Meditation that doesn't suck
For autoimmune conditions and more.
A typical meditation trial for me used to look like this: I sit cross-legged, eyes squeezed shut, thoughts flooding my brain as I fight in vain to push them out of my mind.
It was tough for me to do more than five or ten minutes at a time. I didn’t get the point.
It didn’t matter how or where I meditated; nothing made it easy. I’d joined a spiritual center and attempted to meditate with the whole congregation, the place so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I’d attempted to meditate at home, lying down, which in retrospect was the only bit that was actually on the right track (more on this below). I’d even tried a long spell spent staring at a candle flame, under the guidance of a yoga teacher who’d trained in India with a traditional guru.
But I never achieved anything more than supreme irritation at these activities, let alone nirvana.
The only thing that seemed effective was what I liked to call moving meditation: a contemplative walk in the woods, or else vigorous vinyasa flow yoga instead of just sitting there trying desperately not to think.
I figured I was one of those people who needed the movement in order to make it work.
Moving on…
Then I joined the Gupta Program last year in an attempt to cure a lifelong autoimmune condition. The first step in that program is to calm the nervous system through meditation. This preps the mind for brain retraining, the core of the program, as I told you about a couple of weeks ago.
Could I have continued to substitute moving meditation for the real thing while in the program?
It turns out hikes and yoga poses—while worthwhile in their own right—are not actually substitutes for meditation. Something else happens if you can get quiet and bring your central nervous system down to a calm state on its own.
I also later came to realize that those moving meditations were sometimes part of the problem: Maybe they weren’t so contemplative anyway, especially the 90-minute power yoga done in a room heated to over 100°F with thirty other competitive yogis.
That said, my core takeaway about movement itself was worth exploring, as part of what I needed was a somatic practice that connected my body and mind together in gentle awareness.
Somatic refers to the manifestation of emotionally painful experiences as physical pain in the body, which is likely at the root of many autoimmune illnesses.
A lot of meditation sucks
The prevailing meditation method—or at least the way it’s watered down and taught in the self-help industry here in the U.S.—simply sucks.
Yeah, if you struggle with meditation, it’s not you. It’s the method.
Let me break down the usual meditation practices and why they can backfire.
Sitting crosslegged. A lot of people with autoimmune or adjacent conditions (scoliosis, for example) flat-out find this pose uncomfortable, and that means it’s also distracting.
Eyes closed. This can sometimes exacerbate a tendency to get lost in our thoughts.
Blanking your mind. Trying not to think is a really good way to increase your thoughts, or just wind up frustrated.
It wasn’t until I ditched all of the above that meditation started to finally work for me.
Keep calm and meditate on
After more than a year of daily practice, I now depend on meditation for a much-needed respite and reset. I look forward to it and see it as an essential part of my life.
Those excruciating five-to-ten minutes have now stretched into rejuvenating, welcome, twenty-to-thirty-minute sessions twice per day. I often combine them with a spiritual practice or brain-retraining techniques.
Besides deepening my religious work and preparing my mind for brain retraining, I’m overall much calmer. When life throws shit at me, which it continues to do because it’s life, I can handle it better.
A method that gets results
I’ll credit some of the coaches in that brain-retraining program for providing much of the unconventional advice that made the difference, encouraging me to try the following methods:
When the weather’s nice, I meditate in the garden, with eyes open. If you don’t have a nice garden to sit in, any spot where you can look up at the clouds works as well.
You can meditate with eyes open inside, too, or in a soft gaze. That allows you to stay present in your environment rather than getting lost in your thoughts.
Speaking of thoughts, those are OK. Instead of trying so hard not to think them, you might just note them, even accept them: Of course I’d be thinking about the political divisions plaguing my family! Who wouldn’t be? That still makes you aware of your thoughts, so bingo, you’re meditating.
I prefer to lie down with a bolster under my knees because I can fully relax. That way I’m not stressed about my posture and am less likely to be distracted by pain. Since I experience involuntary shaking as my nervous system calms during meditation, this also protects my neck and spine.
Shaking is a known phenomenon, by the way, though not everyone experiences it. It’s normal.
On accepting your thoughts, there’s so much more to say here. This morning, when I was practicing a guided meditation as part of my brain-retraining program, I was supposed to be visualizing a connection to nature. But anger bubbled up in the form of a vision of myself grabbing an Uzi and taking out the criminal who hurt me.
Did I squelch the thought, shoving it down and returning to birds and butterflies?
Nope—that’s how my autoimmune condition was established in the first place, by having my feelings, experiences, and truths silenced.
So I let it come up, following its natural course, which eventually did lead me back to nature as a solace, as I finally set down the Uzi and sat in my garden sanctuary. No one was actually harmed in the mental space I allowed for the visualization to play out, and it allowed me to acknowledge the crime, myself as victim, and my anger at the perpetrator. Since I’m working with a therapist, I had a place to go to discuss it after that.
