How I learned to meditate even with ADHD

Meditation is such an essential part of my daily life that it's hard to believe I couldn't sit still for more than a minute at one time. Now, I meditate several times a day, lead guided meditations, and teach others some of the techniques that have helped me find deep meditative states. What helped me learn to meditate wasn't the cliche of "clearing my mind" or focusing on my breath. It took lots of subtle shifts in daily activities, attitude, and practice. Here's what I learned on that journey!

1) Meditation is a practice.

You don't have a good meditation or a bad meditation; it's all meditation. Even as someone who meditates at least two times a day, there are times when it can be harder to settle. This restlessness isn't a reflection of me doing something incorrectly; it's a symptom of being human. Life isn't static, and we will have days when things can be more challenging.

2) Meditation is about letting your mind clear, not clearing your mind.

I've got no clue where that misconstrued concept arose, but you can shed that idea now. I liken the intention of meditation to the following example.

Place a pencil in the middle of a rubber band and hold both ends while twisting the pencil. Continue to do this until you notice tension or resistance building. Stop turning the pencil and observe the force; this is the state of our minds. Meditation is when you let go of the pencil, and all of that tension is released. Regular meditation gradually releases your built-up stress, and clearing your mind is the result of this process. 

3) Face your demons

In some yogic traditions doing preliminary inner work was suggested before meditating. They believe that meditating before doing this work can potentially have harmful consequences. My experience was different because I used meditation to face my demons. That said, meditation isn't always "peaceful bliss."

Sometimes what prevents us from meditating are the very problems we need to face in meditation. To meditate, you have to be willing to observe your feelings without making a judgment call about them. Otherwise, the rubber band I mentioned early on will never release. Meditation is mainly about sitting with yourself, your feelings, and your surroundings

4) Exercise before meditation

Yoga and meditation go together like peas and carrots. In some yogic traditions, it's common to practice a set of yoga postures or "asanas" before meditating. Yoga activates your parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system initiates a process of rest, repair, and relaxation. Entering a meditative state is much easier when your parasympathetic nervous system is active.

5) Diet impacts meditation

What you eat impacts how your mind functions, and while it makes sense, most of us never stop to think about it. Some more apparent foods that can impact your mind are high in sugar and caffeine, but they aren't the only ones. Dairy, soy, gluten are other foods that have the potential to impact your mind negatively. Last but not least, staying hydrated also has a massive positive impact.

Meditation Aides

The previous observations are just the tip of the iceberg in making it easier to start and maintain a meditation practice. Some tools make the experience more pleasant. Here are five meditation aides that I use regularly.

1) Meditation Cushion

When I started meditating, I would sit my butt on the floor and try to stay still. The problem is my crappy posture often made my back hurt a minute or two after starting. Instead of meditating, I was constantly working on ignoring pain or readjusting my body. Then I got a meditation cushion.

I'm not sure if this is unique to me, but when I sit on a meditation cushion properly, I have better posture.

2) Zero Gravity Chair

Up until a few years ago, I thought all meditation was sitting still and silent. Then I was introduced to Yoga Nidra, a form of meditation practiced lying down. While traditionally done on the floor, I had the opportunity to try it on a zero gravity chair and was instantly hooked.

Zero gravity chairs can support your weight evenly and effectively relieve lower back pain due to stress and tension. While you may not have any lower back issues, the experience of meditating in this type of chair is worth it alone!

3) Noise-canceling headphones

The world can be a pretty noisy place, and sometimes there are too many distractions to relax. Thankfully, you can carve out your auditory escape route with a decent pair of noise-canceling headphones. While I'd advise against using these every time you meditate, they can be a great way to tune out the world when needed!

4) Binaural Beats*

Without getting into the science behind it, binaural beats are tones that guide your brain function in certain states of consciousness. I've personally found that I can easily fall into meditative states by regularly listening to Alpha or Theta waves. Think of them as training wheels.

*You need to listen to binaural beats through headphones for them to work. I use apple Airpods Pro.

