#20 — Making Meditation Simple

On Thursday the 27th of June at 6.30pm UK, I will be teaching another ADHD-friendly meditation workshop. You can get tickets by going to drugfreeadhd.com. Okay, so if you can't make that or you're not convinced about... the power of meditation for ADHD. Let me spend a few minutes just going over why I'm so positive about it. So you may have heard the episode last week with Carly.

She came to me in late November 2023. She didn't really want to follow my techniques. The only reason she came to me is because of the medication shortage in the UK, actually globally. But within a few months, she was meditating every single day. In fact, the drug-free ADHD daily meditation accountability group, which is at 7.30am every single day, 365 days a year, that was Carly's idea.

not only was it carly's idea she's even run a few sessions for me when i could not do it when i first met her there really was no doubt in her mind that meditation was not for her And I get it. The way that meditation is taught in most schools and apps like Calm and Headspace is not suitable for people with ADHD. For one very specific reason. They ask you to focus on your breath. And they incorrectly try to make you stop thoughts. So if you have ADHD.

obviously you are in there you can hear the thoughts they don't stop and you have no control over them however what we do know is that You are not the voice of the mind. You are the one who hears it. If you can hear the voice speaking, that voice cannot be you. It is your voice. Yes, it does sound like you. You take guidance from it. But the very fact that you can hear it speaking is all the proof you will need that it is not you. The voice is an object. So are emotions. So is the outside world.

So is your body. They're all objects you are aware of. But the subject, the awareness that is aware of them, that is not an object. You cannot see that. You cannot touch it. But you know it's there. You know it's there. Look, remove all thoughts. You're still there. Remove all emotions and sensations. You're still there. Remove all thoughts, sensations, emotions, perceptions. You are still there. You're just not aware of anything. This happens when you're in deep sleep. Remove awareness.

and you're gone. Even if thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions remain, if you were to remove awareness, remove the I that is yourself, you disappear. Right? So you're in there. You can hear these busy thoughts going on and on and on. And then some meditation teacher.

comes along and asks you to stop thoughts, just focus on the breath, making out that it's very simple. No wonder that you're not going to be able to do it. So how do you meditate with ADHD? Well, you do it very, very differently to that.

And the first thing is you do not ever try to stop thoughts. Instead, because you're in there aware of thoughts, they are separate from you. You can, with time, with patience and training, Turn your awareness away from thoughts so you can learn to ignore them. This is the most important thing you could ever learn.

as a beginner in meditation that is not about stopping thoughts it is about training yourself to turn away from them okay it's easier said than done so let's make it a little bit easier meditation is very simple actually it's just about creating an object of attention so most meditation techniques specifically those from more of a buddhist background focus on the breath

So you just focus on the breath going in and out, whether that's in the chest or the stomach or more subtle areas like the inside of the nostrils. That is an extremely difficult way for most people with ADHD to meditate. Other techniques include focusing on a flame, just staring at a flame, making sure that that object remains present in your awareness.

pulling beads through your fingers one after another and focusing on each bead as it goes through it's a perfectly valid way of meditating however because we have a very very busy mind more so than the average neurotypical person we need to place a new thought in our mind it's what i like to call a willful thought so all the thoughts that are going on and on in your head right now are automatic thoughts you didn't ask for them but they're there

what we want to do is place a willful thought that we did ask but we want to place one in there that's very repetitive okay so if you were to join the meditation group on the sorry the meditation workshop going to drugfreeadhd.org forward slash workshop for tickets. On the 27th of June, you will learn this technique in full alongside a group of other people with ADHD in a safe space on Zoom led by me.

However, if you just want to have a go now and see how it works for you, you can choose one of two mantras. So that's the thought that we place in our head, a willful thought. There's probably one of the most powerful you could ever do and simplest as well. It's just repeating, I can handle this over and over again, silently to yourself with your eyes closed. So it would sound like this. I can handle this.

I can handle this. I can handle this. Okay, why would we use that mantra? Because what is the opposite of I can handle this? I can't handle this. by uttering the words i can handle this over and over again we start to retrain our consciousness our psyche that we can in fact handle whatever life is throwing at us and if we can handle whatever life is throwing at us we become less desperate to try and make everything in the outside world go exactly as we want

Whenever we set goals, whenever we decide exactly how something should be, we limit all of the things it could be. With a mantra like, I can handle this over and over again, we train. our psyche to be able to handle everything. So life becomes so much simpler. Okay, that's one mantra. If you want to go slightly deeper with your mantra, more spiritual for want of a better expression.

You can try this. Just repeat the mantra, I am, over and over again. But it sounds like this, so it's inside. It goes, I am, I am.

It's creating like a gentle vibration inside that your awareness finds quite easy to focus on. There's also another benefit to this and that is that it stimulates the nervous system, almost allowing some... past impressions and negative and positive experiences to rise to the surface to bubble up to the surface this is a very good thing and it's something that's rarely taught in say headspace and calm for some bizarre reason

And that is that when these thoughts bubble to the surface, that is your very, very, very, very intelligent subconscious mind saying it is now time to release this impression that was stored in me. So let's... look at a silly example maybe one that i got from michael singer which is road rage right we most people suffer with road rage they get annoyed with the driver in front of them where does that come from probably because we saw one of our parents

um getting mad at the driver in front of them when we were kids sat in the back of the car okay this is not about childhood trauma this is just very very simple Okay, so then subconsciously we then become annoyed at them because we're really, really important. We must be there on time. We must be driving the speed limit. We must be going at the speed I want to be going.

