This was awesome. While not formally an ADHDer (not diagnosed as such, at least), my brain is reliably yo-yoing 🪀and rubber banding erratically from dawn to dusk. It was interesting to try to choose the wandering as opposed to just noticing it happening organically and then coming back. So, this is like the ultimate clarity and concentration muscle practice, but with a twist.
I had this vision during it of it being like sets at the gym. 🏋🏼♂️ You are focusing on your “home base” of 10-12 reps of whatever you’re working on, and then you “swing” out during a brief rest between sets…maybe to some people watching 👀, doom scrolling 📱, mercilessly comparing yourself to others (as one does), maybe just breathing 🫁, etc. And then, you swing back into action with your “home base,” the next set.
Most importantly: I think it shoudl be required that Jeff say “WWHHHHEEEEEeeeeeee!” in every single meditation going forward, without exception.
That’s a perfect metaphor, Richard. It’s interesting because choosing where you wanna pay attention on the regular like that is technically more demanding than to just stay in one place. To say nothing of noticing when you swing out advertently. It really trains clarity and the capacity for momentary concentration. And yet even though it’s more work, I think a lot of easily distracted brains prefer the agency of it, to quote Gillian above.
Hi Jeff, thanks for this meditation- it was such a gift for me! I loved the framing of swinging in and out from home base - helped me stay neutral, curious and with a sense of humor and adventure about my wandering (judgement dropped away). I also felt much greater agency, which was empowering. I especially loved the “weeeee” swinging back in to home base about three quarters of the way through. You made my Sunday morning brighter. Sending gratitude. Gillian
Thanks, Gillian. I like what you say about agency, that is part of why I like this practice too. I don’t like feeling like I’m supposed to do something one way.l!
I felt privileged to be part of your talk to Canadian universities. ADHD myself; it was easy to connect with what you speak to, and that’s strange to me….I am strange (so I’ve been told), how dare you make sense of my strangeness. Jeff, you possess the art of articulation. Thank you for being able to describe, then offer assistance to our “wild, and seemingly uncontrollable” side!
Same Shane! I joined Substack after your talk. I will admit to over subscribing to adhd/mental health. I can’t believe the amount of writing! I wish to be more supportive in the areas of mental health, I love and appreciate the path you are blazing Jeff!
ADHD retreat with Jeff. Duh. 🙄 that’s a no brainer!!! In in in! (I literally just lost my train of thought something like this is a Fantabulosa idea and I would love to join).
Jeff. I’ve been “following you” for a long time after learning about you from your collaboration w Dan Harris, Daily trip on Calm, etc And THIS meditation is now my absolute favorite from you. This was so helpful especially when you said “are you half in your home base and half someplace else. It’s not binary.” I’ve been struggling w that for years and thinking I’m trying to trick my brain to stay still and yet it has actually tricked me into thinking “oh, we’re meditating now, sure… I’ll let you meditate, haha…now think about this, but really you’re meditating so just ignore that thing you’re thinking about”. This was soooo helpful. I can’t even describe how “liberating” this swinging was for me. I was even able to just picture a kid on a swing but then I put myself in that swing and had an even better time. Gosh. You’re such a gift to us all. I hope someday I can join an in person retreat with you and Dan and some other fun and free folks and just have a good time wandering and swinging. Thanks again and see you Sunday (tonight) for nothing.
So glad to hear this, Holly! I know just the experience you described about the sudden liberation. That often happens for me either through a good guided practice, or the way someone articulates something about their experience, say in a book I’m reading. And I realize ‘oh my God, that exact thing had been happening for me. I just hadn’t been able to see it clearly.’ Once it’s named, I find I am able to accept a wider bandwidth of who I am.
Not sure if that makes sense, nap time over here! Anyway, happy to be connected, see you tonight
I play your freestyle focus adhd meditation on Calm and few times a week to help me reconnect. It’s my favourite meditation and I’m so glad you have done an adhd meditation on Substack - thanks so much!