5) Essential Oil Diffuser

If it's not already obvious, smells impact how we think, act, and feel. To prove my point, think of a time when you smelled something delicious, and it sparked your appetite, causing you to lose focus on the task at hand. Some scents help us relax, boost our mood, and can even help us concentrate. Lavender is one of my favorite essential oils for relaxation!

Hopefully, you've enjoyed the meditation tips and tools I've shared so far! I know they've all made a world of difference for my practice. But I'd like to share one more thing that's helped me learn to meditate, experimenting with different types of meditation. Here are 5 of my favorites types!

• Mindfulness Meditation

• Visualization

• Movement Meditation

• Guided Meditation

• Yoga Nidra

Over the years of building my mediation practice, I've combined several methods and tips previously mentioned into a sequence that makes it incredibly easy to fall into and maintain a meditative state. While using one of these methods or advice can help make it easier to meditate, collectively leveraging them has a snowball effect.  

As with any habit or skill, small amounts of daily practice builds momentum. Gradually we rewire our brains, and achieving meditative states becomes easier. Once we have a good handle on mediation, we have much more leverage for working with other modalities.

How do you start a meditation practice?

If you're new to meditation, there are a few things that can help start a new practice.

• Set a date to start

• Start small - 1 minute a day is better than none

• Have a quiet and distraction-free space

• Hold yourself accountable

• Maintain this habit for 30 days

• Build onto it as needed

Final thoughts on meditation

There's so much more to share on meditation, but you've got a lot of new tools to unpack first. Meditation isn't something you study on the sidelines; the more you learn without taking action, the more likely you will overcomplicate it. Start now, start small, stay committed. 

In the next post, I'll explain how affirmations can help repair broken self-image and lead you to a better life!

How your schedule impacts your magick

Over the past few months, the blog has focused on filling in some gaps in my story. While it was mundane and lacking any magick or spiritual wisdom, it was necessary for me. With that out of the way, we can get into some of the good stuff. Before we get into magickal and spiritual practices, though, I'd like to start with an often overlooked aspect in these topics.

How you schedule your day impacts your magick.

One of my biggest strengths is the variety to which I've approached life. I've embodied the directionless habits of a drifter in my twenties, and I've lived a disciplined routine that bordered on monastic living in my thirties. What I've found is that both of these hold access to different angles of approaching magical powers.

One thing I learned from my psychedelic 20's was the Timothy Leary axiom "set and setting." While my party days are long behind me, this statement touches on how physical and emotional settings can affect your day. Another way of thinking of this is that the structure of the external world impacts your consciousness.  

I've found, though, that not only does the structure of your external world help construct your consciousness, how you schedule your time also influences how your mind works. Understanding that magic relies on your mental framework or consciousness, it also stands to reason that if schedule impacts consciousness and consciousness impacts magick, your daily schedule impacts your magick.

In my experience, I've found three distinctive states of scheduling time. Each state has its attributes, flavor, and personality. Two of these scheduling methods are extreme, and the third is a hybrid of beneficial aspects of the previous two. You have to embody the two extremes to the tipping point to access the third in my experience. However, you might be able to do so and as with anything I say, take it with a grain of salt.

Here's a quick overview of the types of magick

Structureless Magick

Composed of: Unitnetional oddities, weird experiences, associative sync

Lifestyle: Carefree lifestyle that doesn't have any cohesive organization. The schedule can change daily and is out of control of the individual.

Limitations:  Has a life of its own and can lead one to madness.

Structured Magick

Composed of: Intentional odd experiences, Manifestation of desires, 

Lifestyle: Disciplined lifestyle that has a clear pattern. This schedule is routine and is the foundation of success and happiness in life.

Limitations: Restrictive and can eventually orient one towards greed.

Flow Magick

Composed of: a blend of intentional and unintentional weird experiences

Lifestyle: Has daily objectives but does them as appropriate to the needs of that specific day. There is enough structure for the benefits of structured magick to bled through and enough fluidity for structureless magic to flow freely, creating an optimal life experience.

