I’ve been meditating daily (at least once a day) since March 2013. Sporadically since 2001. And teaching different types of meditation since 2003.
And I still find it really challenging. But I can’t imagine life without it.
I hope that by sharing some of the joys and challenges of different types of meditation and ADHD and trauma, my own history (with a deeper, more personal dive for the Sole to Soul Circle members tomorrow), that you’ll be kinder to yourself around any challenges you have in keeping your focus on the meditation.
Remember, it’s a practice.
Some days it’s easier than other days but the noticing when our attention drifts and bringing it back is the key.
Let me know how you get on! Email eve@selfcarecoaching.net or comment.
le grá (with love),
Evei
Full transcript
And when I treat it like punishment, like I don’t know about you, but I used to get told off a lot for talking in class, again, ADHD, for distracting other people, and of course, I distract myself. So it’s figuring out what length of time would work for you. And when I’m talking about a 12-hour silence, that’s not all meditative, but it does help me get quieter.
Welcome to The Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday, I release new episodes to help you feel better every day. They’re trauma-informed and VAST/ADHD friendly, (Self with an uppercase S and lowercase s) self-care ideas designed to support you in connecting with and taking care of your Self, that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant, and miraculous part of yourself. To create a life you don’t need to retreat from. So I hope you enjoy this new episode.
And if you haven’t already listened, access older episodes at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com or at selfcarecoaching.net or through whatever platform you prefer.
You can also access lots of free resources to find out more about how we might work together at selfcarecoaching.net.
And through the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, and for deeper dives into each podcast episode, there’s a bonus interview with my guests, where I have guests or into the theme, as well as access to the complete archive, including the entire Love Your Whole Self chakra journey. And you can access all of that by joining the Sole to Soul Circle. So that’s S-O-L-E for the Sole of your feet.
It’s a fully embodied approach and soul S-O-U-L. It’s a transpersonal approach. It’s very holistic.
You can find out more at selfcarecoaching.net and selfcarecoaching.net/sole-to-soul-circle/. So thanks again for listening. And I hope you enjoy today’s episode for World Meditation Day.
Today’s topic is meditation. Episode 589. We’re looking at the challenges and benefits of meditation for trauma survivors and VAST/ADHD brains. While I’ve already shared hundreds of meditations for you, I have several in the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, as well as on my YouTube, in newsletters, blog posts, articles.
And you can access loads through the site selfcarecoaching.net or through my YouTube channel. I’m sharing shorter trauma-informed and VAST/ADHD meditations every Friday, starting soon, not this Friday. But I thought it would be a lovely way actually to show the huge degree of variation in meditations. They have different benefits, different feelings, different ways of applying them.
When my psychiatrist told me that if anyone told me I should try mindfulness to cure my ADHD, I should tell them to F off, I laughed. I agreed with her AND shuddered to even imagine the state of my brain had I not been meditating for decades and daily since 2013. And I teach mindfulness meditation as one of the forms I do teach.
It’s been amazing and it remains challenging. In recent years, since 2012, understanding more about my brain and other trauma survivors’, and then more recently VAST/ADHD brains, the meditations I’ve been guiding and facilitating for myself and others have all been trauma-informed and in the last few years, VAST/ADHD friendly. Even so, I still struggle with meditation.
I’m still waiting to try ADHD medication, but I also know that even though I struggle with my daily meditation, it is so worth it. In today’s episode, I’m going to share part of my own personal journey with meditation and hope that it will inspire you to keep practicing. It is, after all, a practice.
This is another episode that I have scripted. I’m just moving the recycling bin a little bit closer. I hopefully won’t wave too many papers in too many directions as I go through it.
In my twenties, the first time I tried meditation, I thought I was having a heart attack and I wasn’t, but I was so conditioned to not cause a fuss. I just kind of sat there thinking I was having a heart attack and not looking after myself. Apparently my heart chakra was just opening, but there are so many different styles and there are ways if you want to try it and you’re struggling, there are ways to go easier on yourself.
There truly is something for everyone. And the more compassionate you can be with yourself as you practice, and it is a practice, the more beneficial you’ll find it. Even when we fail. I got distracted in this morning’s beditation. If you want to find out more about “beditation”, I refer you to Caroline Shola Arewa’s episode of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, episode three, I think it was.
