I get it, focusing on nothing or on your breath for 20 minutes every day doesn’t seem that appealing. Whether you’ve tried meditation once or committed to it for a year, there will be a stage where your meditation practise becomes flat-out boring. We all know that meditation is renowned as one of the most important ways to spend your time as it has the potential to open up many profound benefits for an individual, arguably more-so than anything else you can do in your life – so of course, I want to suggest a few approaches to help you relieve your festering boredom and encourage you to continue mediating.
I used to come out of meditations feeling refreshed and awake. However, after months of meditating, it started to sap my happiness, an effect that was completely counterintuitive with what meditation was supposed to help me with. Every meditation I finished, I came out of it feeling more drained than before; it continuously failed to produce the same sense of peace I used to feel; it was an endless sensation of boredom I couldn’t overcome. Eventually this boredom created a downward spiral of doubt and negativity that couldn’t be escaped by simply focusing on the breath.
Many meditators have said that if you meditate long enough, that stage of boredom will surpass. Meditation is, after all, used to recognise that we must accept the present moment as it is. I was skeptical this ever was going to happen – I knew I had to take a different approach.
So, here are my top 4 suggested ways I found to combat meditation boredom:
1. Visualisation Meditation: Your Peaceful Place
Visualisation is a technique you can use while you meditate. Rather than focusing on the breath, you can engage in a world of pure imagination, all in your own control. This technique is much more active for the mind – it seems to boost my creativity and ease my mind so much more than a regular breath meditation. I am an artist and visualising seems to easily slip me into a familiar state of flow as if I would when I am drawing or painting. You may be aware of the flow state yourself: it is characterised as a trance-like state, where you are in complete absorption in what you are doing (often what you love to do), resulting in a loss of one’s sense of space and time, also known as being entirely immersed in the present moment. This meditative state is what we seek during meditation: it allows us to return to the source of our soul, or subconscious, just as a breath meditation would do.
My favourite way to visualise is to imagine the most peaceful place you can picture in your mind’s eye and try to imagine yourself exploring it in vivid detail. Personally, I like to play rain forest sounds aloud on my phone while I meditate and envision myself there using all five of my senses; hearing the birds chirping; feeling the moss in between my toes sinking in the ground; smelling the earthy humidity in the air; making out shapes and colours of the space around me in progressive detail as I peek here and there.
Over time, my personal space has grown in complexity: I have a small clearing where I go to connect back with my source. I have created a hot spring there with a waterfall, a small hut with pillows to get comfy in, a yoga mat to do yoga, an area for arts and crafts – I even imagine my favourite foods, or imaginary fruits that don’t exist to explore my sense of taste and smell. I bring what I love to life in this sacred space created in my mind and I encourage you to explore your own space with freedom and joy during your mediation, especially if you usually struggle to keep the mind focused on mundane tasks such as breathing.
If you are finding it hard to visualise, there are many guided meditations that describe a peaceful place for you, which is a good way to hone your skills in visualisation. Once you are a skilled visualiser, I strongly advise you to try this technique without guidance and find joy in creating exactly what you want to create to be the next focus of your meditation, have fun with it and explore! You start waking up wanting to meditate and wondering what wonderful sensation you can conjure up next – you truly start to surprise yourself.
2. Other Visualisations: Spirit Guides, Past Life Regression, etc…
There are many videos you can find, particularly on YouTube, that claim to help you perform a past life regression or assist you with meeting your spirit guide for example. These videos all come under the same umbrella: they are all guided visualisation meditations and all are technically classified as hypnosis, as you are allowing someone else to guide your subconscious. Hypnosis allows for a certain degree of control, as it is your mind that is imagining, not the hypnotists’. Self-hypnosis, on the other hand, allows for full control. Arguably, hypnosis and self-hypnosis both seem to induce the mediative state that is accessible using breath meditation. Although both methods allow for this state, I feel it is more effective when you perform the visualisation on yourself once you’ve become skilled at it because the sensations or descriptions that come up in your meditation session will seem a lot more personal to your own subconscious and hence bring you a greater sense of peace and connection.
