Notes to a student asking me about meditation as a part of their warm up and daily routine and feeling like she wasn’t able to be present in stillness

try movement meditation... (the slow walk we used in class, walk on a rope, take 5-45 minutes to stand up)

try using music.(one song over and over or get some music intended for meditation.. I don't have any great selections off the top of my head)

try calligraphy... (write one important word over and over again)

try a mantra (saying something over and over)

a yantra (something you look at like a mandala- can be used as meditation – or any image you like)

try holding a stone or any object and seeing it, feeling it for a long time....

there are lots of different kind of meditations...

every culture has used all of these above and many more in different forms-
make meditation as fluid and fun as you are allowing your warm ups to become!!

experiment!!

also make sure that your spine/heart/breath etc are really warm BEFORE you meditate (like a yoga class, which is ultimately getting you ready for stillness but our contemporary materialistic culture has turned it into fitness alone) and do the work from my class (which is pretty basic- and is part of yoga, part of mindfulness meditation, is pretty simple and universal and actually, to do for real, quite difficult...)

HAVE FUN!