How to make meditation ADHD-friendly
I'm teaching 100 people to meditate on 28th March. Sign up before it sells out.
Join me on the 28th March for an ADHD—friendly meditation workshop.
To get 20% off (for newsletter subscribers only) scroll to the bottom ⬇️
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For years my relationship with meditation looked like this:
Get excited about meditation
Meditate for a few days
Gradually lose interest
Stop (for weeks)
Berate myself
Repeat
Why was this happening?
Firstly, because the techniques I learned didn’t work.
But also because I didn’t understand the point of meditation. And when I didn’t see progress, I gave up.
Meditation is taught poorly to people with ADHD.
Almost every person I teach my ADHD-friendly meditation technique to says some variation of:
“Nobody has ever taught me to meditate in a way that actually works with my ADHD — but you’ve just done it. It was so much easier than I expected.”
Meditation is often taught with unhelpful instructions like:
Ignore your thoughts
Focus on your breath and ignore your thoughts
Just ignore your thoughts goddammit!
Erm….
…have you been inside my head lately?
I ain’t ignoring these thoughts at will.
So we often conclude, “I can’t meditate.”
I hate hearing those words.
Not because I don’t agree. Or that I think the person gave up too easily. But because the techniques let us down.
It’s not you. It’s them.
It’s like trying to ram our neurodivergent square peg into the round hole.
So what do we do?
We need an ADHD-friendly technique.
One that doesn’t ask us to ignore thoughts. One that doesn’t make the mind 10x busier. One we can stick to because we notice the benefits right away.
Here’s how:
Meditation is simpler than you think
It’s all about creating an object of attention.
The breath
A candle
Beads
These are objects of attention.
But there’s a problem. Focusing on these objects makes our mind even busier.
Take the breath for example:
When we focus on the breath passing in and out of the nostrils, we’re lost in deep thought in milliseconds.
What do we do instead?
We use a mantra.
A mantra is also an object of attention.
But, different from the other objects, the mantra is inside the mind. A mantra is just another thought.
The mantra stops the mind from running away into deeper darker thoughts. It stops us getting so distracted. In fact, it’s THE BEST way for an ADHD mind to experience calm.
Most meditation is HARD.
ADHD-friendly meditation is (almost) effortless:
We don’t try to ignore thoughts.
We let thoughts come and go. We notice them. Every time we get distracted by thoughts we gently guide our attention back to the mantra
We repeat daily.
Doing this is like compound interest — over time we notice huge changes in our ability to handle life.
Meditating daily will help you:
Handle life
Be less distracted
Less impulsive
Feel happy for no reason at all
Feel calm for no reason at all
Stop seeking stimulation so aggressively
Feel less frantic.
I LOVE teaching people with ADHD to meditate.
They begin all skeptical.
It’s never worked before so why will this be different?
But within 30 minutes they’re able to meditate in a way they’ve never done before.
They don’t get so distracted by thoughts.
They don’t feel so agitated.
They can actually meditate.
They’re confident that they can stick to it.
Which is why I’m teaching 100 people with ADHD to meditate on 28th March.
Will you join us?
To buy your tickets (and get a 20% discount for the next seven days) read below👇🏼
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The ADHD-friendly Meditation Workshop (virtual)
It’s a virtual workshop, on Zoom.
On Thursday 28th March from 18:30 to 20:30 UK.
You’ll learn a breathwork technique designed to calm you down in the face of extreme anxiety.
And my ADHD-friendly meditation technique that I’ve now taught to over 1500 people.
I’ll take you step-by-step through each technique. In a fun and engaging way.
Here’s what Carly had to say about my meditation training:
“I never stuck with a meditation technique before so I wasn’t sure this would work for me. But the technique Joseph teaches, alongside other ADHDers like me who want to meditate, is so powerful.” - Carly W
And, I’ll make you a promise:
If you’re not feeling calmer than you’ve ever felt after any meditation session before, I’ll give you all your money back. No questions asked.
Oh, and there’s more.
If you buy a ticket within the next seven days you’ll get 20% off the ticket price (for Drug Free ADHD newsletter subscribers only).
Click below to get 20% off:
I’m really glad you’re doing this! I’ve always thought that the whole refrain of “my brain is too busy for me to meditate” is kind of like saying “my skin is too dirty to shower.” It’s like, “that’s the point!” Once I stopped trying to stop my thoughts, meditation became easy — because I realized that for that 5-10-15-30 minutes, my only job, the one thing that I had to do — was just sit there. It’s such a relief! Hope the workshop goes well.
Will there be a recording of this available after? I can’t make that time but would like to learn this.