Moving Meditation

Moving your awareness, managing your attention

At the grand old age of 25 whenever my  teacher would bring up a short 10 min meditation practise at the end of yoga class (TEN WHOLE MINUTES) I would get all fidgety, uncomfortable, close and open my eyes, roll my eyes, bang my knee up and down and wonder - when will this be over!  We are talking here  10minutes! And I just couldn't take it. Yoga meditation used to be something  I really disliked. 

I couldn't take 10 minutes of being with myself and looking inside. I couldn't calm down enough to have 10 minutes of focusing on achieving nothing but awareness of my breath. My mind was sooooo all over the place. Attached to every single bit of the reality I felt I have a firm grasp on. So firm in fact I could not let it go for 10 little minutes. My mind was so attached it could not look at itself for 10 minutes. I had no focus, no concentration. And I had a lot of things inside me that I was not prepared to look at in a compassionate, loving, calm way owning every single bit of who I was at that moment or what had happened to me in the past. I was ready to jump and get on with what I had been doing for a good part of my life - run!  Run away from myself, from my past, from my pain, my shame, my desires anything that caused my mind to be anxious and my body to jump up and down. I was hellbent on distracting myself with a number of things - ambition, boys, activities, art, duties. Anything but observing the inside ...all of the inside. As you might guess my yoga journey or the journey of life made me face ALL OF IT -  the pain, the fear, the desire, the shame, the guilt, the past, the present and my future...all that Aristotel will tell you is at the heart of being human. All that yoga and Buddhist meditation will tell you -  you need to befriend before you can release its hold on you and move into a more aware, blissful and enlightened state of being where you can not only experience bliss but actually tolerate it and remain in bliss for longer periods of time as well as let go of the suffering without clinging like a maniac to past or future. 

Finding your center 

We are constantly reconnecting to our center. To do that we need the ground. And from this supported position we can reach out into space. People have different ways of reconnecting to center. Sitting down to have a cup of coffee is meditation. 

It is dynamic continuous re-hearing of your connection to center and seeking nourishment through the effortless movement in space.  When we practise yoga and enjoy the Melt Method fascia treatments we are constantly reorienting our attention to notice how we feel. We are coming back into the body, quieting down the obsessive nature of the mind and sensing.. Learning to direct and move our attention is an invaluable skill in movement practise and healing modalities. Let me help you undo tensions to awaken the skills to reconnect with your body, sensory integrate and empower. 

Find ground to move

I've worked with adults and children in helping them deal with issues of attention, coordination and core stability through movement with awareness. And it always ends up being about the breath. Our ability to notice, allow and come back to our natural breath. Breath exercises in yoga are called pranayama but working with your natural breath is key to evolving your movement and attention skills. 

Practising resting your awareness on body parts and the breath moving those body parts and moving your awareness from one part to another is a basic life skill that can help improve mental wellbeing but also is indispensable in shifting any postural and gate patterns. Awareness training is vital to the success of any movement and performance practise. Yoga and the Melt Method are somatic based practises that realy on your ability to use awareness. 



With great gratitude for my yoga teachers and in terms of meditation for my Buddhist  meditation teachers I will now share what I have learned and facilitate for others the  wonderful tools of meditation to the best of my ability.  

Learn to get grounded in the body through yoga and caring for your friends and family. But at a certain moment you will need to gain access to that most intimate space - your mind and what lies beyond it. Peacefulness and contentment. Ability to act with the laws of nature.


There are three types of meditation that I have explored from my travels in the East


There is also moving meditations that comes through the exploration of our embodied awareness of anatomy, visualizations and qualities of movement that I have studied through various somatic artist and practioners in the West. Working with attention and shifts in awareness is a deeply enriching practise with huge potention for embodiment and shifting and transforming habits of movement.  I am expremely greatful to all the somatic artists and dancers I have worked with in the past 7 years. 


Some meditation techniques available to us through the teachings of yoga, tantra and Buddhist masters:

Yoga nidra is more properly a relaxation sequence with deep healing properties. It can be used as a pre-meditaiton exercise for a number of months to help you prepare for a more rigorous meditation experience.  


The beautiful forest wat in Thailand where I did my second vipassana. A place of happiness. The abbot there said you cannot meditate if you are not happy. That is true. We have mindfulness practises. But true meditation is a state of mind that arises when we are happy. You have to be evolved to tolerate happiness. Many people descend into guilt trips and anxiety and are unable to receive it. Meditation techniques help us clear the nervous system and body so we can receive and be ready for happiness/meditation when it arises, so we can enter and enjoy it, come out and reenter. 

Meditation is like a spa treatment. It starts with the mind but the benefits are tangible and physical as well as emotional and mental. 


photos on page © Camelia Shakti