I often like to branch off into other ways of using visualisation once I’ve first arrived at my peaceful place during meditation. Other methods of visualising include past life regression which can help you learn more about the situations you faced in your past life memories and you can use for guidance by comparing it to you present life’s journey to help find the best solution. You can also do inner child work, where you visualise yourself comforting a younger version of yourself and bring up past memories to relive, in order to help shed yourself of the ego’s defence mechanisms, built up to defend subconscious emotional inner child wounds.
Meeting your spirit guide is also a very useful visualisation, as you can ask your guide to come forward for comfort or advice when you find yourself to be troubled at any point in your daily life outside of meditation. I also enjoy meeting my spirit guide regularly to just chill together while I am in my mind’s peaceful place. Some say spirit guides are the mind’s visual representation of your intuition and others may tell you they are genuinely real spirits. Either way, experiment with the concept of having a spirit guide and see intuitively what works for you best.
(Art by Janie Olsen)
Many people put off these techniques because they believe it is all just imaginary, they see hypnosis or self-hypnosis as mutually exclusive to the meditative state or believe it can’t actually help as effectively as meditation where you focus purely on the breath. In my opinion, visualisation is just imagination, but people often underestimate the power imagination has – it is literally our ability to tap into the vast imagery hidden deep in the subconscious, timidly waiting to be experienced. Hypnosis or self-hypnosis are often portrayed in a bad light as well – they are seen as something completely separate to experiencing a mediative state. Contemporarily, there is not enough research to distinguish whether they are practically the same thing or not, but I believe they all come under the same umbrella. My advice would be to take what I say about the effectiveness of these techniques with a grain of salt and try to experiment with it yourself – all I know for certain is that it has had a very profound effect on my life, just as much as breath meditation used to have on me and perhaps even more so!
3. Open-eye Meditation
There are many ways to meditate through out your day. My favourite and most flexible technique I have learnt is to focus on the space between objects as you do you daily routine and to be aware of not only the space in front of you, but also the space behind you. By shifting your awareness to inhabit that space, you are moving out into something much bigger than the limits of your ego mind. The more you move your awareness outward and into the universe, the more you spend time noticing the subtle beauty in everything you see, unlocking your potential to be fully present and at your highest spiritual potential.
In the book, “The Open-Focus Brain” the authors engaged in conducting experiments on volunteers to test what relaxation method was most effective at producing the most phase-synchronous alpha and measured this by monitoring their EEG. Alpha waves are one type of brain wave that predominantly originate from the occipital lobe during wakeful relaxation with closed eyes. Some were asked to visualise a peaceful scene, look at colours, try different fragrances, etc. But none seemed to produce more than a mild alpha-enhancing effect.
As soon as they asked, “Can you visualise the space between your eyes?” A high amplitude of alpha was produced immediately. The same significant increase in alpha brain synchrony was monitored after asking similar “space”-related questions which described “objectless imagery” like “Can you imagine the space between you ears?” and so on. One Eastern mystic wrote that it was important to “attain a state of mind in which even though you are surrounded by crowds of people, it is as if you were alone in a field extending for tens of thousands of miles.” The Japanese have even coined a philosophy called ‘Ma’, which is the ability to see the space between objects as well as the objects themselves. Surprisingly, it’s one of the least known techniques, yet appears to be one of the most beneficial – more research is needed!
Shifting your awareness to the space between objects is one open-eye technique and very efficient for helping you with mindfulness. You can also eat mindfully, by first appreciating where the food came from, how it has been developed over time and what others had to go through to bring it to your plate, etc, before you start eating. Appreciate the smell, the detail on the food and the colour which will help immerse yourself in the present moment. Take smaller, slower bites where you actually take the time to appreciate the texture in your mouth and the taste. Practise mindfulness like this with all the sensations of all your five senses throughout your day, not just at meal time, and you will find your sensory world will strikingly come to life. If you have a constant awareness of your own thoughts and feelings developed through being present and mindful, you can easily decipher and notice which thinking patterns serve you and which ones need replacing.
