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Meditation
Struggling with Meditation? Mindful Writing Might Work
Writing meditation may be a helpful approach to mindfulness.
Posted August 14, 2024 Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Key points
- Writing meditation is a little-known technique to promote mindfulness.
- It’s about capturing your moment-by-moment thoughts on paper.
- It’s great for people who are frustrated by traditional meditation approaches.
Meditation is hard. It’s hard to get into a routine. It’s hard to let go of the expectation that you “should” be focused and calm while meditating. It’s even hard to not fall asleep while meditating! While there’s no hidden trick to make meditation easier, I’ve recently been experimenting with a different technique that I’ve found to be helpful: writing meditation.
The writing meditation I’m referring to is not journaling or creative writing, although the output looks somewhat like poetry. It’s an open mindfulness practice that happens to be done on paper. Here are the steps I take:
- Take a blank piece of paper and a pen
- Write down each thought that comes into my mind
That’s it!
But I think an example might help make this clearer. Here’s a recent writing meditation that I completed:
Breathe
In through my nose
Out through my mouth
Pressure around my eyes
Feeling the pen in my hand
Sounds of a bird outside
Noticing the breath in my chest
Waiting
Heart beating
Am I doing this right?
Sounds of cars going past
I want it to be quiet
Frustration
Sensations of my feet against the ground
Sounds of crickets
Pressure again around my eyes
Am I getting sick?
Back to the breath
Waiting
My chest rising and falling with the breath
Thoughts moving faster than my fingers
Feeling the pen in my hand
Is this a good place to stop?
I’ll wrap up now
This is just a brief example, but you can see that I was mindfully aware of physical sensations (the breath in different parts of my body, the sensation of the pen in my hands, my feet against the floor), sounds (birds, cars, crickets) as well as thoughts (“am I getting sick?” “my thoughts are moving faster than my fingers” “I want it to be quiet”) and emotions (“frustration”).
The exercise helped me to get into a meditative state and was more focused than trying to notice all of this while just sitting and meditating, where it can be easy to get lost in the swirl of thoughts.
I’ve been using this technique for the past several years and have been surprised that it is not more commonly used. Have you tried this type of meditation before? Where did you learn it? Try it out for yourself and let me know how it goes!