I know I can do this wandering style and it captures my attention and brings my focus back.
Hi Helen! I love that you found that on Calm. What would you say the effect of doing the freestyle focus practise is for you? That is, if you’re doing it a few times a week, do you feel in general more settled after or more clear, or …? I would love to hear a little more about your experience.
When I do freestyle focus and also this meditation I feel a loosening of my intense holding onto thoughts and ideas and a soothing relief from all that.
I get to see how unnecessary this is and I feel freed from it like it’s a cage.
I feel more present and softer and more expanded, like everything opens up and I’m here in the world again, rather than in my circling thoughts.
Generally I have resistance to feeling and connecting and this style gives me more confidence to approach meditation.
When I have one home base like the breath, it actually makes me really stressed and I feel a knot in my stomach and anxiety rising.
I had asked you last year how to manage meditation if your home base makes you stressed and you suggested to make my home base moveable and this has really opened up my practice. I feel meditation is now friendly and kind rather than something I fight with and fail.
So I am very grateful for this guided meditation.
There is nothing else like this that I have come across, and it feels like a lifeline for people like myself - autistic with adhd.
Helen, This has been my experience as well. I also experience my home base as shifting between two or three different sensory experiences during a meditation. With this notion of a moveable home base as okay, or even welcoming it, it lets me be more present with whatever crops up.
I find too that shifting between internal breath and external focus like hearing or fingers helps to ease gradually into feeling what’s going on inside, because just focusing straight on the breath can bring up feelings that are way too intense and hard to be with.
Really interesting to hear both of your descriptions. It’s like the permission to move your attention gives you a lot more space in your experience. If you think of meditation in part as getting out of the doom circuit of narrow thoughts and pre-occupations, there are different ways to do that in a short meditation, sit. You can focus in one direction on one thing and get really settled and find some relief that way. Or you can go wide, stretch out the boundaries of your sensory experience and find a different kind of relief. And of course, there are many other ways too. I love these reports and I learned from them. Thank you.
100% yes to a meditation retreat for ADHDers. Now, if I could convince my 14yr old daughter who also has ADHD to join me -- that would be a hell of a coup.
Oh boy do I LOVE this meditation! You have given me full permission to do what has already been part of my practice --moving back and forth through sensory experiences while I sit. Although I do not have ADHD, I've often felt dismayed that I have such trouble sticking with one home base throughout a meditation. I swing from noticing my breath, to feeling my fingers tingle, to a thought, then back to my breath, and so on. How did this meditation make me feel? Buoyant! I'm all smiles!
Loved this meditation, Jeff. Why? Because, well, did you know it would take you 19 minutes to fall from the North Pole to the earth’s core? Wait, what?
I'm tutoring a twelve year old home schooler who has a diagnosis of ADHD. These posts are helping me "get" him. When he's focused, he's very, very focused, sometimes for as long as three hours. But other times, when he's not as engaged, or he's between projects, he is so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he can't explain to me what he wants or needs. I'm tutoring him in studio art, so we are doing things and making things. He wanted to make a spin art device: a board that was attached to an electric drill, with paint on it. When you turn on the drill, the paint spreads in interesting ways. We finally got that to happen, but it took a long time because he couldn't explain what he wanted to achieve, in part because he was thinking so hard about it, and also looking around the house for the supplies he needed while muttering, not quite out loud, about what he wanted.
As an old person my mind does not move nearly as fast as his does and it's hard for me to keep up!
One problem is that he believes it's a handicap and apologizes for it a lot, even when he's not doing anything unusual really.
As a learning specialist who has worked with many children and young adults with ADD / ADHD, I am very familiar with these kids expressing a sense of inadequacy and feeling the need to apologize for how their brains work. Spending six hours a day in a traditional academic setting (and sometimes even homeschooling) where self-discipline and focus is expected is excruciating for these kids, so its great that he has a creative outlet by meeting with you.