4. Yoga
Yoga, Tai Chi or any exercise that operates through sequences of bodily movements that are interwoven in coordination with the patterns of the breath are forms of meditation. Yoga is mostly seen as a physical exercise across the Western world but in Indian traditions it is considered much more than physical exercise; it has a meditative and spiritual core. It can also make your meditation practise much easier if you do it directly after a physical practise, as it imposes your awareness to shift into the sensations felt in your muscles and breath rather than the ego mind, creating a much more comfortable starting point to meditate.
Incorporating all four or even a few of these different types of meditation into your day-to-day routine may be enough to completely replace breath meditation if you loathe it that badly. Personally, when I started using all four techniques, it made breath meditation a more approachable and a lot less of a boring practise for me and I began to find it as peaceful as I did back then once more!
Confused or have desperate questions about this blog post? Feel free to send a message and I will be happy to give advice or clarification as soon as possible.
Before we get into it, I have a little disclaimer:
Warning: Do not attempt this technique if you have serious physical or mental health problems. I take no responsibility for any damage this practice causes you. You have been warned.
So what the fuck is death posture anyway? You’ll hear lots of chaote’s throw the term around without much explanation. Simply put, it is a kind of alternate form of meditation. Of course, it is a little more complicated than that. Austin Osman Spare, the creator of death posture, defines it in the following way in his book “The Book of Pleasure”:
“Lying on your back lazily, the body expressing the condition of yawning, suspiring while conceiving by smiling, that is the idea of the posture. Forgetting time with those things which were essential-reflecting their meaninglessness, the moment is beyond time and its virtue has happened.
Standing on tip-toe, with the arms rigid, bound behind by the hands, clasped and straining the utmost, the neck stretched- breathing deeply and spasmodically, till giddy and sensation comes in gusts, gives exhaustion and capacity for the former.
Gazing at your reflection till it is blurred and you know not the gazer, close your eyes (this usually happens involuntarily) and visualize. The light (always an X in curious evolutions) that is seen should be held on to, never letting go, till the effort is forgotten, this gives a feeling of immensity (which sees a small form ), whose limit you cannot reach. This should be practised before experiencing the foregoing. The emotion that is felt is the knowledge which tells you why.”
So that’s all well and good, but lets put it into some more modern terms. This is the way that I do death posture. Keep in mind, this is just the way I do it, and there is not an “absolutely correct” way to do something in chaos magick. This is just the way it works for me. Feel free to change any of it to suit your personal needs.
1. Find a place where you won’t be interrupted for a while, preferably a nice, quiet dark room.
2. With your back to a wall, close your eyes (closing your eyes is not always necessary, depending on your goal) and stand on your toes. Lock your arms behind your back with your hands interlocked together. Arch your back and extend your neck as far as you can.
3. Your breathing will become/should become more labored and faster, bordering on hyperventilating. You’ll also start to feel tingly and exhausted. It will feel intense, so be prepared.
4. You will begin to feel incredibly uncomfortable, start hyperventilating, and your vision (if you keep your eyes open) will begin to blur, but stay locked in this pose for as long as it is possible.
5. Right before you collapse from the strain, you will enter a kind of altered mental state. At this point, you may feel like your floating, or like your muscles are on fire. While in this state, it will be possible to do certain acts of visualization. This is also when sigils can be charged, or an affirmation can be said.
6. Collapse to the floor and relax. Hopefully, you didn’t blackout, but it is possible. You will probably feel fairly strange but this is normal. Do whatever banishing ritual you feel necessary (I usually go with a laughter banishing, but it doesn’t really matter as long as it works for you) and then get up slowly so you don’t accidentally fall over and crack your head open.
So why the hell would you want to do this? It sounds pretty awful.
Well, yeah. It kind of is awful. That’s the point. I initially said that death posture was a kind of meditation, which is true in a sense. Claudio Naranjo once said:
“The word ‘meditation’ has been used to designate a variety of practices that differ enough from one another so that we may find trouble in defining what meditation is.“
Death posture exemplifies this, as it is meditation, just not in the sense of what we typically imagine meditation being. Like any form of meditation, the primary goal is to attain a state of gnosis (something I will cover more in depth in a later WTF is article), but in attaining this gnostic state, you then use it for a work, whether a sigil, spell, or whatever.
But wait, how do I use a mental state for spellcraft/sigil craft?