We still gain benefits even when we get distracted. It’s about noticing when the mind wanders, congratulating yourself for noticing and gently bringing the awareness back to whatever the focus of that particular meditation is.
Research has found that, I mean, there’s been so much research around meditation and many of these practices are ancient, whereas the modern neuroscience is just catching up. Some research shows that in as little as eight minutes, we get psychological, mental and emotional benefits. And that’s for anyone.
A lot of the research has been done on seasoned veteran meditators and people who are monks and in other ways of life where it is an enormous part of their day-to-day. With practice, it rewires our brain.
If you’re interested in some of the ever-increasing research using cutting-edge neuroscience and technology to find out how some of these ancient practices have been helping people, in some cases for thousands and thousands of years, I highly recommend Sharon Begley’s beautiful book, The Plastic Brain.
It’s a great start, a great place to start. In a nutshell, our brains are plastic. Everything we do either entrenches old beliefs or habits or helps us to cultivate newer, more helpful approaches.
While it’s easier for children to, for example, learn a new language, learn new skills, learn anything new, their brains are more plastic when they’re developing. It’s never, ever, ever too late to learn even though it takes more effort. Dr Daniel Siegel was a guest lecturer when I trained and I remember him telling us about a man in his 90s who had healed his attachment issues even at that stage.
Every time you struggle with meditation practice or any kind of mind-body practice, I hope that you will remind yourself that all humans struggle and it can of course be even harder for our brains as Dr Ned Halliwell puts it, Ferrari engine, bicycle brakes, but it’s still beneficial.
So even this morning, my not stellar effort had me start the day feeling much more centred, much more grounded, much more focused and calmer than if I hadn’t bothered. If you were to imagine a jungle well-worn pathways are the old unconscious patterns and beliefs and habits that are our defaults.
We don’t think about them. As Donald Hebb said, neurons that wire together, neurons that fire together, wire together. The more we do anything, whether that’s helpful or less helpful, the stronger those neural pathways become. As we consciously change these, initially it might be like trying to find our way through dense thicket.
You might need a metaphorical machete to cut through, but the more we do it by practicing meditation and other new habits we’re consciously cultivating, the more familiar and the better trodden those newer pathways, those newer neural pathways, new ways of being become.
That doesn’t mean that we won’t have tougher practices, but even noticing like I did this morning and persevering and like kind of giving myself more slack, cutting myself more slack helps us enormously. Just having a daily practice, having a regular practice and noticing some days your concentration is better. Some days your focus is better.
I hope that my sharing some of my experiences and some different practices, which you’re going to find in instructions for in the new mini meditation series, will help you build, create or restart and maintain a regular meditation practice that supports you and your unique glorious brain.
I remember from childhood, I did a lot of drama, but I was so self-conscious and we did a lot of like relaxation, guided relaxations and meditations. And I remember pretending to relax. My mind was whirring the gazillion miles an hour. I remember on one occasion, I was so wound up. I looked relaxed, but someone kind of touched me gently and I kind of flew down a split of stairs at the Towngate Theatre in Basildon, because my startle reflex remains high, but it was really, really high. I would pretend to be relaxed, but I could not relax. I didn’t understand anything about either ADHD or trauma.
I mentioned earlier my crystal therapy introduction to meditation as an adult, and I’d chosen some rose quartz to support my heart chakra. And I was palpitating so badly, I thought I was having a heart attack. In the Sole to Soul Circle, I’m sharing some of the crystals that support different types of meditation, because they can really offer a beautiful focus, both in terms of their energy, which I believe they have, but also in terms of them being comforting to hold.
So I have this beautiful clear quartz cluster here. It wouldn’t be one that I generally pick for meditation, but just to give you an example for like focus, clarity, that could be wonderful. There are so many, I’ll go into more detail with the Sole to Soul Circle, but you can also check out the crystal information on the website.
I remember in yoga classes when I started attending around 2001, for pain relief for the endometriosis, I’d be sobbing in Savasana at the end of every class, but I kept going because it offered such good pain relief. I knew it was a psycho-spiritual practice, so I knew that the stuff was coming up for healing, but back then there was very little understood about trauma-informed yoga. I longed to heal to get through how awful I felt.