Limitations: Can be challenging to maintain initially, requires discipline and ability to set your schedule. 

Let's take a more detailed look.

Structureless Magick

In my twenties, the guiding compass was driven chiefly by random hedonistic impulses. The openness of this approach to my schedule allowed for the unexpected to be a common occurrence. It led me to exciting places, unique people and was the generative force of some of my best stories.

It seems the more space we make for the unexpected, the more we allow the universe to move us into new directions. To steal a phrase from Gordon White, we are "moved around the board." The openness of this lifestyle leaves space for other forces to influence some of your decisions and actions. While this can be invigorating, it can also be frightening and lead to some disastrous places, as my story shows.

Structureless magick has its own life and inertia. As such, the absence of restraint or coherent structure; will eventually lead to disaster. However, when channeled properly, it can create excellent results. I would posit the freedom of this model is essential to harnessing true power. However, to conduct structureless magick beneficially, we need its opposite, structured magick.

Structured Magick

Most of my thirties were about rebuilding my life as a result of uncontrolled structureless magick. Building implies structure, and considering all I had was rubble, I had to start with the foundation. The foundation for me was structure and routine.

Structure and routine offer something tangible to your life that better prepares you for the inevitable hardships that will arrive. Regularly engaging in the same set of constructive habits is akin to building a root system. It will support growth and sustain life. 

In my case, this was the restoration of my psychical, emotional, mental and spiritual health. The wellness in these areas also positively impacted developing a business, better social skills, healthier connections, getting out of debt, and self-reliance. Effectively structured magick was a catalyst for correcting all of the imbalances of structureless magick. 

The problem is at some point, structure and form become prisons. They are devoid of movement and inevitably become rigid. Over time, anything that does not bend will break, and life will eventually present situations that disrupt your routine and habits. Which, for me, resulted in panic attacks, anger, defeat, and a whole slew of other emotions.

Thankfully, life has a grey area, and here we enter into Flow Magick.

Flow Magick

Flow magick is the effortless act of being that has aspects of both structured and structureless magick working in harmony. It consists of having things to do but not being too committed to accomplishing them in any particular order or fashion and instead allowing the day to unfold organically.  

When you create enough randomness for unique experiences to occur and sprinkle in enough structure to maintain a level of coherence, life takes on a new form. It's more potent and visceral. You can blend the best aspects of two opposite ways of living into one harmonious expression of life, but it takes skill.  

The basic premise is the understanding that things happen on a different timeline than your own. You switch off the clocks and time systems that the rest of the world live by and tune into the universe's pulse. This process is incredibly destabilizing because we are shedding one operating system and switching to another. 

Flow magic is primal.

Society has influenced the mind and the way the human being interacts with its environment. Before living in cities, life allowed more space for the mysteries to play. Now we've unfortunately seemed to build layer upon layer of disconnection, with our days saturated in distraction. However, we can tune in to a more primal state by creating a different structure to our lives.

No alarm clock

It's shocking how much this can impact your day. Let your body sleep until it feels rested, and then get up and go straight into meditation. You want to tap into the power of the theta state your mind is naturally in upon waking. You can maximize this benefit by also using theta binaural beats through a set of headphones. 

Daily Meditation

Meditation orients your mind differently. We are looking to approach the world from a calmer and more centered perspective. It's necessary for navigating the world outside of the traditional approach to scheduling. Most modern techniques to schedule focus on productivity, while meditation focuses on awareness.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the practice of being fully present in the moment. Think of it like taking some of the practice of meditation to active parts of your day. You are observing the very act of being alive and the experience for what it is. In a non-stop society built on frantic impulses, the ability to fully experience a situation with your senses is a blessing.

Listen to your body

Your body is trying to tell you things all the time, but most of us aren't listening. When we crash during the workday and need a nap or unplug for a few minutes, many of us can't. When you ignore what your body is telling you, it distorts your intuition and makes it harder to function in a natural state. 

