Meditation

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My counselor recommended I work on mindfulness...which I have concluded was an excellent idea...but it has also been SUPER hard for me!! !! I assumed it had something to do with my ASD?!? In the beginning I had a hard time "letting my feelings and thoughts pass through me." The visual I had was of my body filled with lots of different colored puzzle pieces each representing different feelings/ thoughts that I was "storing" because I didn't know what to do with them. I finally realized that the reason I could not let them pass through me was because I was believing other people's perceptions of things more than I trusted myself....I think because people were always discrediting my perception as being wrong because of my ASD.

At any rate, NOW I am taking a yoga teacher training course, and one of the teachers said that if I was having trouble settling my mind then it must be that I am not breathing right...but I think it has something to do with having ASD and being raised in a negatively controlling environment...that's just not a good combination. Anyone have any insight? Anyone else have this problem? Any good resources on meditation with ASD?

So glad to be able to come to this space and talk with others like me <3

As an aspie who meditates I can say with certainty, it does make meditation a challenge in the beginning, but there is no reason to think you can't get there with a bit of effort

At the start I had two big stumbling blocks, I had real trouble visualizing anything, and I couldn't let thoughts "pass by" without focusing on them. Pretty much every method I tried wanted me to do one or both and it was beyond frustrating for me.

Mindfulness meditation is about being in a calm state, observing your thoughts, and not attaching to them (focusing on them). Eventually you bring that ability into your day to day life becoming aware, in the moment, of how you respond to things and your emotions and behavior in general, and that practice is mindfulness.

So let's start with the two parts required for meditation:

1) Can you get into a calm, relaxed state physically?
2) Can you get into a calm state mentally?
By this I mean, can you sit with your eyes closed in a relaxed physical state and not be distracted by every thought that enters your mind.

Don't worry, I couldn't do either to start with, we just need to figure out where to start

Feel free to pm me if you'd like.

I remember trying Franz Bardon's IIH and had some hangups with Step I because I was supposed to watch thoughts pass in the first step. What I ended up doing was sort of 'cocking back' or chambering my awareness, if that makes any sense, to watch thoughts but no thoughts were forthcoming. I guess that can happen to some people so I've let it go. I haven't pushed my self too hard on holding one image or attempting long spots of clearing, at least unless it's just throughout the day somewhere that I felt like I was getting too far stuck in my head.

There were a few exercises in Israel Regardie's One Year Manual though that I thought were pretty helpful. One in particular, I think it was the second month, was a full body relaxation technique that focused on blood-flow and muscle relaxation (after a couple minutes of imaginary jump-rope). I won't lie, it takes maybe 35 or 40 minutes but it seemed to work amazingly well. I'm not sure if that exercise might help you break into this or not but that one in particular, at least for me, helped me sink in a lot deeper than I have otherwise.

Other than that I study the tarot so it stays pretty brief - ie. holding still for five to ten minutes and staring at one of the BOTA trump cards.

Greetings.

One of the things that I found to be very helpful when I began my meditative practice was guided meditations. Starting out 5-10 minutes. Then progressing to 45min - hour. "Monkey Mind" as they call it can make things challenging. When you notice your mind has wondered, just recognize that and bring it back to focus. (don't add anything negative....just notice that it has wondered and compassionately refocus)

If you find it beneficial and want to know more I would encourage you to do some reading about Vipassana.

One of the books that really helped me and was really my starting point with mindfulness was a book by John Kabat Zinn "Wherever You Go There You Are"

If you like pod casts...look up Tara Brach.

Once I was able to train mind better, my ASD ability to hyper focus became of great benefit to my meditation practice.

Meditation will show you all that is inside. It can be overwhelming at first, but encourage you to stick with it. It won't be long before you see the benefits and start to move throughout your day with a better more centered outlook.

