If someone has ever told you to sit still,
Close your eyes,
Focus on your breath and just be present,
And your response was somewhere between laughter and despair,
This one is for you.
Meditation has a bit of a branding problem when it comes to ADHD.
The image most people have of it silent,
Still,
Eyes closed,
Focused,
Is perfectly designed to be the most difficult possible experience for many people with ADHD.
So,
Many try it once,
Conclude that meditation is simply not for them,
And never try again.
I want to offer a different starting point.
And I want to say up front.
ADHD doesn't manifest the same way for everyone who experiences it.
Every person who lives with it has a different relationship with attention moment sensation and focus.
What I am sharing here is one entry point,
Not a prescription or anything that insinuates one size fits all.
Take what resonates,
Leave what doesn't.
But when it comes to my personal experience,
What I have noticed working alongside people with ADHD is that the traditional meditation format tends to ask too much too soon.
No warm up.
No adaptation.
Just sit still and be quiet.
For many of the people I work with.
That turns out to be the wrong starting place.
Some approaches that have helped the people I work with and your experience may be completely different again.
Involve starting shorter rather than longer.
2-3 minutes of focused presence can offer more than 20 minutes of fighting your own attention.
It is not a lesser version.
It is often the better one.
Also,
For many people,
Sensory anchors work better than abstract focal points.
The brain gets something real and immediate to hold on to.
Maybe the feeling of feet on the floor,
The texture of something in your hand.
The sounds in the room.
Rather than a concept or an instruction.
And For some people,
Movement helps.
A walk taken with full attention to each step can serve as meditation.
Stretching while paying attention to bodily sensation can too.
The body becomes an anchor rather than something to manage.
Let me offer one practice that draws on a few of these ideas.
Try it and see how it sits with you.
So what we're going to do is we're going to tap our fingers.
Tap your fingers together gently,
One finger at a time.
Index finger.
Middle finger,
Ring finger.
Inky,
And back.
Moving slowly.
Noticing the sensation of each contact.
We are just tapping.
Now add the breath.
Tap one finger as you breathe in.
And another as you breathe out.
Give the mind two simple things to follow at the same time.
Out.
Again.
Out.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
If your attention wandered,
That is fine.
Come back later.
The way you might pick up something you dropped.
Out.
In out.
In.
Out.
That is one version of this.
Short,
Sensory,
And forgiving.
It works well for some people and may not be the right fit for others.
The only way to find out is to try a few different approaches and notice what your own nervous system responds to.
Your brain is not an obstacle to this practice.
It may just need a different doring.
