding the quiet place in my brain... but... the distractions kept coming. 

So... then I decided to try and stop fighting the distractions and see if I could use them all, simultaneously, as the focus of my meditation. Instead of trying to push all that stuff aside, I started to take note of each one I was experiencing and I started counting them. I didn't dwell on them. It was more like I noted them, acknowledged that they were happening, and then set them on a shelf in front of me. I didn't dismiss them or try to make them go away. I let them stay as long as they wanted. I just tried to tally them up and quietly just let them each exist.

So in addition to still noticing my breath and the physical sensations there, I counted and acknowledged six distractions:

1. The physical discomfort in my hips and ankles. Okay. I noticed the sensation, categorized what it felt like (kind of burning, and a kind of pulling sensation today)
2. The song stuck in my head ("Here comes a thought" from Steven Universe. One hundred percent relevant to what I was doing.)
3. The presence of my cat, nudging my hand and rubbing himself on the floor. (Hi buddy, thanks for joining me.)
4. The sounds from inside the apartment... the heater turning on, the fridge's hum, the creak from... somewhere. This is the environment I'm in. It's okay for it to make sounds.
5. The sounds from outside, the cars, the opening and closing of a neighbor's door, footsteps, a chirp/squawk that might have been a bird. It's okay for that to exist too.
6.  Thoughts about what kind of meditation I wanted to do once I "succeeded", and thoughts about telling other people about the kinds of meditations I liked to do and that helped my ADHD (these were the seeds that led to this blog).

These seemed to be the full set of distractions I was experiencing in that moment. Sure I was having other experiences, but none of them were "grabbing" me or making me pull away from what I wanted to be doing. This was the set. And I kind of marveled at how few there were. There were only six. I wondered how many I might have tomorrow. More? Fewer? How many might other ADHDers find if they tallied them up?

And then I noticed that my brain was quieter. I wasn't fully centered or fully meditating... but my brain was calmer, quieter, much more content and happy to sit with the distractions sitting on the shelf in front of me.

I spent some time focusing on the sensation of my breathing. And every time a thought or a distraction happened, I noticed it, acknowledged it, and figured out which of the six categories on the shelf it belonged with and gently nudged it to join its friends.

Then I started to experiment with some of my favorite visualizations that I like to use when I meditate. None of them stuck with me for very long. My brain stayed with one for maybe the first minute or so, and then drifted into trying the next one. But that was okay. I was content with the fact that I felt "settled". It was okay if my meditation today was haphazard.

Here's a summary of some of the visualizations I played with as I settled my brain further:

Little people with clean, soft cloths, wiping down the inner surface of my body starting from the top and working their way down. 

This is one of my favorites. Something about the idea that I am made out of some kind of hard, shiny material that gets dingy and dusty, along with a visualization of that dust and dirt getting cleanly wiped away by tiny, thorough workers.... it appeals to me. It feels satisfying. In the past, I would continue this visualization all the way until the little workers had cleaned all surfaces from the top of my head to the tips of my toes and then I'd imagine something like a flushing rinse to flush away all the dust that had collected at the bottom. But today I only got to about the top of my chin before my brain got distracted by a different one.

An egg cracking on the top of my head, gently coating my body from the top down with warmth.

This one is weird. I don't like raw eggs. I don't like the idea of egg-guts running down my body. But I can borrow the metaphor to visualize something that does feel good and that works for my brain (at least for a little while). Something like syrup, or just "warm goo" like those slime toys we'd have as kids. Anyway, I felt the "egg" on the top of my skull, and I straightened my posture so that it would run evenly down me. I felt it crack, and the warmth slowly made its way through my hair, and down.  But this one didn't last long either. I noticed that the idea of the egg on my skull had made me straighten up, so I started to wonder about altering the metaphor to something like balancing a bean-bag or a water balloon on my head, and feeling sand (gross) or water (too fast) flowing down.  It was interesting and didn't take away from my meditation, but it meant the egg-visualization didn't go far.

Detangling hair, starting with the tips.

