Short morning meditation

April 29, 2024 9:01 AM

I'm trying to improve my morning routine.(Which right now consists of coffee and doomscrolling...) I'd like to incorporate a 10-20 minute meditation, guided or otherwise, but I keep striking out. Largely, I think, because I struggle with anything that focuses on breath and with certain kinds of visualization. I'd really appreciate ideas.

I have access to insight timer and calm but would be willing to pay for something else.

I am not spiritual but light content in that direction won't bother me. What I do struggle with is anything that focuses on breathing-- counting breaths, feeling your diaphragm rise, square breathing etc. It makes me oddly tense.

The other reason I think I'm striking out is that I'm not a particularly visual person and a lot of the meditations that don't focus on breathing ask you to do things like visualize a warm light shining from x body part which also doesn't work well for me.

Other kinds of visualization seem to work fine-- e.g. imagining the faces of people I love. It's basically visualization around my own body that seems to bump me out of the groove.

What has worked well includes: body scans focused on paying attention to your body, especially if it includes imagining a feeling of heaviness, loving kindness meditations that feel grounded and not...breathy? for lack of better word. Gratitude and self compassion exercises also sometimes work. But these often feel geared towards sleep and the end of the day rather than morning.

I'm open to trying out different approaches and appreciate any ideas!

posted by jeszac to Religion & Philosophy (20 answers total)

Try walking, either in meditation form or just plain walking.

Another form of routine and automatic movement may do if walking is not an option.
posted by shock muppet at 9:12 AM on April 29 [2 favorites]

In my experience, "tenseness" is pretty normal and often means you're doing the right thing; it isn't "striking out" at all. At least how I was taught, the whole idea of breath meditation is to notice that tenseness so you can focus on it, then release it. That is, meditation isn't a magic button to make yourself less tense, but rather a tool to find the tension so you can relax it.
posted by etealuear_crushue at 9:14 AM on April 29 [2 favorites]

Along with the other advice, just a thought in case this plays a role - start smaller. 10-20 minutes is a great goal, but start with 1-2 minutes. Even 1 minute of meditation helps and can be easier to complete, especially when you're first starting.
posted by Meldanthral at 9:19 AM on April 29 [3 favorites]

Meditation takes practice and consistency. The more you do it, the better you'll get at it.

How long have you tried your morning routine? Opinions may vary on this, but I'd say give it at least 3-4 weeks before determining that it's not working.
posted by Leontine at 9:22 AM on April 29

Have you tried short morning yoga routines? I’ve been doing some to incorporate breathing and stretching in the morning. They can be 10-15 mins with some light intention setting in the beginning/breathing and some flow yoga and then a few mins at the end that’s a bit like a body scan and relaxation. Yoga with Adrienne on YouTube is a popular option.
posted by inevitability at 9:29 AM on April 29

Best answer: I tend to agree that "let everything go and just concentrate on the breath" is supremely annoying advice. "Deliberately become hyperaware of something that's largely autonomic and don't be irritated by the result." It's as if they said, "court an earworm!" Why?

On the other hand, I find that I really like the nonsense instruction in the TV ads for better sleep: "Try to feel your brain smoothing out." Snort! Right, okay, will do. Apparently when my brain smoothes out, my shoulders drop and my jaw unclenches and the muscles around my eyes relax so they get wider and go slightly out of focus. This puts me in a beautifully receptive mode to learn all about new developments at Hardee's.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:41 AM on April 29 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Something I used to do as a kind of meditation technique (before I knew it even was meditation) is something that may work for you...I think I half-remembered a self-hypnosis thing once, and it cross-polinated with some acting conservatory exercises and it somehow turned into this.

You basically imagine you are in A Safe Space. This space can be whatever you want it to be - if your aunt's kitchen was especially comforting for you, you can imagine that, or you can imagine something wholly original. And then - you just explore the space. See what color the curtains are, open the cupboard doors and see what's inside them, look under the bed if you're in a bed, check out what sounds and smells are there, etc.

In my acting classes we did this for acting exercises, and it's really amazing how detailed your memory can get if you let it. I once did something like this where I was picturing myself in one of the rooms from my childhood home - but I was imagining all the doorknobs were at my own eye level. Which puzzled me until I realized that the last time I'd been in that room I was like about five, and so the doorknobs would have been at eye level for a five year old.

