Is Meditation Too Woo-Woo For You? Try These 3 Simple Practices Instead

Enjoy the life-changing benefits of increased awareness without hours of knee pain, restlessness or boredom while sitting cross-legged with closed eyes 

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I am what you might call me a spiritual late bloomer. I wasn’t always a meditator; I was a more of a thinker. The touchy-feely stuff was never really up my alley. 

Many years ago, as I prepared to let go of my marriage and all sense of where I might be headed in life, I remember sheepishly asking an ordained Buddhist nun if she would teach me to meditate. I bought a cushion and launched myself into my new practice with some devotion. I read a lot of Buddhist philosophy and I gave my thinking brain plenty to go through complex visualized meditations. 

But something in me resisted being completely open to what felt like the scarier, ‘woo-woo’ part of meditation, the part where I would actually let go of controlling my experience with my rational brain.

When I eventually worked up the courage to take the plunge with a , I understood what I’d been missing. I stepped through a door that I didn’t know was there and made friends with a part of myself I’d been keeping prisoner for a