By Sister Lindsay

If you’ve taken our Wicca 101 course or read anything on the internet about meditation, you might have some ideas about what meditation is. Those ideas probably go along the lines of A). you sit still and try not to think thoughts or B). the use of guided visualization.

But those are only two forms of meditation. There is a whole world of meditation types to fit your particular needs.

Let’s take a deeper dive into how meditation works and how it helps the witch

The benefits of meditation are widely written about. With benefits like stress reduction, improving work concentration, and supporting overall wellness and healing, meditation has been a hot topic for a while. But meditation is also the basis of many metaphysical practices and can increase your ability to develop your magick and psychic-intuitive abilities.

Whether you realize it or not, I think you know how to meditate.

Throughout any given day, you shift your focus and levels of consciousness. One minute you might be daydreaming; the next, you are plotting and planning for a future event. Right there, you probably shifted your awareness from beta to alpha brainwave frequencies. Those shifts in awareness to different levels of thought and consciousness is exactly what meditation trains us to do.

You don’t have to be discouraged if one form of meditation doesn’t work easily for you. All that matters, in the end, is your ability to shift consciousness and the quality of your meditative experience. Especially for those who might be neurodivergent, using different forms of meditation might be the key to making the whole experience click. I tend to think that the forms of meditation that work best for a given person also have to do with their psychic-intuitive gifts.

Mandala or grid gazing Wall gazing Guided visualization (for those who can create and hold mental images)

Binaural beats and frequency meditations, including sound baths or singing bowls Drumming meditations ASMR sounds like crowd, nature, or traffic noises Frequency noises: white, brown, blue, pink noise. Chanting, humming, or throat singing

Walking meditation Rocking Fidget spinners or even rattles Doodling Any repetitive movement (even washing the dishes)

The list could go on and on, and googling forms of meditation isn’t a bad idea to help spark some ideas that can help you personalize your practice.

Because meditation is a foundational building block in magickal and metaphysical practices, it really shouldn’t be an activity done just to check off your list. It would be best if you took the time to experiment with it to find some techniques to grow comfortably into mastery.

Your first benchmark in your meditation experiment should be figuring out what gets you to a state I like to call “base receptivity”. For me, base receptivity is similar (if not the same) to getting both grounded (connecting your energies to Earth) and centered (bringing your energy/attention back to the present moment inside your body).

Here are some different qualities of the base receptive state I look for in my own practice: • It’s a state of awareness where I can assess my own energies, do any healing from, see how I am feeling on a deeper level, and the place from which I begin any other workings once I’ve gotten myself centered and grounded fully and deeply. • It has a similar dreamy quality to an active daydream for me, where I can slowly direct my attention to different thoughts and tasks, but I am acting from a place of greater energetic coherence or alignment than just my daily mind thinking in alpha brain waves. • By this point, my body is going to be calm, and relaxed, my heart beat slowed, my breathing a little more shallow and even, and I have a mild sense of detachment from the outer body.

Once you can consistently get to a similar state for yourself, you will have a strong foundation for further exploration for things like regressions, astral travel, energetic clearing, healing, channeling, spellwork, protection and wards, working with your guides, and a whole host of exciting metaphysical experiences.

Discovering your unique meditation process shouldn’t be a stressful thing. It should feel like coming back home to your soul. As you begin to gain small successes with getting to base receptivity, it will feel better and better. Once you’ve gotten to the point where base receptivity has become an easily achievable activity, you can experiment with different forms of meditation. Once you have some idea of what state you should be aiming for, getting there from any other form of meditation becomes that much easier.

How will you begin your great meditation experiment today?