And there was a part of me that kept going back and that did heal and that continues to heal. But something I teach my yoga students the whole time and often share with clients or loved ones is if you’re in a position where you’re meditating or you’re doing anything where things are coming up for healing and you’re struggling to contain it, being kind to yourself. Let yourself bring your awareness to your thighs, your breath, inhale as you tense the thighs and exhale as you release the thighs. By doing that a few times, you’re coming into a sense of safety in your body and you’re coming into the present moment.
By tensing and releasing the thighs, you’re also burning off some of the extra stress hormones that are coursing through your system. When I did my psychosynthesis training, I did a lot of guided imagery work, which was really powerful, really transformative and sometimes deeply distressing because it was so powerful and transformative. And back then it wasn’t trauma-informed the way I kind of facilitate them. They’re very much trauma-informed. I’ve also been really fortunate wearing my freelance journalism hat to interview meditation experts, including former presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson, Sonia Choquette, Martha Beck, Robert Dilts, Dr Dina Glouberman, Piero Ferrucci, Diana Whitmore, so many people, so many different styles of working with meditation in so many different ways, practising, being kind to ourselves.
In my yoga therapy training, obviously there was an enormous amount of meditation and we finished with a semi-silent retreat, which for me back then, I remember everyone else was like, “Yay, silence!”
And I was like, “Oh my God, I’m not going to survive this.” I had no idea it was coming up. My longest stretch of pure silence was 36 hours. We were allowed to journal. I know people who swear by like the 10 day Vipasana retreats, they adore it. For me, and now again, I understand more about my VAST/ADHD brain. It’s like, of course I need to journal. Of course I need to externally process. Of course the rejection sensitivity dysphoria is high in such situations.
Back then, I remember thinking we were meant to be doing pure mindfulness meditation and I was drifting into breath practices and drifting into Metta meditation because I just found it too much to focus on. So I was shame spiralling. Then I went to hear Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is credited with bringing mindfulness to a more secular audience around the world decades ago now.
I love the title of one of his books, Wherever You Go, There You Are. I heard him in London in 2013 and there was something so beautiful about his approach. So allowing, so gentle.
I’ve not missed a day since. I just recognised, of course, it’s about befriending your brain. It’s not something I have to do or should do. It’s something that I long to do. It’s something I need to do, just like I brush my teeth. It’s just like, I love it.
That doesn’t mean that I always love it but I love it enough. Like as I record this, I’m waiting for high tide and I’m also wondering if the rain will stop and I’ll have a sea dip. But I know enough that, year round, being in the sea, it helps me reset. A mini meditation.
It helps me reset. In 2013, I had an MRI for aura migraines and I passed no heed for many years because the only abnormality they felt, first of all, I was like, they found a brain but they found an abnormality, which when I Googled it, it correlated with ADHD. And back then we weren’t as addicted to our devices as we are now.
We hadn’t rewired like so many people, even without ADHD or without trauma histories. As a society, we’ve been rewiring our brains for inattention. So I would be doing in my morning meditation, mindfulness of the breath, some Metta. I include all my clients past, present and future supervisees, groups I’m working with and groups I’m worried about, like different parts of the world, local, wherever it might be. I’ll often do some image work and then I’ll move into a moving meditation with some yoga. I will also, because I’m so used to it now, when I’m stressed during the day, I will regularly be moving into that calming breaths, those calming, like just grounding myself, centring myself and helping me navigate life and all of its lifing. Life-be-lifing.
The other day, the other week, I was at a conference in Cork and I came up against a really scary hill start and I needed to get out the car and my partner took over for me. He used to do this loads when he was teaching me how to drive, but I’ve had my licence now since September last year, I think it is. I’m recording this end of April and I’ve become a much, much better driver. Regularly driving halfway across the country alone and I do like at night, I do all sorts, but this particular hill, it set me back.
I did my calming breaths and I got into a resourceful state. When I got back home to Westport, I started taking myself for little hill finding missions and I came to the conclusion that Westport was really flat. It is not.
It just wasn’t that awful hill in Cork which came out onto traffic lights and it was just like traffic behind me, but I realised how much better I’ve got by practising, but I realised also I was calming the breaths, I was calming the whole body.
We know through Polyvagal Theory, 80% of the signals go up through the vagus nerve, up from the body to the brain, which then sends all those signals of calm, of peace or confidence or ease or whatever condition, whatever feeling you want to cultivate by working with your body, by working with your breath, you can send that shortcut signal to the brain and it’s incredible.