I've also tried this with a unique space - I sort of let the images come into my head as I explore instead of consciously deciding things. Like, I don't think that "okay, I like green so the curtains are green, there we go" I just imagine I turn my head and "see" - "where's the window - over there. Oh, look, green curtains." It's a little hard to explain, but it also lets me incorporate all sorts of weird details that my brain sort of coughs up (like, I didn't intend for the place I was exploring to have a red and blue tiled hammam with 4-foot-deep pools, but there it was).

I have no idea if explaining this makes any sense. Please forgive me if it's a little out-there!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:43 AM on April 29 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Waking Up. It's designed for doing a 10-minute guided meditation once a day. Although the meditations will sometimes focus on breathing, it's usually only for part of a session. Lots of focusing on your body resting in space, and some loving kindness. Many sessions have a non-dual focus, if that means anything to you. You can save the daily meditations you like, so when you find some that don't involve too much breathing, you can revisit them.

Also the app is basically all Sam Harris, a noted atheist, so there's not much in the way of spirituality.
posted by crLLC at 10:50 AM on April 29

Best answer: There are some free body scan guided meditation downloads here, midway down the page: www.freemindfulness.org/download

They are by several different instructors so try out a couple and see if they work for you.
posted by splitpeasoup at 12:22 PM on April 29

Best answer: I have similar issues with breathwork and body-focused stuff, possibly due to hypermobility spectrum disorder (which is accompanied by difficulty with deep inhalation as well as a number of other interoceptive issues related to connective tissue development). I tried a “traditional” meditation program (that was primarily breathwork and body-focused) daily for about 2 months and the only times I responded to it were the handful of sessions that did not focus on breathwork or visualization around the body. I suspect there’s something about how my brain processes information about my body at play, and stopped forcing myself to use a meditation method that didn’t work for me.

Here are some that do work for me. I haven’t found any specific keywords to find more (as the visualization/imagination keyword hits a lot of bodyscan-plus-imagery stuff, so it’s basically just wandering around finding them here and there in the wild), but this might be somewhere to start.

Book Visualization
The Library: Immersive Guided Imagery Meditation
Imagination Meditation: Countryside Sunset
Who Dreamed Me Here
posted by brook horse at 2:01 PM on April 29 [1 favorite]

Writing morning pages - basically just a brain dump - might be something that you'd find useful.
posted by stormyteal at 3:37 PM on April 29

Best answer: The following is a VERY short morning meditation that I sometimes do. YMMV. Source:

• "He who is everywhere is nowhere." — Seneca to Lucilius Junior
• "You're like a rock tossed into the air. You gain nothing on the way up and lose nothing on the way down." — Marcus Aurelius
• Is my mind in the past or the future at the expense of the current?
• Am I multitasking? Am I multi-thinking? Is my mind cluttered at this time?
• Do I know what is right with my life, and if something is wrong how I plan to deal with it?
• Am I concentrating more on my plans or on my dreams?
• Since the universe is infinite, where I am right now is at its center (to a very good approximation).
• I also try to "absorb" my immediate surroundings (the weather, the activity of birds and animals, my home, my neighbors and my town).

FWIW.
posted by forthright at 7:09 PM on April 29 [3 favorites]

I aim to watch the river.

You're sitting on the river. Watching the river flow, the boats go by, birds chirping.

This one boat is red, it's really pretty, the sails fluff out nicely. What is that red, anyways? It's pretty. I wonder what brand boat it is, and/or where it was built. And what does it carry -- it rides so nicely. I'm in the hold now, looking around -- there's a bunch of bags of oats. The cloth on those bags is a nice weave. I wonder ...

Gently, back out of the boat, back to your seat on the river. No impatience, it would be ridiculous to think you can rigidly Keep Your Mind On Watching The River Flow. But that's the intention. And when drawn from watching the river flow, you'll notice it, and back out.

It's pleasant to watch the river flow. It's totally OK to fall away from watching it flow, just smile when you notice it, back off, and again watch the river flow.

I like to think of John Lennon "I'm Just Sittin' Here Watchin' The Wheels Go 'round And "round". It's a song I just love anyways, and it's a good fit for watching the river flow, for me.

You can't do it wrong. Sometimes my mind is so cluttered and clattered and shuttered and shattered and buttered and battered and it won't shut up -- my job is to sit. I generally sit 12 minutes, often another 12, often another 12 after that. But start wherever it is that you start; I've been at this for years.

A common mistake is to think that it's gonna be all peace and calm -- Ha! There are times I'm sitting in a chair, pouring sweat -- wtf?

Of course I love it when it's peace and calm but I don't aim for that.