Since every child is unique, it's really difficult to make suggestions about what might make things easier for you when you are meeting with him. Nonetheless, I'll give it a go, realizing that you may already be doing all of this.
You might try to separate the stages of making things by writing very brief bullet lists on a white board, and limiting the number of choices through questioning. The white board makes things easier, because kids can SEE information rather than trying to hold it all in their heads while it is whirling around. An art project can be motivated by a desire to use particular tools, materials, or wanting to make a particular thing. So for materials, you might start by writing the word 'materials' and listing 3 choices to work with (more than 3 choices is likely to be overwhelming). Then you could move to 'tools' -- what will we need to make this thing? and list 3 choices. The choice of materials and tools can sometimes be what leads to making a particular thing. If you start with the 'what do you want to make' the number of options can be totally daunting (as you've already experienced). So you might ask questions -- are there lots of colors? does it move? is it something flat?
I hope some of this is helpful for you and your student -- and thank you for doing this work with him!
Shannon and Tamar I appreciate this exchange. Both of you sound like great educators, wish I had someone like you when I was a little ADHD
kiddo. I was thinking about how I could actually use some of them myself or do a version of with my eldest, who is neurospicy of some kind. I like reading books about all this and listening to neurodiversity podcasts; a lot of it ends up being about different learning strategies for different kinds of brains. I feel like we’re living in an explosion of developmental insights. Of course, as we move away from a one size fits an all curriculum you get into a new set of challenges around how to deliver to all that diversity. That’s why I think a lot of of it needs to be peer driven, and also driven by a core curriculum of learning about ourselves from a very young age and how to find customizable practises to help us regulate and grow and learn in our own idiosyncratic ways
Jeff -- At this point, there is an enormous body of research documenting how diverse the neurodiverse population is, as well as providing excellent insights into strategies for individualizing both instruction and curriculum. But of course, since you have lived experience of these struggles, and you are also parenting a child who is neurospicy (I love that term! thank you for it) you bring a different perspective to all of this. In the classroom (or in 1:1 situations), what makes a huge difference is the training of the teachers. Combining research based strategies with an ocean of empathy and understanding are critical.
By the way, you might want to take a look at the work of MaryDee Sklar. I took a workshop with her many years ago and immediately found her approach made more sense than most others I had been taught in grad school. She focuses on showing kids what is happening, not just talking at them with endless instructions. She developed a book / program called 'Seeing What I Need to Do" to help adults and adolescents understand what it means to have executive functioning challenges and how to work with them. I know that many of her strategies can be simplified to work with younger children as well and I can help you with that. I'd also be happy to have a longer conversation with you-- I'd like to learn more about your experiences parenting a neurospicy kid, and can share things I've learned after 30 + years as a learning specialist (now semi-retired).
A mindfulness retreat for ADHDers? Sounds fabulous. You are spot on describing the (my) ADHD brain while attempting meditation. In fact, it’s like you were in my head yesterday, writing the exact words I was thinking while trying to meditate to another guided meditation while using the Calm app. Swiiiinging way out and back in my head while attempting to stay at home base. Yes, I’d be all over that endeavor of yours. Keep us posted. 😊
This was awesome. While not formally an ADHDer (not diagnosed as such, at least), my brain is reliably yo-yoing 🪀and rubber banding erratically from dawn to dusk. It was interesting to try to choose the wandering as opposed to just noticing it happening organically and then coming back. So, this is like the ultimate clarity and concentration muscle practice, but with a twist.
I had this vision during it of it being like sets at the gym. 🏋🏼♂️ You are focusing on your “home base” of 10-12 reps of whatever you’re working on, and then you “swing” out during a brief rest between sets…maybe to some people watching 👀, doom scrolling 📱, mercilessly comparing yourself to others (as one does), maybe just breathing 🫁, etc. And then, you swing back into action with your “home base,” the next set.
