Momentum Monday: Follow Up Meditation

Sheila Lewis
Nov 5 · 2 min read

Last week’s Start-Up Meditation was meant to motivate you for the week. Follow up after the first burst of motivation is key. The secret sauce of extending and sustaining motivation is momentum. This is true whether you are practicing meditation or practicing piano.

If we keep our momentum strong, we are more likely to enter the state of heightened focus known as “flow,” a term defined by well-known psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

He defines flow as “concentration so intense there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant or to worry about problems…An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake.” (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, p. 71).

How can meditation increase momentum and lead to flow? Students and seekers are often taught that meditation is for stilling the mind and stopping active thinking. This is partially true. But it’s also for flow, which opens the floodgates of the mind and can stimulate imagination and creativity. If we put the two words together, “creative” and “flow,” don’t we reach a kind of altered state of consciousness that feels like meditation? Test this yourself.

Follow Up Meditation: Creative Flow

(Set a timer for as long as you like).

  1. Pick a problem you’d like to solve or an idea or project you’d like to tackle, like finishing a story or artwork you are creating.

2. Close your eyes and settle into a completely relaxed posture. Take several long, deep breaths from the belly up to the top of your head.

3. Drop down and feel yourself inhabit a space somewhere between your heart and your belly, a private, cozy corner of yourself.

4. Now drop down further, as far as you can go, until you feel you’ve hit the bottom. This bottom is the seat of your creative well. Its where you refresh your energy with nurturing waters. Momentum gathers.

5. Allow your mind to relax and feel present. Reside fully in this soul-quenching creative well. If thoughts come, let them think. Don’t effort at thinking them or controlling them.

6. When you come out of meditation, pick up your project or idea. See if the problem is still a problem or needs some tending. Go with the flow.

Enjoy a momentous Monday and a week of creative flow.

Sheila Lewis

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