You’ll hear me often say this, echoing a bit from bluefluke‘s Psychonaut field manual, but visualization, visualization, visualization. You’ll need to hold the image of what your are trying to accomplish in your mind’s eye when the gnostic state is entered (and preferably for the entire duration of the instance of death posture.) I’ll cover different visualization techniques in a later article.
Thanks to enochtopus for suggesting I talk about this. I think I’ll do sigil magick next, then move on to gnosis and visualization.
If I want to contact higher realms or angels, I meditate with:
Celestite – it allows me to communicate with angels and receive messages. It’s also a lovely crystal for reducing fear and anxiety. For me, Celestite sounds like gentle shimmers in a moonlit pond.
Angelite – it also allows me to communicate with higher beings but works better for specifically angels, as well as reducing fear and bringing serenity. It sounds like very faint, soft voices singing with echoes that tickle your ears gently.
If I want to feel love and warmth, I meditate with:
Rose Quartz – brings compassion, peace, tenderness, and healing. This crystal vibrates softly, yet is very strong.
Blue Lace Agate – balances energy, security, communication, and confidence. If you meditate with this crystal, it feels like pleasant circular energy.
For grounding, I use the combination of:
Hematite, Black Quartz, and Jasper – these are powerful grounding crystals which will help you feel stable, secure, at home in your body, and will take away the symptoms of spaced out.
For protection, I use the combination of:
Black Tourmaline, Black Onyx, and Ocean Jasper – cleanses negative energy, protects against the influence of evil spirits, and can also aid against nightmares.
do you have ADHD? are you easily distracted? do you daydream constantly abt everything and anything? when you hear the words “you might fall asleep” in a post abt meditation, do you sigh and roll your eyes?
if you answered “yes” to any of the above, then this is the post for you!!
as someone who has type one ADHD and a crazy imaginative mind, I haven’t seen a single Intro To Meditation post that pertains to me. they’re always abt tips for visualization, or tips for not falling asleep within 5 minutes. I have insomnia you guys, I ain’t gonna be asleep in any less than 2 hours smh
without further rambling, here’s some tips and tricks for people who just can’t fucking meditate
1) listen to some goddamn music. preferably stuff you’ve listened to many times before, songs you have basically memorized so you don’t get distracted by how unique this new sound is, or how cool that voice was right there. listen to your favorites!! listen to songs in foreign languages, so you aren’t focused on the words but more the feeling they give. blast that shit through your most comfortable earbuds, tune everything else out
2) don’t sit outside. trust me. too many extra sensory bits and shit that you just don’t need rn. miss me with that wind and bugs and prickly grass.
3) tired of the “visualize a door” method? visualize yourself dancing! find one good dance song that you’ll only use when trying to meditate, and choreograph your own little routine! imagine urself dancing outside on a chilly autumn day- the air smells crisp and the leaves crack and almost hurt beneath your feet and every once in a while your arms hit a twig or branch. imagine it’s spring and there’s cold dew on the soft new grass and the sun is making your bare arms tingly, a warm breeze tugs at your hair and clothes. get creative! the hardest part is imagining yourself *in* your body, looking out, instead of watching urself dance like it’s a movie.
4) sit in the car!! oh my god!! do this!! the passenger seat of the car opens a world of possibilities, and you probably won’t even have to close your eyes because damn, look at you, you’re already off daydreaming abt god knows what and completely ignoring everything around you!! if cars are good for anything, it’s daydreaming. now all you gotta do is figure out how to switch your daydreaming off and turn meditating on.
5) school age witch? meditate in the morning on the bus. if you trust the other kids riding with you enough, do it on the way home too (warning: may suddenly find urself interrupted by flying paper balls or gross laughing. this is why we meditate in the mornings when everyone’s half asleep still)
6) it’s okay if a stray thought drifts in every once in a while, so don’t get upset over it.