Most importantly: I think it shoudl be required that Jeff say “WWHHHHEEEEEeeeeeee!” in every single meditation going forward, without exception.
That’s a perfect metaphor, Richard. It’s interesting because choosing where you wanna pay attention on the regular like that is technically more demanding than to just stay in one place. To say nothing of noticing when you swing out advertently. It really trains clarity and the capacity for momentary concentration. And yet even though it’s more work, I think a lot of easily distracted brains prefer the agency of it, to quote Gillian above.
Haha I’d vote for that too Richard
Hi Jeff, thanks for this meditation- it was such a gift for me! I loved the framing of swinging in and out from home base - helped me stay neutral, curious and with a sense of humor and adventure about my wandering (judgement dropped away). I also felt much greater agency, which was empowering. I especially loved the “weeeee” swinging back in to home base about three quarters of the way through. You made my Sunday morning brighter. Sending gratitude. Gillian
Thanks, Gillian. I like what you say about agency, that is part of why I like this practice too. I don’t like feeling like I’m supposed to do something one way.l!
I felt privileged to be part of your talk to Canadian universities. ADHD myself; it was easy to connect with what you speak to, and that’s strange to me….I am strange (so I’ve been told), how dare you make sense of my strangeness. Jeff, you possess the art of articulation. Thank you for being able to describe, then offer assistance to our “wild, and seemingly uncontrollable” side!
This is so good! He is very articulate. And what a sense of freedom he gives in these meditation to do what we need to do in this moment. Peace to you
May you be well Holly!
Hey awesome to see you here Shane! The same Shane who did a terrific job editing the video? Really loved hanging out with you all
Same Shane! I joined Substack after your talk. I will admit to over subscribing to adhd/mental health. I can’t believe the amount of writing! I wish to be more supportive in the areas of mental health, I love and appreciate the path you are blazing Jeff!
ADHD retreat with Jeff. Duh. 🙄 that’s a no brainer!!! In in in! (I literally just lost my train of thought something like this is a Fantabulosa idea and I would love to join).
Jules! You’re already at the top of my list anyway
Thank you! I found myself laughing at myself.
You’re welcome!
Jeff. I’ve been “following you” for a long time after learning about you from your collaboration w Dan Harris, Daily trip on Calm, etc And THIS meditation is now my absolute favorite from you. This was so helpful especially when you said “are you half in your home base and half someplace else. It’s not binary.” I’ve been struggling w that for years and thinking I’m trying to trick my brain to stay still and yet it has actually tricked me into thinking “oh, we’re meditating now, sure… I’ll let you meditate, haha…now think about this, but really you’re meditating so just ignore that thing you’re thinking about”. This was soooo helpful. I can’t even describe how “liberating” this swinging was for me. I was even able to just picture a kid on a swing but then I put myself in that swing and had an even better time. Gosh. You’re such a gift to us all. I hope someday I can join an in person retreat with you and Dan and some other fun and free folks and just have a good time wandering and swinging. Thanks again and see you Sunday (tonight) for nothing.
So glad to hear this, Holly! I know just the experience you described about the sudden liberation. That often happens for me either through a good guided practice, or the way someone articulates something about their experience, say in a book I’m reading. And I realize ‘oh my God, that exact thing had been happening for me. I just hadn’t been able to see it clearly.’ Once it’s named, I find I am able to accept a wider bandwidth of who I am.
Not sure if that makes sense, nap time over here! Anyway, happy to be connected, see you tonight
Perfectly captured adhd again. Thank you
I love this meditation!
I play your freestyle focus adhd meditation on Calm and few times a week to help me reconnect. It’s my favourite meditation and I’m so glad you have done an adhd meditation on Substack - thanks so much!
I know I can do this wandering style and it captures my attention and brings my focus back.
I know I will play it often.
