Coaching practices for Meditation and Unconscious
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Meditation and Unconscious, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I’ve got the breath thing down
- I never just let my mind off the leash and watch where it goes on its own
- The second I close my eyes to meditate I lose my grip on where I am and old frightening stuff comes rushing up out of the dark
- I keep trying to sit quietly and meditate when I’m actually keyed up, and it just doesn’t take
- I’ll surface from a meditation realizing I drifted off ten minutes ago and was completely gone the whole time
Practices that may help
- Choiceless awareness — resting without an object
Sit with attention open and receptive, letting whatever arises in experience be the meditation object — without choosing, pursuing, or rejecting any of it.
Open Monitoring Meditation, Made Practical - Practice observing where your mind wanders without redirecting it
Occasionally sit without a task and simply observe the thoughts and images that arise, treating them as creative raw material.
Boredom and Creativity: Why Your Best Ideas Need Idle Time - Use external anchors instead of closed-eye inward attention
Keep eyes open and soft-focused, or anchor on an external object, to reduce the risk of dissociation during practice.
Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, Made Practical - Rest-and-digest activation — understanding your baseline state
Learn to identify your current autonomic state before practicing, so you choose the right tool for where you actually are.
The Relaxation Body-Mind, Made Practical - Develop introspective metacognition
Train the ability to notice, in real time, when attention has wandered — before you’ve been distracted for a long time.
Shamatha: The Buddhist Practice of Calm Abiding - Drop from head-based thinking to open, embodied awareness
Shift location of identity from the chattering mind to the open space of the whole body.
Non-Dual Awareness, Made Practical - Allowing the "divine therapy" — psychological healing through practice
Expect that regular centering prayer surfaces buried emotional material, and allow it.
Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating - Working with sloth-and-torpor (thina-middha)
Dullness and sleepiness in meditation require energising antidotes, not more settling.
The Five Hindrances: Diagnosing and Working with Meditation Obstacles - Witnessing thoughts — observing without being them
Watch thoughts arise and pass without identifying with them — you are the awareness in which thoughts appear, not the thoughts themselves.
Open Monitoring Meditation, Made Practical - Open Monitoring Meditation, Made Practical
Open monitoring meditation (also called choiceless awareness or open presence) is the practice of resting in an expansive, receptive awareness without directing attention at any single object — observing whatever arises in experience without preferring or pursuing any of it. It complements focused-attention practices and is associated with different neural signatures in contemplative neuroscience. Direct outcome evidence is limited compared to focused-attention methods.
Related concerns
- Observer Awareness Meditation
Turn attention to the process of noting itself, observing who is doing the labeling and whether the "noter" is also a mental event.
Advanced noting — noting the act of noting itself
- Awareness Itself Meditation
Pause, drop the question "What am I aware of?" and simply notice that awareness is already on.
Glimpse practice: a 10-second recognition of aware space
- Bare Awareness Meditation
Pause, drop the question "What am I aware of?" and simply notice that awareness is already on.
- Concentration Before Open Awareness
Use focused attention to settle the mind first, then release the object and shift to open monitoring — this is the standard contemplative sequence.
Sequencing focused attention and open monitoring
- Default Mode Network Meditation
Mind wandering is the brain’s default activity when attention is not actively directed outward. Research by Jonathan Schooler and others shows it consumes roughly 47 % of waking hours, is associated with lower momentary happiness, but also serves planning, creativity, and self-reflection — making the goal regulation rather than elimination.
- Metacognitive Meditation
Train the ability to notice, in real time, when attention has wandered — before you’ve been distracted for a long time.
Develop introspective metacognition
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