Some "catchy" sayings that help "check in" throughout the day:

Is your mind full? or mindful? and one of my favorites Are your feet and head in the place? (are you present in THIS moment)

I know having ASD our minds work a little differently than most, but because of that, I think we stand to benefit that much more from it. Enjoy the path. Not every meditation is going to be stellar but in time you will find that sitting on the cushion is where the work gets done. Allow yourself to just be.

All the best and kind regards. Shark

Hi Aimee

Am ASD and practice mindfulness meditation. SharkSandwich had good recommendation with Kabbat Zinn (and also Tara Brach whose podcasts teach me how to be mindful in reactions and behaviors).

Sound is my dominant sense (to a problem degree), but why fight it? So I leverage it and do the SoundScape approach that Kabbat Zinn teaches. I just 'acknowledge' more and more of the sounds, moving out wider to get them all. It stops the verbal processor in my head completely (so, no 'content' or stories/issues to mull etc).

For me, it also start seeing flashes of textures instead (wood, fields of wheat, water) - not sure what that's about lol but that's probably unique to me

What I mean is that if you have a dominant (or interfering) sense, you might try a meditation that leverages that fact. Very effective for turning off any secondary processing and analytics you might otherwise do. Brings you and keeps you experiencing the Present, which is really what mindfulness approach is aiming for.

Happy meditating!

I found meditation hard before I actually learned in a Buddhist setting.
I find secular and "self taught" meditation can have a few gaps. Is there somewhere you could go perhaps to a led meditation? Someone experienced who knows how to lead meditation without interfering is a great help.
In the city where I used to live there was also meditation courses available, to get a more in-depth idea of all the aspects of meditation. Having a well-rounded, complete, solid understanding of the practice helped my constantly-calculating autistic mind slow down a bit, because I could understand what was happening, and thus stopped trying to understand all the time.

hello. as a meditator and yogi i found that people (NTs) tended to talk AT me when discussing yoga and meditation. the psychologist who assessed me recommended two fabulous books to help me translate the different spiritual experiences of NTs compared to those with ASD:
Autism and spirituality by olga bogdashina and
Donna williams, autism and sensing
hope this helps

I have something like that too, though it's mostly forest scenes for some reason.

I would have a hard time with "letting my feelings and thoughts pass through me"; for me there's just something disturbing about that visual. I was taught to regard thoughts and feelings as ephemeral; like clouds in the sky, whose only power to hurt me is the power I invest in them (it took me a very long time to get the "feelings aren't facts" bit). I was taught to simply ignore them; allow them to arise without aversion, allow them to pass without glomming onto them with my endless analysis and editorializing, and then allow them to dissipate like snowflakes on a wet sidewalk. When something particularly "sticky" comes to mind and I find that I've drifted off course into worrying, daydreaming, or fantasizing, I was taught to simply come back to my practice, gently; without self-judgement or self-criticism. It did not matter how often my mind drifts off; only that I return to my practice. My practice exists on kind of a sliding scale, depending upon how discordant and delusive my mind is at the moment; ranging from focusing upon counting the breath, to following the breath, to "bare awareness". When I'm in a bad way, I tend to stick to counting the breath; bare awareness gives my mind too much opportunity for unhelpful rumination.

This is how I was taught:
Meditation Instruction
And this was the instruction manual:
Fukanzazengi

Works for me; your mileage may vary. No warranty expressed or implied.

I've learned that, while I can stop thinking (and when I do so it tends to be relatively absolute - no thoughts to watch), I have a need to think through my internal content and contemplate it if I want it to get better.

I've taken that up increasingly, especially as I find myself in very high-pressure situations jobs, situations where less scrupulous people above me in company hierarchy (these days customers) might want to send their failures in communication or forethought down to me and go King Kong over it for good measure, so getting myself oriented in such a way where I can internally weather other people's personality disorders as well as the types of environments I've found myself in over the years demands that I look inward and take very seriously the practice of untangling every bad or unfruitful heuristic that I have in my way of thinking. To that extent I also find myself needing to pay very close attention to my emotions, anymore I don't see them as something meaningless that just happens or something to be avoided - they're pieces of my own internal machinery groaning or complaining under certain kinds of strain, much like any other ache in the body, and I think under most circumstances - and especially under aberrant or adversarial circumstances - one ignores them to their own peril.