Every lunchtime, I do a longer yoga nidra, that really helps. I’ve got several that you can experiment with and there are bespoke ones in the Sole to Soul Circle, but they’re guided relaxations that also help harness the power of the unconscious mind to help you move towards goals and dreams otherwise known as sankalpas that you’re working towards.
Every week I do a 12 hour silence, which is both delicious and it continues to sometimes be excruciating. With the yoga nidras, find recordings that don’t stress you out. So if you like my voice, great, listen to them. You might prefer other types of voices. You might prefer music in the background or other sounds. Me personally, I like voice only. Mine are all trauma-informed and VAST/ADHD friendly.
But with the 12 hour silence, it’s really interesting in terms of the years I was doing a 24 hour silence around every Christmas and I continue to do that. But every year, I’d start out, I’d be stressed. I’d be like, I need my phone. I need to talk to whoever. I need to message whatever I need to do, do, do, do. I let myself journal.
I let myself write all my Brain in a Box thoughts (see the Lisa Woodruff episode for more), jotting them down, emptying my brain onto index cards. But very quickly my mind settles. I feel more attuned to whatever I’m doing.
No TV, no washing machine. I’ll let myself boil the kettle. I’ll let myself brush my teeth. I’ve got an electric toothbrush. I’ll try and be telepathic with the cats rather than talking to them out loud. I’ve let all my loved ones know that I’m not available for that 24 hours.
But this year, I realised that every year for over a decade, I’ve been promising myself at another bank holiday, I’m going to do that. And I realised I’ve not done it. So I thought, how can I make it more manageable for myself? And I thought by doing a weekly 12 hour one.
It tends to be on a Friday night. Once I’ve kind of had my goodnight conversation with my partner, I will turn my phone off and it will stay off for 12 hours. Then on the Saturday morning, I do my yoga without being able to take any photos of how adorable the cats are being or potentially the donkeys.
I might bake in silence or clean in silence. Normally I listen to podcasts or audio books or music. And it’s such a gorgeous start to the weekend. I don’t know how to describe it. But when I frame it as a treat for myself, as an indulgence, it’s brilliant. And when I treat it like punishment, like I don’t know about you, but I used to get told off a lot for talking in class, again, ADHD, for distracting other people.
And of course I distract myself. So it’s figuring out what length of time would work for you. And when I’m talking about 12 hour silence, that’s not all meditative, but it does help me get quieter.It does help me. My yoga on those mornings goes deeper. My meditation goes deeper.
Yes, I still get distracted wanting to take photos of whatever it is I’m seeing, or wanting to send messages to myself to remind me to do things or make notes or whatever it might be. And having an even bigger stack of index cards than I normally have access to, because when I’m in those 12 hour periods or those 24 hour periods, more ideas come. But it’s such a wonderful way of connecting with your inner voice rather than the constant default: wake up, look at the phone, get hooked into it.
I’m not saying anything new, but for me working with that PDA, that kind of pathological demand avoidance, even when it’s something I want to do for myself, I have to be really gentle with myself. I’m hoping that you will experiment. If you find my meditations, I’ve got loads from the books in the book bonus section as well, and that you will find them helpful and that there are many, many others out there as well.
And when I’m doing my own yoga nidras or listening to other people’s, they can be wonderful. And even the same persons, I can really like some say, settling into it, very, very relaxing. And then others, it’s like, it just doesn’t work.
Having that compassion, recognising it is a practice, we can cultivate that concentration, that attention, that focus. And also make life as easy as you possibly can for yourself. Remember, there are also so many breath practices, so many breath practices, pranayama in yogic terms.
And the pranayama practices, the breath practices are ways in which we’re harnessing that mind-body connection in order to help us feel how we want to feel. Some of the practices are balancing, like Alternate Nostril Breathing. Some of them are lifting, like Kapalabhati. Some of them are calming, like Ujjayi, when done in a particular way. Some of them are really calming and that kind of help create a sense of spaciousness, like Durga. There are many, many beautiful, glorious breath practices.
There is, you’ve heard me probably talk about Metta, that Loving Kindness meditation that I wouldn’t get through a day without because it helps me not worry so much about what’s going on in my life, in other people’s lives, in the world, with work, with anything. It’s like, anytime I worry about anyone, I’m much, much faster at remembering. Worrying is like praying for bad things to happen.