Hi Helen! I love that you found that on Calm. What would you say the effect of doing the freestyle focus practise is for you? That is, if you’re doing it a few times a week, do you feel in general more settled after or more clear, or …? I would love to hear a little more about your experience.
Thanks for asking Jeff.
When I do freestyle focus and also this meditation I feel a loosening of my intense holding onto thoughts and ideas and a soothing relief from all that.
I get to see how unnecessary this is and I feel freed from it like it’s a cage.
I feel more present and softer and more expanded, like everything opens up and I’m here in the world again, rather than in my circling thoughts.
Generally I have resistance to feeling and connecting and this style gives me more confidence to approach meditation.
When I have one home base like the breath, it actually makes me really stressed and I feel a knot in my stomach and anxiety rising.
I had asked you last year how to manage meditation if your home base makes you stressed and you suggested to make my home base moveable and this has really opened up my practice. I feel meditation is now friendly and kind rather than something I fight with and fail.
So I am very grateful for this guided meditation.
There is nothing else like this that I have come across, and it feels like a lifeline for people like myself - autistic with adhd.
Thanks so much Jeff 🤗🙏🏻
Helen, This has been my experience as well. I also experience my home base as shifting between two or three different sensory experiences during a meditation. With this notion of a moveable home base as okay, or even welcoming it, it lets me be more present with whatever crops up.
I find too that shifting between internal breath and external focus like hearing or fingers helps to ease gradually into feeling what’s going on inside, because just focusing straight on the breath can bring up feelings that are way too intense and hard to be with.
Really interesting to hear both of your descriptions. It’s like the permission to move your attention gives you a lot more space in your experience. If you think of meditation in part as getting out of the doom circuit of narrow thoughts and pre-occupations, there are different ways to do that in a short meditation, sit. You can focus in one direction on one thing and get really settled and find some relief that way. Or you can go wide, stretch out the boundaries of your sensory experience and find a different kind of relief. And of course, there are many other ways too. I love these reports and I learned from them. Thank you.
Thanks Jeff
That’s really helpful to see it that way.
Yes I use meditation to widen my experience and free myself from a narrow uncomfortable place.
I think there are different motivations for meditation but mine is for relief. 👍
100% yes to a meditation retreat for ADHDers. Now, if I could convince my 14yr old daughter who also has ADHD to join me -- that would be a hell of a coup.
Oh boy do I LOVE this meditation! You have given me full permission to do what has already been part of my practice --moving back and forth through sensory experiences while I sit. Although I do not have ADHD, I've often felt dismayed that I have such trouble sticking with one home base throughout a meditation. I swing from noticing my breath, to feeling my fingers tingle, to a thought, then back to my breath, and so on. How did this meditation make me feel? Buoyant! I'm all smiles!
🌊 ride the wave!!!
A retreat for ADHD meditators is a great idea. Loved today's meditation.
Wow. What a great idea for sure
Retreat for ADHD meditators. Woohoo!!
Loved this meditation, Jeff. Why? Because, well, did you know it would take you 19 minutes to fall from the North Pole to the earth’s core? Wait, what?
🤣
I'm tutoring a twelve year old home schooler who has a diagnosis of ADHD. These posts are helping me "get" him. When he's focused, he's very, very focused, sometimes for as long as three hours. But other times, when he's not as engaged, or he's between projects, he is so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he can't explain to me what he wants or needs. I'm tutoring him in studio art, so we are doing things and making things. He wanted to make a spin art device: a board that was attached to an electric drill, with paint on it. When you turn on the drill, the paint spreads in interesting ways. We finally got that to happen, but it took a long time because he couldn't explain what he wanted to achieve, in part because he was thinking so hard about it, and also looking around the house for the supplies he needed while muttering, not quite out loud, about what he wanted.
As an old person my mind does not move nearly as fast as his does and it's hard for me to keep up!
One problem is that he believes it's a handicap and apologizes for it a lot, even when he's not doing anything unusual really.
