Floating Meditation Tip #1 – See Noise as growth
When you’re in the pool trying to meditate and the kids are crying in the kiddy pool or the old guys are shouting at each other about politics in the hot tub, it can be hard to stay focused on your practice. Instead of getting annoyed and feeling disgruntled, see these noisy distractions as opportunities for growth. When a sound disturbs you, just label it noise and come back to your practice. Your daily life is filled with distractions so the more you’re able to refocus back on your practice despite distractions, the better you’ll be at refocusing on what matters to you in the rest of your life. What noise is always distracting you while you’re trying to focus in the pool?
Floating Meditation Tip #2 – Practice all the strokes
When you meditate do you have a go-to technique that you always use? While consistency has its value, so does variety. Just like its good to go through all the strokes as a lap swimmer, it’s good to change things up in a meditation practice too. What element of your practice can you change a little? Maybe where you practice, when you practice, trying a new meditation position or style. Leave a comment on how you’re going to add some variety to your practice.
Floating Meditation Tip #3 – What’s holding your swimsuit together?
Most of us wear stretchy synthetic swimsuits held together with thread in the pool. The thread is literally keeping the suit together. Our practice is the same since it’s held together by the threads of the yoga sutras. Pick a sutra this week and incorporate it into your meditation practice. Report back at the end of the week. Did your suit stay on or get all stretchy?
Tip #4 – Run the pool vacuum
Just like the pool needs maintenance, so does your meditation gear. Since most of us are in the depths of winter, do an indoor practice this week. Give your mat a scrub, wash your pillows, give the shrine a dusting and polish up your mala beads. Whatever gear you use, give it a good cleaning this week so you’re ready for the better weather ahead.
Tip #5 – Just keep swimming
Have you ever hit the wall in your meditation practice? That place where you’re uninspired in your practice? You’re not seeing any benefits, it’s just a struggle and a waste of time? Yes, it’s normal and happens to everyone. You’re not a bad meditator and it’s not a reason to quit practicing. It’s more like a slump that an athlete would experience or writer’s block. It’s just going to happen. So, what do you do about it? Nothing, you just keep practicing. Be like Dory. Just keep swimming.
Floating Meditation Tip #6 – Fish have shiny scales for a reason
Just like shiny scales make a fish hard for predators to catch and increase its survival rate, scaling during a meditation practice can keep you from getting triggered and help you survive mediation. Sometimes a thought or prompt during a meditation practice can send you over the proverbial edge and down the rabbit hole of PTSD, mental health reactivity, or just a really bad place.
The concept of scaling can keep you in your meditation and in a place of safety because it’s a tactical retreat. If you think of your meditation as a long ocean journey, you had to prep for it, you launched from somewhere and you probably have resupply stops along the way. Scaling in a meditation is returning to that last successful stop if you start to struggle.
So if you started at point A, and your destination was point Z, but somewhere around M you started to have trouble, just dial it back to point L, or J or even A, wherever your last successful place was, and continue the meditation from there.
#7 – Are you causing the Mutiny on the Bounty?
How would you describe your internal dialogue during a meditation session? Do you have a running banter of negativity –
I’m finally going to get better at meditation this time?
Why can’t I stay focused?
I should have bought the app.
I’m distracted.
My brain is a mess. You get the idea. Your thoughts turn to negative labeling of yourself or disempowering yourself by reaching outside yourself. Can you talk to yourself like someone you’ve just met who’s having a hard time? In a way that keeps you focused on your strengths and good qualities? When something negative about yourself intrudes, turn it around to be kind. I’m so glad I get to practice today, I am enough. With time and practice, it gets easier, just like all aspects of meditation.
Want help learning Pool Meditation?
Enroll in the Pool Meditation Mini-Course. It’s an easy, affordable way to get help applying these prompts and learning how to meditate in the pool. The whole point is to relax and distress and this course will deliver that for you immediately. You get videos on moving meditation and restorative aqua yoga. Three downloadable guided audio meditations. Plus a course workbook for tracking your practice, getting more resources, and help in choosing which position is best for you.
Want more Floating Meditation Tips?
These floating meditation tips originally appeared in my free Mindful Aquatics Facebook group. If you’re interested in practicing aquatics and mindfulness or meditation together, join us.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/MindfulAquatics/
Related to Floating Meditation
If you need some help on what positions to use for a floating meditation, check out my free Water Yoga Pose Tutorials.
And if you need more information on Aqua Yoga, read The Best Resource for Water Yoga.
Indeed, instead of getting annoyed and feeling disgruntled, seeing the noisy distractions as chances are good. In my case, I move with the flow of water, the noise feels all-natural. Thanks for the wonderful tips.
Thank you, Leona. I’m glad you enjoy floating meditation as well.
An excellent and well-written article on meditation, Christa Fairbrother. When I use meditative techniques the noise reduction is significant and the class becomes very quiet and focused!
Thank you Bonnie! It’s amazing in an aquatic environment how beautiful it is when it’s quiet, we just don’t prioritize it very often.