Don't judge

Part of flow magic is also letting your emotions be. That doesn't mean we don't investigate our feelings and what's causing them; it means we don't label them as good or bad. All emotions are carrying messages; we've just become shit at decoding them. When you stop viewing your feelings as good or bad and embrace the feeling as information about an experience, you open yourself up to an opportunity for learning.

Switching over to a flow magick lifestyle

In the future, I will be working on outlining what I perceive as one path to accessing the state of being that is flow magick. There are many different roads to the same destination, and you are encouraged to take what works for you and discard the rest. Until then, stay diligent on your path, and we will chat again soon.

The Journey So Far

In the roughly 4.5 years since its inception, Spiritual Phoenix Studios has gone through several deaths and rebirths. This cycle of existence has developed and eroded the initial intent for better and worse. However, I feel this most recent iteration condenses the essential aspects of what I perceive its proper function to be. Spiritual Phoenix Studios has always been about inspiring change and transformation through the telling of our lived experiences.

Since the number of people engaged with the work has increased substantially and you may not be familiar with me or my story, I wanted to share a short thumbnail sketch of the journey so far. I can't fit the full version in one post and am already working on a larger writing project behind the scenes, so I'll offer a very rough snapshot. 

My life was an increasingly combustible dumpster fire for most of my life. At some point, drugs and drinking became my way of coping with that fire. A significant number of intense psychedelic experiences seemed to cleanse some psychic centers and open me to some minor changes, but there was always an inability to finding lasting change. I always craved a mystical or spiritual experience, something life-changing. Be careful what you wish for, sometimes it comes true.

The Fools Journey

Only a fool would be willing to choose this path. If there is one clear-cut example of my arrogance and ignorance, this would easily be it. Spiritual awakenings are not rose-tinted experiences; they are a visceral juxtaposition of life's simultaneous horror and beauty. I can only credit my survival and the shred of sanity that remains to good luck, magick, and something else entirely, which for the sake of my work, I will refer to as "The Mysteries."

My initiation into The Mysteries began as a spiritual emergency that led me to the psych ward. That experience changed my life forever and resulted in me abandoning one life and adopting another. For sanity's sake, I had to shed the incredibly obvious mystical underpinnings and attempt to return to life as usual. However, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

I ignored my experiences for a year when ultimately I ended up in a similar albeit more intense and extended set of experiences that persisted for the better part of a year. Eventually, these would lead me to a path of healing, change, and growth.

Initially, this path was therapy, peer support with a mental health group, and later involvement in Twelve-step programs. Twelve-step programs require accessing a higher power, and it seemed that I was allowed to explore my previous experiences again. I was always fascinated with spirituality and the odd; now, I had the freedom to explore ideas open-mindedly. 

Testing the Waters

Due to the severe nature of my mental health crises, I was conscientious with exploring these topics. I started with a healthy amount of disbelief but was open to seeing results that would prove otherwise. Throughout studying, life experiences, and experiments, belief transitioned to a sense of knowing there was something more going on here than meets the eye. 

I documented my journey from the beginning. It started with a cringe-worthy video of me smashing my bong with an ax. It then transitioned to recording some very early speaking opportunities, blog posts, podcasts, and even self-publishing a poetry book. I had a lot going on, and in a perfect world, things would have been fine, but reality set in.

Trouble in Paradise

Nothing I was doing was making money. I had to accept that something needed to change, and it was me. I went all in and invested time in learning more skills. I also needed to start making some money too. Soon the fun and healing process became a fight for survival. My digital footprint was an unintentional barrier to escaping the path I created. It was either win or lose it all.

When you don't have an option, miraculous things can happen, and you will tap into an inner well of strength you didn't know existed, but first, you have to get the shit kicked out of you. And I did, bad. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to quit or was lost or stuck.

My life was healing, study, and work, 24/7, 365—no social life, nothing else all day. Things were starting to improve and look hopeful; our idea expanded into local events that blended metaphysics with the community and practical philosophy. Then Covid hit, and the dynamic of everything shifted.

