The autistic's meditation practice starter guide

Meditation is one of the most powerful tools autistic women have to build awareness, intuition, and self-sovereignty. Five minutes is all you need.
The autistic's meditation practice starter guide
Photo by Hans Vivek / Unsplash

The autistic's meditation practice starter guide to build your intuition

For as long as people have peopled, meditation has been an invaluable tool for mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. It works wonders for autistic people’s specific needs too, but don’t tell that to the neurotypicals. Whether you’re a 9-to-5er, unemployed, or a digital nomad, a meditation practice can be adapted and customized to suit just about any lifestyle.

I don’t claim to be an expert meditator, but I have built a practice for myself that allows me to journey in grace, be less critical of myself and others, and appreciate the best and worst of life just a little bit more.

But more than anything else, it’s also helped me build my intuition and trust my instincts. If you want to learn how, I have a few short, practical tips for you, plus some recommended courses and resources if you’re really fired up.

But first, let’s go over the basics: what do you stand to gain from learning how to meditate?

Benefits of meditation

Meditation brings plenty of positives to your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual life:

  • You’ll feel more relaxed, no matter how stressful your life is. For everyday anxiety, meditation lowers cortisol levels and provides a quick fix to return to baseline.
  • It helps regulate your emotions. Sitting down to meditate with minimal distractions means you can slow down enough to identify and process emotions in the safety of your own mind. It also helps you practice an internal locus of control — that is, you are capable to managing your emotions without the help of an external source.
  • Practicing regularly enhances your attention span and reduces mental clutter. (If you’re as chained to your phone as I am, this is crucial.)
  • Meditation improves sleep quality by helping to calm the mind.
  • It encourages self-awareness and introspection, which can lead to a greater understanding of your own needs and boundaries. Many of us who were put through ABA or similar training as kids could use some help re-learning who we are and what makes us tick.
  • Some meditation techniques can give you greater access to joy and gratitude, teaching you how to better appreciate both positive and negative experiences in life.
  • Finally, it enhances your intuition, which you could call subconscious self-awareness. We unconsciously process information all day every day. Intuition is how we train and learn to trust those subterranean gut instincts that get us out of trouble, before we even know what the trouble was.

There’s more than one way to meditate!

When you hear the word “meditation,” what image comes to mind? If it’s an old man in robes standing on a rock in perfect silence for hours, and you’re about as far from the stereotype as a person can get, I wouldn’t blame you for ignoring the practice until now.

I’m a firm believer that an autist who’s tried meditation once and hated it, probably hasn’t tried the right one yet. Some evidence even suggests that autistic people have naturally easier ability to benefit from my favorite meditation technique than neurotypicals:

Achieving a flow state through movement-based meditation

Maybe you’ve heard of the flow state. Most think pieces and blog posts call it the “zone,” describing a tool to be more productive at work or encourage your employees to work harder. I believe the phenomenon of flow exists for a more embodied reason; it’s an essential part of the creative process, and the creative process is how we deeply connect to the world around us.

In and of itself, flow is a type of movement meditation brought on by a full concentration, to the point where we lose grip on time and focus only on what’s in front of us. You’re fully absorbed in the moment, just you and your tools, creating an almost out-of-body experience. This can be done through actually moving your whole body, such as in dance or martial arts, or by using your body to create something, like visual art or music.

Martial arts as a meditation practice

Quick story: Back in 2023 my therapist recommended that I get in touch with my repressed anger with a punching bag. Easy enough. I bought one and punched it for few days, before ultimately realizing I had a deep urge to punch people instead. A few days later I joined Northwest Fighting Arts, a martial arts studio in Portland, so I could punch people, and also learn escrima, the art of beating people up with a stick. (My therapist was right about those anger issues.)

Right off the bat I got distracted, spending a year and a half completing three ranks in Muay Thai kickboxing before I remembered stick fighting was still on the table.

And that’s because training can be extremely meditative. Getting hyperfocused on, say, learning how to perform a decent switch kick — not even perfect, just “pretty good” — takes no less than 10,000 repetitions of the same kick consistently. At first I only came in when I was stressed or angry, but eventually I ended up coming in daily to “leave it at the door,” dropping every thought in my head to focus on whatever I showed up to do (or whoever I showed up to punch.)

For people who aren’t sadomasochists, NWFA also has a Tai Chi academy, where the focus is entirely on honing the body, mind, and spirit in tandem with one another without getting any black eyes.

Art as meditation

Not into moving your whole body? You can still practice movement meditation. There’s a reason so many art therapists end up working with a ton of autistic clients; there’s evidence to suggest that monotropic minds are naturally attuned to better access flow states. Ryan Boren over at Stimpunks has suggested that our propensity towards special interests and attention tunnels makes us naturally attuned to slip into flow states.

It doesn’t matter what type of art you’re making, so long as you allow yourself the time and space to let yourself get completely absorbed in the process. Art as meditation helps you to trust your body and mind, build confidence and expertise, and let go of pent-up stress, all in a single activity.

Psychologist Joanne Domash notes that when creating art, the sense of flow “facilitates freedom from self-judgment, allowing for novel associations and expansion of the imagination.” You can see this happening in brain scans of jazz performers while improvising their craft; the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, responsible for self-censorship and inhibition, completely shuts down, allowing the medial prefrontal cortex, in charge of empathy, attuned communication and intuition, to take center stage (Domash, 2020, p. 22)

Okay, I’ve infodumped enough! Here a few additional ways to meditate I think suit autistic needs and proclivities really well.

