If you can't picture things
Some people have no picture in their mind's eye at all. It's called aphantasia. A lot of guided meditation is built on "imagine a beach" or "picture a warm light". If that has never worked for you, this is why.
What this site does instead
- Every practice uses what is actually here: the floor, your hands, sounds, your breath.
- Steps say "notice", never "imagine" or "picture".
- Every practice is labelled Picturing: none needed.
Good places to start
- Five things: name what you can see, feel and hear.
- Hands: warmth and pressure, nothing else.
- The Mandala: the picture is on the screen, so you don't have to make one.
More about aphantasia
- Zeman, Dewar and Della Sala (2015), Lives without imagery: congenital aphantasia, Cortex. The paper that named it.
- aphantasia.com: a community and information site.