7) your leg bouncing? scalp itch? eye twitching? keep bouncing it! scratch your head! rub your eyes!! trying to ignore these things will take more effort than it will to just take care of them. make sure youre comfortable
8) extending on that point, if you find your overall position uncomfortable, just move dude. it’s okay, just cause you aren’t laying with ur arms at ur sides and legs perfectly straight doesn’t mean you won’t get some meaningful meditation in
I was hoping to get 10 points but I’m suddenly lacking motivation and getting bored with typing this. guess that’s the proof for you that I have ADHD? I hope these help! feel free to add on your own tips for meditation! and like always, don’t beat urself up if nothing seems to be helping. I’ve been trying for three years and I still struggle very much to meditate, and be confident that what I’m seeing isn’t just my Wild Wild imagination, and is instead the astral or whatever else I’m looking for. take your time, and good luck! ✨🌊🥀
I get it. Meditation isn’t always easy. You don’t always have time for it. And maybe you just suck at it. I get it, really I do. Even though now meditation is something I can do easy peasy {mostly} I used to struggle like you wouldn’t believe with just getting my head to shut up long enough to get a few quiet breaths in. Spoiler Alert! You’ll never get your head to shut up. Not truly.
Here’s the thing though – we need meditation. Your excuses and past experiences don’t matter. It’s time to hack it, try something different, and just practice! The number of benefits to meditation are massive. You’ve heard them all by now I’m sure:
Meditation is simply the practice of maintaining a sense of peace and mental calmness for a period of time. It is not about having no thoughts. To try and empty the mind completely is a waste of time and it defeats the true purpose of mediation. All you need to do is simply let those thoughts come and go. You can’t control the fact that they pop up but you can control hold you react or hang on to them.
So I have for you 50 tips, some super quick and simple, and a few a little more involved, to help you make it happen:
Listen to chants or kirtans. {Deva Premal and Krishna Das are my favs!}
Let the noise around you be like natural music rather than a distraction.
Don’t close your eyes.
Keep a soft gaze on a candle flame.
Count your breaths to keep your brain busy {count 1 on an inhale, 2 on an exhale, and so on up to 10 then start again}.
Stretch first so your body is loose, just like before any exercise you do.
Have a purpose for your meditation. {just being quite is a purpose!}
Make it a ritual.
Try different meditation techniques from different traditions + cultures.
Commit to start with 10 days of meditation without skipping a day.
Use guided meditations.
Meditate when everyone else in the house is asleep or out.
Meditate before you get out bed in the morning.
Meditate at the same time every day.
Use mala beads.
Sit quietly and just mentally list what you’re grateful for that day. {hey, that’s mediation!}
Stop meditating when it feels like it’s time, regardless of what the clock says.
You only need a few minutes a day {5-10 is perfect}, not hours.
If you have a scratch, scratch it! It’s more distracting to try to ignore it.
Start where you are with just 2-3 minutes a day – that’s better than no minutes a day!
Do activities that let your mind wander like looking out the windows at clouds floating.
Write down all your thoughts, frustrations, and to-do’s on a piece of paper so you can get it out of your head before sitting down to meditate.
Mediation has no true beginning or end so don’t worry about the destination and focus on the journey.
Adjust your posture when you start – if you can’t comfortably take a deep breath, shift.
The mind is always changing, so your meditation practice will always change – some days will be harder than others.
The mind is meant to think, so give yourself a few minutes every time to just let the mind do what it wants.
Practice with consistency is the only way it will get easier.
It’s ok to just sit there – just sitting there and being focused on that alone creates an intentioned focus.
Keep a journal handy to write down your Ah-Ha’s and your Ah Crap’s – then work to fix the Ah Crap moments.
Keep track of your excuses and then stop making them!
Do a mediation challenge with a friend – hold each other accountable.
Be realistic and honest with yourself about why you’re doing meditation – what are you looking for?
Don’t judge your meditation – no meditation is good or bad – you get what you need each time.
Turn off and drop out – shut down computers, phones, and anything that can distract you and pull you out of your meditation and back to the daily grind.
Don’t start off with your eyes closed – after getting settled and doing some breathing, let your eyes close naturally.
Make use of the “me time” that you already have – meditate in the shower, on our lunch break, or while you’re walking the dog.
Your mind will wonder and you will start to think – acknowledge when this happens and then turn your attention back to your breath, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Begin being more present and in the moment in your every daily life {you know, not trying to be a multitasking master} – this will help your meditation practice.