Mindfulness meditation

Mindfulness meditation is about as close to the “old man on rock” thing as you can get. It involves focusing on the present moment, anchoring your attention to the breath. This practices allows for more non-judgmental awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and the sensations of your body.

If you can sit down in silence or with some chill, calm music and breathe for five minutes, you’re doing excellent. Again, I’m no expert, but I’ve been committing to a minimum of five minutes a day for a couple of years. It helps me reset when dealing with task paralysis or demand avoidance issues.

Guided meditation

These are recordings where practitioners walk you through a full meditation session, usually with a specific topic or issue in mind. Guided meditations are free and easily accessible online, so they’re a great starting point for people brand-new to the practice. I like to use guided meditations when I’m stuck ruminating on a specific issue.

Of course you can peruse YouTube for guided meditations by practitioners from just about any demographic and background. Thanks to their accessibility, though, the quality of meditations can sometimes be iffy. If you need a place to start, try Lavendaire; her calm and mellow personality has earned her millions of subscribers, myself included!

I mostly use Insight Timer to find specialized meditations. The app can be a little finicky, but I really their variety. Each practitioner brings their own unique flair to it.

Body scanning

Body scan meditations encourage awareness of the physical sensations in your body by mentally scanning yourself from head to toe. It’s a great grounding exercise — if you’re prone to dissociation or feel like you’re going through the motions, this might become your go-to.

You can do a body scan meditation pretty much anywhere (provided you’re stationary!) Give yourself 5-10 minutes to focus on every area of your body, and get really granular with it, right down to the toes or kneecaps.

Mantra meditation

There’s a meditation technique for every bodily sense; mantras are best suited for those who like auditory stimulation. It involves repeating a soothing word or sound to help focus the mind. You may have seen videos of monks letting out a guttural “om” — one of the most common one-sound mantras.

The professor of my tai chi academy, Jeff Patterson, published a condensed version of his self-development practices, including mantra meditations, in The Yielding Warrior. I have to admit this is the technique I’m least familiar with, but I’m warming up to it the more I read.

Growing up as a Black girl in the midwestern US, I’ve grown to believe that humming and singing is its own kind of mantra meditation, one that can be done in isolation or together with a community. In My Grandmother’s Hands, Resmaa Menakem offers humming breathwork practices as a method to fully experience repressed emotions and feel a deeper sense of belonging.

Sensory meditation

Most of us are hypersensitive in some way. Sensory meditations incorporate soothing sensory inputs, like holding a soft object, listening to gentle sounds, or focusing on a pleasant aroma.

Candles are excellent tools for sensory meditation. A lit candle is warm, pretty to look at, smells great, and produces a pleasant flickering sound in the silence, so you have plenty to work with.

You know I’m a tarot girly. When reflecting on a big issue or project I like to choose a card that corresponds to the issue at hand, from the deck that feels most intuitively aligned. Then, I’ll meditate on just the one card, considering whatever lessons I can pull from it. I examine the story being told through the artwork. If it’s associated with any archetypes, myths, or legends, I reflect on those as well. And of course, the art itself; how does it make me feel? What feeling do the colors convey? What symbols are obvious to me, and which ones were harder to spot?

The tarot is an excellent tool for building your intuition and discovering what matters to you, specifically. Using a single card as a guided meditation into your own psyche does just that!

Five tips to start and maintain a meditation practice

Hopefully a few of those meditation styles resonate with you. I have a lot more to say about each individual technique, so if you have a burning question about a particular one, let me know.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a few tips for absolute beginners to meditation:

  1. Start small. Try out super short sessions of 1-5 minutes. As you build confidence and get more comfortable, you can increase the duration. If you need a goal, maybe aim to meditate a few times a day for just 5 minutes.
  2. Choose sensory-friendly environments to practice in. Most of us won’t have the means for a dedicated meditation room, but maybe find yourself a special pillow (if you meditate seated) and a nice box for your favorite meditation tools. Treat your meditation time with a little extra reverence and make it as enjoyable to start as possible.
  3. Use apps for guided meditations tailored for NDs. The Soft App is a meditation app designed by autists, for autists, and I am in love with it. There are probably others out there but I hope you’ll give it a try!
  4. Experiment with different styles to find what feels most comfortable to you. Everybody’s needs and limits are different. You might not vibe with mantras 90% of the time, but flock to them when you’re stressed. A little trial and error will help you build enough familiarity with meditation to be able to treat each technique as a valuable tool in your intuitive toolbox.
  5. Incorporate special interests or your favorite sensory tools into your practice. Again, this practice is yours and yours alone. If you want to meditate on your OC or hum the tune you made for your Animal Crossing island, chase your bliss.

Meditation is incredibly flexible and can be a uniquely empowering tool for autists of all ages. I hope you’ll take some time to explore and build a practice that feeds your soul. And please, try not to feel pressured about doing it “right” — I promise you, you already are. Approach meditation with patience and self-compassion, and watch your intuition bloom.

If you end up experimenting with these meditation styles, I’d love to hear what you come up and what’s working best for you!

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