What I am discovering with a lot of my own internal focus efforts to this extent is that there is a sort of layer between your conscious and subconscious mind where your feelings are there in their full complexity and you can sense the shape of your own architecture and what needs to be done in response to a particular set of problems when you relate your current concerns to how the topography of that layer 'feels' (a bit like reading braille for the lack of a better analogy).

I suppose that also raises another particular question, do the eastern traditions mostly just focus on clearing and ego-dissolution or do some of them also focus on character/integrity meditations or really purification/optimizing of the ego? I know that in the yogas you have karma yoga and gnana yoga and character contemplation of the sort of Socratic variety seems like it could almost sort of exist in an overlap between those two if they were set in a Venn diagram. Also anything from Rosicrucian and Martinism to the Golden Dawn diaspora seem to focus on something similar - ie. purifying/rectifying the ego rather than eliminating it. Either way those sorts of contemplation, ie. on my own internal structure and character, seem like they've been priceless in both reducing pain and also helping to steer me away from counterproductive thoughts, activities, and all kinds of other things that would impair my capacity to bear good fruit when I'm acting or bringing my internal situations to bear in the world around me.

Meditation is wonderful!! I practice it every now and then, and it’s the most difficult when wound up, which for aspies, is a lot.

I find it’s easier when you have relaxing peaceful music to focus on.

Those look great, I will look at them too. Where in NZ are you from?

I was introduced to meditation by the inner child programs of John Bradshaw. I also did some hypnotherapy that left me with a short cut that still seems to work to get into a meditative state almost immediately.

Having a scattered mind and being unable to turn off the rat race in my head has always been a problem for me. But the biggest problem for me what the "rule" that you have to sit in a certain way and stay still the entire time. As I have chronic pain, typical sitting positions are painful for me. I had to learn that it was okay to find a position that was less painful for me and also that it is okay to change positions during meditation. You can change positions mindfully.

It would be good if this could become a sticky.
I think a lot of people could benefit from this thread and we can help each other.
Meditation and mindfulness is not easy to learn or master.
A thread to pass on tips and ask questions.
Lets face it, there are a lot of questions in life.

I was taught to sit very formally on a zafu on the floor (I sit Burmese). When I tore my right meniscus, sitting that way would cripple me, to the point that I was forced to sit in a chair. Even then, my meditation sucked; I just couldn't seem to get into the zone. Then one day I realized just how attached I was to sitting "properly"; just like everyone else (I was practicing at a Zen Center at the time). Once I could let go of that need, my meditative state improved. I've had a friend who had cervical fusion surgery to her neck; she brought her own special chair with a neck support. Another had been a professional dancer; her back hurt so bad sitting, she'd pull two zabutons together and lie down. Roshi Philip Kapleau sat in chairs at the end of his life; he had Parkinson's. I've since had the opportunity to "sit" in hospital beds on numerous occasions. Sometimes we need to adapt.
Proper form actually is very important; but we must remember that form is there to support our practice; not the other way 'round.

What you're describing sounds like a common issue for people and probably has nothing to do with your diagnosis. Your yoga teacher is probably teaching a different style of meditation, especially if you're being told to control your breathing. There's nothing wrong with that if you're doing that style but you should know what you're doing and know what advice is relevant to it since styles of meditation exist for different purposes and don't always mix well. If what you were taught is called mindfulness it's probably based on vipassana meditation where you wouldn't tend to control your breathing, at least not with any effort most of the time. I'd suggest you read books or find teachers in the same style you're doing or if you want you can ask your therapist if switching to what your yoga teacher teaches would be ok.