Make sure you’re sitting somewhere that you are completely safe.
You don’t need a special mediation room – you can meditate anywhere you’re comfortable.
Meditation is like running – you have to start small and build muscle to go long distances.
Meditation will never give you a permanent sense of bliss and well-being – instead it gives you a tool to help you create a space of peace and calm in your mind when you need it most.
Create a schedule for building and growing your meditation practice and then stick to it.
If you’re meditating in the morning, do it before your coffee.
Don’t do your meditation after eating, especially big meals – try to meditate on an empty stomach.
Let gravity do it’s thing and really feel the sensation of sitting in your body.
Stretch when you’re done to awaken your body, but don’t jump up and move around too quickly.
Don’t use a timer and don’t rush – just do things in the time that comes naturally.
Cover your eyes with something if you feel the light or outside world distracting.
If your emotions are high and get in the way, turn your attention to your body – where do you really feel these emotions gathering in your body? Acknowledge that, feel it, then let it go and focus back on your breath.
– B.D: I still need practice, but I usually meditate best with my eyes open and just staring blankly at the wall or something. Idk why but when my eyes are closed, my imagination peaks and I just start imagining images that distract me or I just fall asleep. Of course I blink, scratch an itch, move a bit to get comfortable, but I’m still meditating. You can meditate while moving. And for me, it’s just as simple as doing it while sitting still. Maybe even simpler because I’m not concentrating on sitting so still, and even if I do move a bit, I am still relaxed.
I also breath in through my nose for the count of 4 seconds, then breath out of my mouth for the count of 4 seconds until I start getting into a meditative state. Then I just continue breathing in my nose and out my mouth. I keep my mouth opened just a little bit the whole time so I don’t have to keep opening and closing my mouth the entire time. I just concentrate on my breathing and nothing else. Sometimes I concentrate on my chakras or I do a tree meditation (I reblogged a version recently, but you can see the version I use here).
I usually meditate laying down or sitting against the wall with a pillow behind my back. It’s more comfortable for me that way. But I always do it on my bed. The floor hurts my butt then I get distracted by the pain or numbness.
You are in a long hallway. There are thousands of doors to your left and right. Between each door is a marble pillar, elegant and strong. The walls are a deeper shade of your favorite colour. Torches dimly light your path. A long thin carpet lines the floor, straight. Each door is a different design and shape. Open the door to your left. It will take you to a memory. Where are you? WHO are you? Is anyone with you? There is nothing you can do here, this is a memory and it will play out the same each time. Don’t try to force it, let it play out. You can leave by turning around. The same door you entered from will be behind you. No matter where you go, the door out will always be behind you. You will enter back into the hall way. Good luck.
*note: if you encounter a mirror that does not reflect your appearance, step through it
*note-note: If you encounter anyone else walking into and out of doors that you didn’t willing invite in, close and lock all the doors. There should be a key to the doors in your pocket. Proceed to the very last door, it is not marked by any pillars. This door leads nowhere. You control everything in this hallway, the hall is yours. Open the last door and let out the wolves.
*note-note-note: The doors farther down the hall are older. The last door (if you ever reach it) is your first life.
You are in a long hallway. There are thousands of doors to your left and right. Between each door is a marble pillar, elegant and strong. The walls are a deeper shade of your favorite colour. Torches dimly light your path. A long thin carpet lines the floor, straight. Each door is a different design and shape. Open the door to your left. It will take you to a memory. Where are you? WHO are you? Is anyone with you? There is nothing you can do here, this is a memory and it will play out the same each time. Don’t try to force it, let it play out. You can leave by turning around. The same door you entered from will be behind you. No matter where you go, the door out will always be behind you. You will enter back into the hall way. Good luck.
*note: if you encounter a mirror that does not reflect your appearance, step through it
*note-note: If you encounter anyone else walking into and out of doors that you didn’t willing invite in, close and lock all the doors. There should be a key to the doors in your pocket. Proceed to the very last door, it is not marked by any pillars. This door leads nowhere. You control everything in this hallway, the hall is yours. Open the last door and let out the wolves.
*note-note-note: The doors farther down the hall are older. The last door (if you ever reach it) is your first life.
Candlelight-magick 