High stimulation meditations are things like aerobic exercise and dance, which use your entire body and require conscious focus to maintain the effort.
You may need to start with a bit of high intensity in order to settle the system if super agitated but the important thing is you *do not* stay high intensity.
You want to be around zone-2 on the aerobic exercise scale: where your breathing is slightly elevated but you can continue for 2-3 hours if you focus. A good gauge of intensity is that nose-breathing suffices.
All of these need to be done *alone* to be effective. I like using music with high-stimulation meditations.
Examples would be cycling, jogging, swimming, dancing, fast walking, or maybe even aggressive rocking, humming and vocalisation.
Make sure that when you feel a wave of bliss or motivation flow through your body you *do not respond* to it. These are high stimulation but we are still training our system to decouple from reactivity.
Rocking and humming are more instinctive so I will use cycling as my example.
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Remember you are not there to break any records. Do not use data devices, apart from a clock. Do not use a heart rate monitor. Do not try for the ironman world championships. All these things will move your latch away from the activity at hand.
1 - Dial in on your breathing and make sure you are around the level where you could hold a conversation; where you can get 4 to 6 words out before having to take a breath.
2 - Dial in on your legs, hips and feet. Focus on pedalling in circles, ideally with clipless pedals, so you can feel the force from your feet transferring to the cranks through the entire 360 degrees. Do not stomp or grind; find your own comfortable cadence and power and settle in to riding in smooth circles.
3 - Get your body as stable as possible and focus on your contact points: the handles, the seat, and the pedals. Slight bend in the arms and stable hands. Stable breathing, which is tuned to the timing of your legs.
Feel yourself as a well oiled machine with your hips being the driver of motion. Your diaphragm goes all the way to your pelvis, then your lungs are at the root of your arms; your breath is the centre of it all. Your arms are relaxed but firm and your hands sit on the bars without grasping.
Your legs are smooth pistons, cycling around like the wheels of a train. Settle in; feel everything; breathe. Settle in; feel everything; breathe. Focus on the body and how it feels as it moves. Stay stable.
4 - Do this until you feel like you have a rhythm and then relax the focus and look around and enjoy the ride. Drink in the scenery. Enjoy the colour of the season and the taste of the air and the music in your body and realise your mind has drifted to a thought and acknowledge the thought and let it go.
If the thought doesn’t want to be let go, back to step 1. Rinse. Repeat. If it still doesn't want to be let go, stop the bike and send yourself a text message for later. Export the thought. The regular flow of dopamine is loosening things up in your mind and this is a good chance to export them.
Enjoy the ride!
Don’t push.
Just enough to stay focused on your legs and your breathing. Just enough to keep that mind from wandering.
Decide whether that’s enough or whether you want to step down to a moderate stimulation meditation.
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