This is one of the rare ones that go from the bottom up instead of the top down. I usually prefer ones that start at my skull and work down. focusing on my brain first seems to work the best for me. However this is one that's in my toolbox and sometimes it's the right visualization to work with. I imagined long, wavy hair, tangled, and ratty, and mentally held a handful of it in my left hand, and gently, carefully, combed through it starting at the very bottom, working slowly to detangle it until it was smooth and flowing. Again, I didn't get very far before I drifted to another meditation, but also again, that's okay for today.

Water flowing down my head, filling up a reservoir of water, my thoughts become bubbles floating:

This is one that combines top-down and bottom-up and also includes a tool I have used in the past to acknowledge thoughts and distractions. I felt the warm water flow down my head, like a gentle, steady, warm waterfall. The water collected on the floor and the level of the water rose around me, slowly, gently. When it reaches above my head, I settle into the sensation of being safe and warm, and every time I have a thought or a distraction, I notice them, and visualize them as large, iridescent bubbles. I watch each bubble slowly make its way from the floor and float up to the surface, breaking and releasing the thought into the air above.  

And then, distractions that led to this blog:

And then I became distracted by thoughts of how other people might experience these visualizations and began contemplating ways to explain or teach these practices to others.... again these were some of the seeds of this blog. Someone who was afraid of drowning would not get much out of the water/bubble visualization. In fact that might be awful. Someone who hated eggs, and couldn't reframe the metaphor wouldn't get anything from the egg one... and the "little people with cloths wiping down the inner surface of me" just sounds weird and difficult to explain.

I realized that all of these things are visualizations I invented for myself. And I'd invented a ton of them because over time, I'd get bored or distracted by them. I actually can't remember if I ever did one of these meditations multiple times in a row, or if I kept rotating through different ones, inventing new ones, each time.

I started to wonder if that's an important component of successfully meditating with ADHD.... at least for me. Each time it can be new. Novel. Fresh. As soon as it becomes a routine or feels familiar/repetitive, my brain just can't do it. Not until a bunch of time has passed and it decides it wants to return to it. 

Is that a key to meditating with ADHD? Always do something new?

Then I started to imagine recording a podcast... creating guided meditations out of each of the different ones I've invented over the years... and then I started contemplating starting a blog... "ADHD Meditations" came to me as the name right away.... 

And then, I noticed that I'd become distracted away from my body. And that was okay. I took a moment and thanked my brain for getting excited about this topic, and promised myself that I would see if "adhdmeditations.com" was available as a domain when I was done meditating (spoiler: it was!). 

My medication kicks in and the slow rise back to the surface.

After that, I just let myself drift. I tried to just be with the experience of having thoughts, gently following their shapes, and putting them on the shelf in those six categories.  

I noticed my breathing had changed. My brain was feeling light, calm, present. Focused. I wondered if my medication had kicked in, and I welcomed the sensation of calm and quiet. I sat with it. I didn't "try" for anything. Just felt my body and tried to notice when my brain and body decided I wanted to be done.

I don't know how much time passed. And that's perfect. When I get to that experience, where it feels like twenty minutes or twenty seconds are the same thing, it's great. It feels fuzzy in my body and my brain, and my breathing feels more "open" somehow.

Eventually though, like a gentle light-switch, my brain decided it wanted to be done. It felt "satisfied" by the meditation. So I opened my eyes. I gently moved my hands. I stretched my arms, moving them in small circles. I extended my legs, rotated my ankles, and brought feeling and awareness back into my body. 

The last thing I did was a session of physical therapy for my back. I was already on the floor, and after the meditation, I felt motivated to do other things that I know are good for my body.  So that felt good. Body and brain, both centered and more solid. 

Even if I didn't get into anything like a "deep" state of meditation, I felt really good about this first session. I felt optimistic that I could do this more often, especially if I started a blog and started journaling online about my experiences. 

So that's what I did next: I followed through on my promise to my brain... I checked if this domain name was available, bought it, and set up the blog. Nice to follow through on a promise to myself, and I hope that this is the beginning of more blogging about ADHD and meditation and the way I practice it.