Helpful approaches
I also practice a few somatic techniques you might find beneficial.
Playing around with the eyes-open state, you could try pendulation. Slowly move your awareness back and forth between something uncomfortable and something comforting.
Here’s an example of how I do this when an autoimmune symptom arises: If my stomach hurts, I calmly notice the pain there for a few breaths and then move to a beautiful lilac tree in full bloom, going back and forth for a few breaths each so that my nervous system recognizes that I’m safe, and there’s no need to trigger the symptom of pain in my stomach.
The reason this can work with some autoimmune symptoms is they might actually be caused by neurological messages between parts of your brain. Your nervous system senses stress and activates the immune system to defend with symptoms, and then the symptoms inform your nervous system you’re in danger, in a vicious, self-perpetuating loop.
Another technique that works well for me is either humming or sighing audibly. This seems to soothe the vagus nerve, one of the longest nerves in the body, which connects your gut to your heart and brain and is believed to be involved in everything from digestive issues to epilepsy.
Humming and audible sighing is similar to the calming effect of a cat’s purr, which brings me to another kind of technique, called co-regulation. I allow my cat to partake in meditation; since I’m lying down, Chaco will inevitably cuddle up onto my chest, pressing his cheek against mine. You’d have to be a Terminator not to find this reassuring! Yeah, even when he drools on me… which is every time. A low-frequency sound produced by vocal-chord pads, a cat’s purr has been shown to help reduce cortisol levels, lower inflammation, and even heal damaged tissue.
Mirror neurons allow us to learn something new both by mimicking and merely observing someone else, so my cat in his low-key manner is teaching me how to be… more like a cat, able to move between seemingly blissful relaxation and alertness with ease.
Of course mirroring and co-regulation work wonderfully well with trusted humans, so never underestimate the power of a healing cuddle, hug, or reassuring hand to hold.
Meditation as life
As a precursor to meditation and as punctuated breaks throughout the day, I try to stretch, yawn, and “shake it off.”
Stretching might seem obvious, but it’s also underrated. You might be able to gently stretch even if you’re bedridden. Again, you can think about cats or dogs and how luxuriously they stretch. Embody that.
Yawning signals to your nervous system that you’re relaxed, and it works even if you have to fake it at first. If I’m not feeling the yawn, I pretend to yawn, and that usually triggers the real thing in short order anyway.
If you’re like me, you tend to stiffen up after long stretches at a computer. It’s amazing how therapeutic just shaking your legs, hips, and upper body can feel. I read once that when animals slip, fall, or tumble, they’ll quickly pick themselves up and shake it off, able to immediately go about their business. There’s something to the phrase, “Just shake it off.”
Free, guided meditations I recommend
Here’s a roundup of my favorite meditations. I hope they make it more of a welcome activity for you—or help expand your practice if you already have one.
(a Brunette Gardens member) offers 15-20-minute guided somatic meditations via her Substack, Chronically Human, Practically Healing. I highly recommend these:All three are very gentle and both physically and mentally nourishing. I often play through them twice to extend the experience.
Two of the most challenging aspects of being human—self-compassion and working with difficult emotions—are also hard to find addressed through meditation.
Fortunately, Dr. Kristin Neff tackles both in this suite of lovely meditations ranging from five to just over 20 minutes in length, also easily repeated for longer sessions.
Three of the most powerful meditation resources I’ve found are available through free program downloads:
Teal Swan is a bit of a controversial figure. I don’t agree with all of her positions, but her Meditation #1: Healthy Boundaries has been key for me. It’s free inside the app named after her and 42 minutes long.
Don’t let the frou-frou title Transformative Journey of Self-Love put you off; this 41-minute meditation by Manon available for free inside the Insight Timer app gets to the heart of self-loathing, the rock holding down our ability to love ourselves.
Lastly, enrollment in the Gupta Program to access the daily healing meditations is free through the 28-day trial, as an app and desktop link. Live and recorded meditations are typically 30 minutes long and hosted by a rotating round of coaches, all of them very good.
I’m not affiliated with any of these programs or guides and receive nothing in exchange for mentioning them here. I pay for my own membership in the Gupta Program and have downloaded and used the other meditations for free.
I hope my alternative approach to meditation inspires you. It’s my intention to provide the straightforward help I wish I’d received years ago, which might have saved me years of pain and symptoms.
What have you struggled with when trying to meditate?
My husband says the most he's been able to do in one sitting is 15 minutes, and his most consistent bout was to stick to it for just one month. Because he's not seeing results in terms of a state change, he can't justify the commitment. However, he's naturally pretty calm and optimistic (we should all be so lucky!).
This is such a useful article, so many good ideas!