I aim to watch the river.
posted by dancestoblue at 10:40 PM on April 29 [1 favorite]

The other reason I think I'm striking out is that I'm not a particularly visual person and a lot of the meditations that don't focus on breathing ask you to do things like visualize a warm light shining from x body part which also doesn't work well for me.

I have a similar orientation. My teachers remind me that "visualize" isn't a literal command. Any way that you mentally experience these things is doing the same task. For me, I have a kind of halting or jumpy ability to "visualize" lights and things, but it's always felt kind of jarring, like a flip book, when I feel like I'm expecting a smooth movie. Instead, I acknowledge that's an expectation of mine, and I let the jumpy frames come to me as they are wont to do. I'll also augment those mental images with something like a "felt sense" of taking in the words in a guided meditation, sort of hovering above them in the sense that I'm listening without trying to reprocess the words—sometimes it feels like I snap into a feeling like the guided meditation is narrating what is sees around me, freeing me from the need to visualize when instead I'm kind of just agreeing with what's being described.

Other kinds of visualization seem to work fine-- e.g. imagining the faces of people I love.


You can find all manner of lovingkindness meditations, of many durations and variations, that are basically this. Lovingkindness as a search term may be helpful for you.

Sometimes I really get along well with particular voices rather than specific meditation content. Jack Kornfield, for instance, is someone I listen to often because his manner of speaking is somehow a great complement to the larger mix of factors that make up meditation. He has lots and lots of free content online, and also lots of paid material on Audible and elsewhere. That might be an idea to consider, just wander through the voices and rhythms and timbres and see if any of them have a more apparent affinity for you, and go from there.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 2:30 AM on April 30

My Scottish Man - Andrew Johnson on Insight Timer (free app) is my go to.

Not too visual, I think he mentioned somewhere he doesn't really think in pictures (I mostly don't think in pictures), and there's an occasional in and out breaths, but it's not really the focus.

https://insig.ht/cxaIpuAzdJb
posted by Elysum at 6:11 AM on April 30

I switch between Timer and Guided meditation in my Insight Timer App. I think the free version is Timer only and the Guided stuff is for paid customers. I am not sure of this as I have been a paid customer since I started using it.

Sometimes the 'concentrate on your breathing' just doesn't seem enough; so the guided meditations help during those times.

Youtube has a lot of guided meditations to try. I have also found the yogic practice of Bhramara to be real useful during the day. When I feel out of sorts during working hours, I go to a quiet place and do this for 3-5 minutes. Seems to work for me.
posted by indianbadger1 at 8:36 AM on April 30

Best answer: I wonder if you might like a "noticing" practice. The formal version is usually formulated as: name 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, 1 thing you can taste. It's normally recommended for anxiety, as a grounding technique, but I find it a very good sort of meditative practice as well, especially in the morning.

I don't particularly stick to the 5-4-3-2-1 format, but as part of my morning pages just take note of what I can see, hear, smell, feel, including how the body/mind feels as well. My attention is naturally either very fast moving or very intense, so this practice of sort of slowly shifting focus on the physical world is really helpful.
posted by radiogreentea at 9:33 AM on April 30

Best answer: I am a meditator who dislikes most guided meditations and has especially limited tolerance for other people telling me how and when to breathe. How do you feel about just the timer on Insight Timer? I am a big fan of just sitting, breathing naturally or in whatever way feels called for in the moment, and trying to be present, releasing and recentering whenever thoughts come up as a basic practice.

If you like something a little more structured, you could also use the timer and bring in metta meditation in whatever form works best for you, including adapting the phrases if necessary. Tonglen practice is another compassion-focused meditation that can but doesn't have to involve visualization; in its simplest form this would be something like breathing in a particular difficult feeling on behalf of yourself and all others who are struggling with it, and breathing out something that would be an antidote or source of healing (safety, peace, etc.).
posted by wormtales at 9:40 AM on April 30

Best answer: Insight Timer varies widely depending on the teacher. I like Marc Lesser, Jud Brewer, Mary Maddux, and Meg James. I don't mind the breathwork if it's like, a two minute meditation, but otherwise I want something that addresses being present for feelings, thoughts, and experience.
posted by Peach at 11:43 AM on April 30

My wife uses the paid version of headspace (https://www.headspace.com/) every morning. For the New Yorkers out there you might remember that during the pandemic the state struck a deal to provide access for a limited number of guiding meditations for free.
posted by lrm at 4:05 PM on April 30