Listen, I Can Meditate Too

You don't have to be Deaf to try this approach

The word 'meditation' often gets the superstar treatment, making us think of serene scenes straight out of a fancy yoga magazine.

Meditation often seemed like a mystical, almost secret club, seemingly exclusive to the hearing world.

Every time I've tried body scan meditations or anything with closed eyes and no guide, it's been like chewing on mental cardboard.

I do think being Deaf has created a barrier for me and I know meditation is foreign to some of you whether you’re in the Deaf club with me or not.

Sure, maybe if I put in the hours, it would register with me. But I’d like to enjoy it a little too. If I have to watch a YouTube video, even if it was in ASL, I feel clunky. Where’s this mystical flow state everybody’s talking about? I’m NOT having it when someone tells me “just watch a YouTube video.”

I’ve always felt like I already achieved a bit of meditation during some of my workouts.

It baffles me how people STILL view weight training as just 'ugh, exercise,' ignoring the myriad health benefits it offers from preventing sarcopenia and bone density and..and…but “look at those yogis and their retreats.”

So I continue to explore ways how I find weight training such a unique sensory experience for the mind and soul, in hopes to inspire humans get healthier and happier.

I just haven’t been able to put it in coaching material until now why I know how to achieve a meditative like experience with weights, albeit “being untraditional” or ditching the hearing way.

So. You wanna meditate? I got you.

In a recent session, I was instructing a client to feel the sensation of the kettlebell handle on her collarbone. (A common mishap is to hold kettlebells too far away from your body, making it harder to handle).

“Feel your thumb ON your collarbone as you rack the weight. Sweet. Now take a moment to close your eyes and root yourself to the ground.”

As I watched my client, eyes closed, embracing the moment, it hit me: This right here is BODY SCANNING, reimagined!

With nuanced movements — such as kneeling windmills and kettlebells — or something simply new to you, it’s helpful, sometimes peaceful, to scan your body.

This is how I find a slice of serenity in certain workouts.

Of course, it's a different story when I'm diving into the deep end, lifting heavy, and building resilience through reps. Every workout is a unique track of its own. We can squat, deadlift, push, pull and carry for years but workouts can be different.

Some days it’s just consistency. Sometimes it’s unleashing the beast. Sometimes it’s meditative.

We experience more than five senses

Not long ago, I picked up the book Joyful by Ingrid Fetell Lee by when I was dog sitting at a client’s house (it’s an unspoken addition to my personal trainer resume). I flipped to a random page that read:

“…Scientists do count somewhere between twelve and twenty-one. We have senses of time, equilibrium, and direction. We have internal senses, like stretch sensors that tell us when our bellies are full and proprioception, which tells us where our bodies are in space.” This “gives us a remarkably robust sense of the world.”

THIS.

Missing a primary sense doesn’t shrink our world.

I have discovered a different territory of sensations with lifting that stays novel and electrifying all these years, and I *believe* you can access it too, if you let yourself.

Ever since my first training session, I’ve noticed a trend: hearing people are, erm, sensitive to a tangle of noisy distractions.

There’s always SOUND. Background chatter. Passerby interruption. The craving for music (I’ve wrote about fitness without playlists). Eyes darting and heads twisting to follow any new sound.

I’ll be eternally grateful for clients who welcome the heightened eye contact with me, the will to tune out their surroundings so we both can be present together and bang out successful reps every time.

Even now, with virtual sessions, my hearing clients rarely use an interpreter* so we can eliminate even more background noise. If I have an interpreter on the call, I prepare them: “If I am not signing, do not add an voice over. I want them to watch and study my moves & facial expressions.”

In the past, the interpreters have felt compelled to fill in the silence and proceed to provide an explanation.

By having you observe without noise, chances are you’ll be able to tap into that aforementioned proprioception better without an extensive verbal narrative playing interference.

Embrace the silence and you might just 'hEaR' what else is happening. 😉

(*mini note: this is not to say there’s no place for interpreters - we use them for first time meetings, habit coaching calls, etc, and I certainly would adapt if someone had limited vision.)

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All of this is to say: Be curious about fresh ways to experience weightlifting, especially with a Deaf-friendly approach.

You asked, I answered: “How else can we meditate when we don’t or can’t follow a guided meditation?”

Body scanning with movement opens up a new sensory experience and maybe, you’ll find a new avenue to meditation.

Opportunity of a new sensation waits in every point of contact you have with the ground, with the weight, and where your body is in space. For example:

• Feeling the toe and heels rooted to the ground (or earth).

• Imagine cracking electricity surging from toes through knees through butt to help you push press weight with power.

• Soaking in the weight gravitating towards the ground, then notice how lit up your core is when you hold it up against gravity.

• Gripping the floor with such fervor as you imagine a coat of armor hugging you head and toe, and push yourself up through the air beautifully

You can body scan during lifts to be meditative, or even to improve your form.

I adore this approach when I’m mastering new movement like archer push-ups, kettlebells or when I just want to check in with myself and breathe.

You have force radiating from you when you lift (literally - how else do you get your muscles to contract and lift?).

So, what if you turned down the volume and scanned your movements, feeling the power radiating from every grip and lift you execute?

What if you 'turned down the volume' and reveled in the ‘amplified’ sensation, ‘tuning’ in the energy you bring to every lift, and did it all without sound?