This week I’ve been working out a new four-day neurodiversity retreat program with my friend Ofosu Jones-Quartey, which begins next Thursday July 16th at the Art of Living in Boone, North Carolina.
The retreat’s curriculum poses a fun intellectual challenge for me, as a neurospicy human. How do I balance an understanding of the diversity of our nervous system needs, on the one hand, with the healing universality and simplicity of meditation on the other? Every decent meditation teacher comes up against this contradiction in different ways. It’s just more exaggerated with neurodivergent practitioners, since – in matters of sensitivity, emotional regulation and other processing differences – many of us live at the outer range of our respective spectrums.
For this retreat, the solution we’ve come up with is: options. Lots of them (spaced out, to avoid overwhelm). Lots of ways in, and – crucially – lots of ways down. As in, down-regulation. In the neurodiversity context, this means regular check-ins around what folks need, and when. It means ensuring a sensory-safe space away from the group is always open – a space to rest and move and make art and lie on your back repeating the Lord’s Prayer. It means breaking things up with movement and nature practices and sharing special interests and restorative soundbaths and (if my master plan works out!) a neurodiversity-themed video viewing party for maximum amusement, insight and co-regulation.
Once we’re down – or down-ish – it’s easier for the medicine of meditation land.
That medicine, in my way of thinking, is, basically: finding and resting in the “no problem,” amidst all the problems. A radical proposition. It’s being genuinely available to the sensory moment, to our own bogglement and hopeless desire for certainty, and ultimately to the many surprising ways our minds and bodies start expressing themselves when we get out of our own way.
Practicing this kind of equanimity, again and again, is healing and transformative for both those on the mental health edges, and for those more in the middle (the non-existent middle). You could say it’s the practice of our own innocence. The care in this – the love – radiates out. It can become the paradoxical basis of how we approach change in ourselves and the world.
So. In this post, something a bit different. First – at the top – a 14-minute guided meditation about this, taken from my recent Hollyhock retreat on Cortes Island, B.C. The full 27-minute version of the meditation is below, for those seeking something more substantive. Second, I’ve embedded a teaching video from the end of that same retreat that expands on what I’ve written above. It goes into how meditation deepens over time, into what it means to “awaken,” and it unpacks the radical creativity and healing potential of equanimity. Also – bonus! – I talk about what a shitty palliative caregiver I was. Because, before I understood anything about equanimity, I stressed out a lot of almost-dead people.
