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.
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 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 a garmin or data devices. 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 and your hips and your 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 on the bike 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 into the timing of your legs. Slower exhales if possible but don’t sweat it too much.
The key is to tune in to your entire body; feel yourself as a well oiled machine with your hips being the driver of all the 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.
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 as it sails by. Enjoy the colour of the season and the taste of the air and the music in your body and then 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. There is no goal other than to be present and to keep your mind gently latched to the feeling in your body while you allow you environment to wash over you, your thoughts to wash over you, the world to wash through you.
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.
When you get home, if something was on your mind, write it down. It will probably leave and stay gone.
Decide whether that’s enough or whether you want to step down to a moderate stimulation meditation.
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