It's all ego, this is. And the ego is driven by these past impressions that were stored. So you're in meditation and then the memory of some event comes up. And it's... you know your dad or your mom getting annoyed that the driver was going too slow and shouting and you were scared in the back um and then

you try and change it you try and change that memory or repress it or you escape from it by stopping meditation or whatever no that's not what you want to do you want to just allow that memory to play out on its own because if you do that you effectively surrender to it And then it disappears on its own. Whatever energy was being used to hold that down will then be released and you'll feel gentle release in your body.

You'll also notice the next time you get in the car that you're much less likely to have road rage. In fact, you may not have road rage at all anymore. Now, meditation is not the only way to do that. The best way to do it. is when you're driving in the car and you sense the feeling of road rage coming up within you and you can hear the voice in your head shouting at you to start shouting at the car in front but you don't do anything about it you don't escape you don't express it through anger

You don't repress it or pretend it's not happening. You accept that it is happening. Remember, you're in there, aware of the voice. The voice is not you. You don't have to do what it says. and then you just sit there and sit there and sit there and then it will go on its own and in a short period of time do that a few times in a row you will no longer have road rage i am living walking example of that

This is what Michael Singer describes as low-hanging fruit. So if you practice with these seemingly small things in life, it prepares you for the bigger stuff.

The stuff that's happened in your life that you cannot handle. That is governing your behavior today. So fear of public speaking, perhaps. Fear of success. Fear of X, Y, and Z. Whatever it might be. Or... the desperation to go on holiday every five minutes, the desperation to escape difficult things, whatever it is, something in your life is making you do that.

it can be released to the point where if you look at not even enlightened yogis that's not the objective of what we're doing here but people who are very dedicated to meditation and dedicated to letting things go like this they're happy all the time

They're happy all the time because they don't define what they do and don't want. They don't define what they like and dislike. Effectively, they have very few or no preferences whatsoever about what's happening. Therefore, every single minute of every single day,

It's a surprise and they welcome it in. It's not always exactly what they may have wanted in the past, but it is what they're getting and they accept that. And those people are happy. They are genuinely happy. What makes people unhappy and suffer is... When you have extremely strict guidelines for how life should go, and it doesn't go that way, you suffer. That's why the Buddha very, very wisely said, all of life is suffering. And suffering...

Now we could rephrase that to suffering is caused by preferences. So all of our suffering is caused...

by our preferences, because it did not go the way we wanted it to. Why am I telling you all of this? Because meditation is a preparation at the beginning of the day. for being able, being calm enough and quiet enough inside to let go of the things that are causing us problems, to let go of our preferences. You know what happens when you do that?

ADHD becomes much less of an issue and you want to know why I think that happens I think it's because although it's very controversial Gabor Mate's theory that ADHD is caused by trauma I think is bang on. Now, a lot of you listening to this will know that I'm a big fan of Tom Hartman's Hunters in a Farmer's World theory of ADHD. And I think there is some truth in that. People with ADHD, or a lot of us at least,

Our brains are different. We are certainly hunters living in a farmer's world we don't quite fit in. But that doesn't explain the way that we can react at times, the way that we're always seeking.

stimulation the way that we're always trying to escape things that are uncomfortable i think trauma plays a big role in that and therefore if trauma can be released which it can through these processes what in sanskrit if you want to google and research is called a samskara which is basically the energy residue left over from a past event

that affected you, that you couldn't let go of in the moment. Like, for example, your parents with road rage. It gets stored inside your psyche and anything at all that reminds it, either directly or obliquely. stimulates it and triggers you and that explains 95 of the negative behavior of someone with adhd so

What I'm about to say now sounds extremely radical and probably upset some people, but I do not believe that ADHD is something we have for life. I do not believe. If we're talking about the disordered part of ADHD rather than the hunter... the problems that we face, the impulsivity, the lack of motivation. I do not believe for a second that that is something that we have to live with forever and ever. And I believe that.

Because I've been meditating for so long in a way that is ADHD friendly, that is very simple to learn, that is not being practiced by just me, but by lots of people that I've taught. over 2 000 now and i would love for you to learn these techniques too so if you're up for it like i said at the beginning of this podcast i am Running a workshop on Thursday the 27th of June at 6.30pm UK. If you want to buy tickets just go to drugfreeadhd.org forward slash workshop.

the workshop will be over zoom you can buy a ticket and if you don't make it you will be sent a full recording of the workshop so you can still meditate learn the technique and then if you want to in the future you can join the accountability group with all of us adhd folk meditating together at 7 30 a.m every single day okay well that was uh

another solo episode uh on the drug-free adhd podcast i will be back next week with another interview um and i would love for you to listen okay have a wonderful day Thank you.