ADHD Meditations says "hello world".

 Hello world.

I'm starting this blog as an experiment in self-care. I'm not new to blogging, and I'm not new to meditation, and I'm certainly not new to having ADHD (although I was diagnosed as an adult and didn't know the name for what I experienced for most of my life).  But right now, as I'm coming out the other side (*knocks on wood*) of some of the worst mental health I've ever had in my life, I've decided to see if I can integrate meditation back into my regular practice of managing my ADHD.

I know that not everyone with ADHD can meditate, and that's okay. I feel like I'm one of the lucky ones who can, and honestly, I credit some of the influences I had as a kid for that ability. My dad experimented with things like hypnosis therapy to try and quit smoking, and he also had a semi-regular practice of meditation that he told me about. My first exposure to the idea was very positive, probably because it came from someone in my life that I trusted and admired and who had introduced me to lots of other exciting and intellectual things like Carl Sagan's Cosmos, and Stephen Hawking's a Brief History of Time. As a kid, it never occurred to me to think that meditation was weird, or "woo woo" or anything. It was just a fun and interesting brain-exercise that made my head feel good and centered and focused. 

I got into the "woo woo" stuff much later, all on my own, dabbling in the usual teen-growing-up-in-the-80s/90s practices of new-age religion, wicca, astral projection, spiritually-influenced martial arts... those sorts of things. And regardless of how you feel about those practices (and regardless of how I feel about them now, which by the way is "with affection, but also it's complicated"), I recognize them all as different ways I developed and maintained a practice of meditation. I was all over the place in terms of my spirituality and what mythologies I used to create meaning in my life, but the brain stuff... the practice of prayer, or spellwork, or trying to leave your body, or manipulate the energies in yourself as you practiced wushu, they all use something like meditation and mindfulness. They all reinforced the... wiring in my brain? the muscles? the pathways? that allow me to meditate now as an adult.

So... I think that's where and how I developed these skills. And very likely, it's also probably a big reason my ADHD went undiagnosed for so long. I was basically using one of the best coping strategies for ADHD in my daily life as I grew up, so my ADHD went unnoticed and undiagnosed for my entire childhood and my young-adulthood.  

But, again, I recognize that not everyone with ADHD can meditate.  But as someone who came into meditation before I learned of ADHD, I feel somewhat uniquely positioned to share what I think my experiences with meditation have taught me and maybe come up with some insights that might help other ADHDers adopt a practice of meditation and mindfulness even if you didn't grow up with these practices.

Because I do get it. I know what it's like to have a brain that can't meditate, even despite my long years of practice. I go through long periods of time where my brain just CAN'T. It'll be too noisy in there, or I'll be too impatient, or my thoughts will be too wild, or my body just won't sit still.

I feel like I'm coming out of one of those periods right now, in fact. Or maybe I'm in it still. I meditated today for the first time in maybe a year? And it felt good, but it was also very difficult. I noticed my thoughts grabbing hold of the idea of creating this blog a lot, and found myself pre-writing blog posts and topics and all kinds of things before I noticed the busy thoughts and gently gave them a mental hug, promised them that I'll consider making the blog when I'm done meditating, and then returned my attention to my body.  So like, truly truly truly, I get it. Brains are assholes sometimes, ADHD brains especially. But I have found ways to work with my brain and meditate (or do similar things), and I hope to write some of those things down in this blog and share them.

I hope you'll join me. :) Thank you for reading this much so far. I can't promise I'll keep this blog going forever... maybe I'll get distracted and lose interest, but registering this domain, and writing this post... well... it feels good. Good for my brain. So, I feel some gratitude for that. 

My hope is that the rest of this blog will be a couple of different things:

• Essays on topics related to meditation and ADHD where I share what I know, what I've learned, and try to connect that with stuff I know is out there in the world
• Personal reflections on the meditations that I regularly do. (I hope to work up to meditating every morning, but I think I'll start small with just 2-3 days a week. You know how hard it is to build new habits with our brains...)

So... that's what I'm thinking. That's the tentative plan and experiment so far. We'll see how it goes. :)