As a learning specialist who has worked with many children and young adults with ADD / ADHD, I am very familiar with these kids expressing a sense of inadequacy and feeling the need to apologize for how their brains work. Spending six hours a day in a traditional academic setting (and sometimes even homeschooling) where self-discipline and focus is expected is excruciating for these kids, so its great that he has a creative outlet by meeting with you.
Since every child is unique, it's really difficult to make suggestions about what might make things easier for you when you are meeting with him. Nonetheless, I'll give it a go, realizing that you may already be doing all of this.
You might try to separate the stages of making things by writing very brief bullet lists on a white board, and limiting the number of choices through questioning. The white board makes things easier, because kids can SEE information rather than trying to hold it all in their heads while it is whirling around. An art project can be motivated by a desire to use particular tools, materials, or wanting to make a particular thing. So for materials, you might start by writing the word 'materials' and listing 3 choices to work with (more than 3 choices is likely to be overwhelming). Then you could move to 'tools' -- what will we need to make this thing? and list 3 choices. The choice of materials and tools can sometimes be what leads to making a particular thing. If you start with the 'what do you want to make' the number of options can be totally daunting (as you've already experienced). So you might ask questions -- are there lots of colors? does it move? is it something flat?
I hope some of this is helpful for you and your student -- and thank you for doing this work with him!
Shannon and Tamar I appreciate this exchange. Both of you sound like great educators, wish I had someone like you when I was a little ADHD
kiddo. I was thinking about how I could actually use some of them myself or do a version of with my eldest, who is neurospicy of some kind. I like reading books about all this and listening to neurodiversity podcasts; a lot of it ends up being about different learning strategies for different kinds of brains. I feel like we’re living in an explosion of developmental insights. Of course, as we move away from a one size fits an all curriculum you get into a new set of challenges around how to deliver to all that diversity. That’s why I think a lot of of it needs to be peer driven, and also driven by a core curriculum of learning about ourselves from a very young age and how to find customizable practises to help us regulate and grow and learn in our own idiosyncratic ways
Jeff -- At this point, there is an enormous body of research documenting how diverse the neurodiverse population is, as well as providing excellent insights into strategies for individualizing both instruction and curriculum. But of course, since you have lived experience of these struggles, and you are also parenting a child who is neurospicy (I love that term! thank you for it) you bring a different perspective to all of this. In the classroom (or in 1:1 situations), what makes a huge difference is the training of the teachers. Combining research based strategies with an ocean of empathy and understanding are critical.
By the way, you might want to take a look at the work of MaryDee Sklar. I took a workshop with her many years ago and immediately found her approach made more sense than most others I had been taught in grad school. She focuses on showing kids what is happening, not just talking at them with endless instructions. She developed a book / program called 'Seeing What I Need to Do" to help adults and adolescents understand what it means to have executive functioning challenges and how to work with them. I know that many of her strategies can be simplified to work with younger children as well and I can help you with that. I'd also be happy to have a longer conversation with you-- I'd like to learn more about your experiences parenting a neurospicy kid, and can share things I've learned after 30 + years as a learning specialist (now semi-retired).
ISBN# 978-0-9826059-1-2
Seeing What I Need to Do: Instructor's Manual
Marydee Sklar
Publication Date: 2010
Let’s do it!
Sure! But I don't know how we figure this out since I'm not going to share contact info on a public feed. Maybe DM me on insta as a start? @tamarzinn
A unique and playful meditation! ❤️
A mindfulness retreat for ADHDers? Sounds fabulous. You are spot on describing the (my) ADHD brain while attempting meditation. In fact, it’s like you were in my head yesterday, writing the exact words I was thinking while trying to meditate to another guided meditation while using the Calm app. Swiiiinging way out and back in my head while attempting to stay at home base. Yes, I’d be all over that endeavor of yours. Keep us posted. 😊
Suzanne, you’re in!