Shift Happens

Before the lockdowns took place, I was already stuck financially. I was coming up short and beyond frustrated because I was grinding my ass off and getting nowhere. I was ready to quit, and I told the mysteries that they needed to send me some money if they wanted me to pursue this path. The next day I unexpectedly got a 1,400 dollar check settlement check from over a decades-old class-action lawsuit against a money order company. That rekindled my spark. 

I leveraged the lockdown to learn new skills and refine aspects of the business on a deep level. I fundamentally reconceptualized everything from March on through to this present moment. I reoriented the heart of this business back to its north star; it's about creativity, art, speaking my truth, and most of all, showing people that it's possible to not only bounce back from some impossible situations but to pursue your dreams. I want to inspire you to find the happiest version of yourself, not the "best" one.

With that said, a lot of inner growth and transformation has transpired from lockdown, and I can't cram it all into this single post. It will be an unfolding process, but I'd love to have you along for the ride. A shift in consciousness is already occurring, and the next giant leap is on the horizon. Now is a time to dig down deep and invest in your evolution. Next week, I will explain what's evolved in my practice from July of last year up until this moment.

I look forward to exploring the unknown with you.

3 Powerful Root Chakra Healing Stones

If you're tired of being anxious and afraid, check out these three root chakra healing stones! 

• Your Root Chakra keeps you connected to reality!

• Life makes it easy to lose your balance!

• Healing stones can help you!

Astonishingly, you are exposed to an estimated 34 gigabytes of information every day. Unfortunately, much of this information is fear-based. To put it another way, you collect over a terabyte of fear porn each month. So, unless you're working on your root chakra, it's out of balance. 

How to tell if your root chakra is out of balance

When your root chakra is out of balance, life will be more challenging than it needs to be. Some of the most easily recognizable signs of an unhealthy root chakra are anxiety, lack of trust, and motivation. If you're not sure if your root chakra is balanced, take this quick 4 question quiz! 

How to heal your root chakra!

If your root chakra is out of balance, don't worry! You can hire a healer, or better yet, you can heal it yourself. Today, I'll share 3 Powerful Root Chakra healing stones with you! 

Black Tourmaline

Black tourmaline is a powerful root chakra healing stone. It helps you by drawing off negative energy and clearing any blockages. Other benefits include grounding your power, increasing physical vitality, dispersing stress and tension! 

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Rough Black Tourmaline

$6.00

Rough Black Tourmaline is a protective stone known for absorbing negative energy and promoting emotional stability. Its raw form enhances its grounding properties, making it ideal for energy cleansing, protection, and maintaining a balanced, safe environment.

Exact sizes, shapes, and colors vary.

Ships within two business days.

Add To Cart

Hematite

Hematite is one of the most common root chakra healing stones because it can harmonize the body, mind, and spirit! It's also an amazing stone for empaths because it helps remove excess energy and separates your emotions from others! 

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Rough Hematite

$6.00

Rough Hematite is a powerful grounding stone known for absorbing negative energy and promoting stability. Its raw form enhances its protective qualities, making it ideal for energy clearing, boosting focus, and creating a solid foundation for emotional and mental balance.

Exact sizes, shapes, and colors vary.

Ships within two business days.

Add To Cart

Red Garnet

Garnet is less common than the previous stones but still incredibly useful. Benefits include enhancing survival instinct aids in finding hope in hopeless situations and dissolving ingrained behaviors and outworn ideas!   

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Rough Garnet

$7.00

Rough Garnet is a powerful stone known for its ability to energize and revitalize. Its raw form enhances its passion, strength, and grounding properties, making it ideal for boosting confidence, enhancing creativity, and promoting emotional healing and personal transformation.

Exact sizes, shapes, and colors vary.

Ships within two business days.

Add To Cart

Still, want more help?

If you're not confident in your ability to heal your root chakra, don't worry! You can always book a private healing session!