Send them Metta. May they be happy and healthy, peaceful and at ease. May they be able to take care of themselves joyfully.
May they possess the courage, wisdom, patience and determination to manage life’s challenges. If I’m feeling frustrated with someone, if I can’t understand why someone would be so mean or so cruel or anything like that, that’s the challenging part of the Metta, where I also wish, may they be happy and healthy. It’s the whole thing.
ImageWork is wonderful. Again, I’ve spoken about it before, harnessing the power of the unconscious mind, helping us focus our imaginations for good rather than catastrophising. And thinking again about the yoga nidras, what are your favourites? What types of meditation help you most? And what time of day might you find it most beneficial in terms of developing your own practice or reigniting your own practice? If you have kids or pets, you might incorporate them.
I love in the morning to hold paws with Meadbh or Rainbow if they’re on the bed with me. Or I might be cuddled into my partner while I’m meditating, just like he might be asleep or I might be holding paws with one of the cats. They might be asleep. They might be gently kind of moving their claws around me, but it’s incorporating it.
I very much realise that small children and dogs and other life situations are more demanding, but even recognising your child is crying or your child is excitedly waking you up, even just connecting with your breath and grounding and giving yourself permission to be more present, that’s a form of meditation.
In the book, one of the meditations I have is my Rainbow Appreciation Time, where Rainbow would leap onto my lap and I would then be stuck there, just feeling her fur, hearing her purr, being calmed by her breath. And it’s a whole mindfulness experience and really, really gorgeous when I allow myself to connect with that present moment.
Never have I regretted slowing down, pausing to do that, because I think it was the Dalai Lama who said that when things are very busy, he meditates for longer, because the more we connect with that inner stillness, the better resourced we are day to day, the easier life’s challenges become, because we’re able to connect with all of our resources, rather than being so off centre, we’re just being ricocheted around the world.
Challenging advanced practice, but if you have pets or kids and you think you can’t meditate because of that, or if you’re in a high traffic area or it’s very noisy, yes, it’s going to be more challenging than if you’re in a tranquil spa, there are going to be more distractions, but life is an advanced practice.
Give yourself credit for what you’re dealing with and notice how it feels to go with it, to stay with it and yeah, to really cultivate the mind.
When you let me know your favourite kind of meditation, I would love for you to really think about like, for me, when I had Jon Kabat-Zinn, that really was transformative because for many, many years, it’d been like, I should have a daily meditation practice and I should be doing it. Like when I was doing my crystal therapy training, when I first learned how to teach meditation and do it for myself, it’s like, you should be meditating. You should, should, should, should, should.
And interviewing so many mindfulness experts and other types of meditation experts and they were very lovely, but there was also that sense of, I should be doing more the yoga therapy training.
We had to have our daily yoga practice and meditation, but it was the kind of discipline, which is really important. But for me, hearing Jon Kabat-Zinn talk about it in such an allowing way, it enabled me to stop shooting myself and start reminding myself that I deserve that time every day.
I want you to think about how you can give yourself permission to treat meditation, if it appears to you as a gift, as something that you are worthy of, as something that is a treat and indulgence. I had a little orange sticker from that talk in London, where it was like a little round sticker. I think they put it on my hand, I can’t remember. But when I got home, in order to anchor my intention of developing a daily meditation practice that I’ve not broken since March 2013, I stuck it on my light switch, because it was still dark at that time when I was waking up in the morning. It was before the clocks went forward, and so like first thing in the morning, turning on the light, seeing that little orange dot, okay, time to meditate.
And it gradually became a practice, and like I said, over the years, it’s become such an ingrained part of my life. Anytime I get stressed, I automatically go into some kind of mindfulness or regulatory meditation practice.
Thank you for listening. I really look forward to hearing from you about your favourite meditations. I’m looking forward to sharing more with the Sole to Soul Circle tomorrow.
And I hope you’ll look out for the new meditation episodes, as well as accessing older ones. You can do that by subscribing. I hope if you found it helpful that you’ll share, rate, review, comment, feel free to email me, eve at selfcarecoaching.net. And this episode, like all of them, is produced by me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham.
Thank you for listening. And I hope that you’ll start listening to yourself and connecting with your own Self with that uppercase S. And a wonderful way to do that is to get still, to get quiet, and to listen to that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most wondrous, brilliant, and miraculous, joyful path.