If you’re looking at practice as the time you have to blandly sacrifice so that you can be a Chill Meditator Person with a more persistently neutral facial expression, you’re already losing. That’s engaging in the kind of self-aggression that gets in the way of being alive—precisely the problem that meditation is supposed to address, rather than exaggerate. Meditation shouldn’t be a venue for staging another fight between you and how you’re supposed to be.
The quality that you’re looking for in most meditation is, I think, best described as collectedness. You can think of this as the opposite of being scattered.
If you make the wholehearted attempt to be thoroughly alive to your experience for one full breath, and you curiously investigate what this does for you, that’s much better than 20 minutes of grindy, homework-y practice that you’re not really there for.
For example, it’s hard to remain collected when you don’t enjoy what you’re doing.
Get into the habit of asking, “what’s my experience like right now,”. Especially do this during moments you find enjoyable.
A mantra, silently repeated as you breathe out (can be any phrase in any language, whatever you find resonant)
Similarly, if you’re really dreamy by default, there’s a more mentally intense way to meditate: standing up. Sometimes, I do standing meditation if I want to contact emotions that I’m tempted to suppress by cocooning myself in dreamy coziness.
Also, moving is a posture. Some of my most powerful practice has been walking. Corey Hess, a teacher I have a high opinion of, recommends spontaneous movement—just letting your body do what it wants to, while keeping a state of full-body awareness—as a meditative practice, and I’ve found it fascinating at times.
pretend the music is rain, and you are a puddle