Discovering a Living Relationship with Inner Experience
Meditation is often introduced through sitting quietly, attending to breathing, and recognizing thoughts as they arise.
These practices can introduce valuable opportunities for developing awareness.
Yet meditation can also become part of how we experience movement, rest, emotions, relationships, and the changing circumstances of everyday life.
We may become aware of unnecessary muscular holding while resting.
We may recognize a feeling before attaching a story to it.
We may notice an impulse to respond to another person’s behaviour and discover that we have a choice about what to do next.
These familiar experiences provide opportunities for meditation through lived experience.
The Inside Awareness approach draws upon contemplative meditation, Awareness Through Movement®, sensory inquiry, personal values, and the ongoing exploration of inner and outer relationships.
Rather than attempting to achieve a particular state of calm or eliminate uncomfortable experiences, participants are invited to become curious about what is already present.
Meditation introduces opportunities to listen to ourselves without immediately trying to change, explain, or act upon what we discover.
01 — Meditation in Lived Experience
Recognizing the Relationship Between Sensation, Feeling, and Awareness
Our inner experiences continually participate in everyday life.
Sensations, thoughts, feelings, memories, expectations, and intentions may arise as we move, rest, work, communicate, and respond to our surroundings.
Sometimes we recognize these experiences immediately.
At other times, we may be so familiar with our responses that we scarcely notice them.
Meditation in Lived Experience introduces opportunities to become familiar with these inner relationships through conscious attention.
Beginning with What Is Present
An exploration may begin by noticing physical support, breathing, or the experience of sitting or lying down.
Attention can then include whatever becomes recognizable.
Perhaps there is a sense of ease, uncertainty, restlessness, anticipation, or discomfort.
There is no requirement to produce a particular feeling or maintain a particular state of mind.
The invitation is simply to recognize what is present.
Making Friends with a Feeling
Feelings offer another doorway into meditation.
An emotion may first become recognizable through a change in our physical experience.
We may notice warmth, tightening, heaviness, agitation, or another sensation.
Sometimes a story about the feeling follows almost immediately.
We begin explaining why it is happening, remembering similar experiences, or anticipating what it means for the future.
Rather than immediately following that story, we can explore remaining with the felt experience itself.
What am I feeling?
Where do I recognize it?
How intense does it feel?
What happens if I allow myself to notice it, even briefly, without needing to explain it?
A personal temperature image may offer a useful reference.
A feeling may seem cool, warm, or very heated.
This is not a measure of whether a feeling is correct or acceptable. It is simply another way to recognize the quality and intensity of our experience.
Recognizing Feelings and Present Needs
As a feeling becomes recognizable, we may begin discovering what is meaningful or needed in the present.
Perhaps we recognize a need for reassurance, understanding, rest, support, space, safety, or connection.
Sometimes the need is immediately apparent.
At other times, it may become clearer through further listening.
The intention is not to assign a correct explanation to the feeling.
It is to develop familiarity with our emotional experiences and the personal information they may offer.
When a feeling becomes overwhelming, attention can return to physical support, the surrounding environment, or another experience that feels manageable. There is no requirement to remain immersed in distress.
Making friends with a feeling begins by allowing it to be recognized, without requiring that it become a story, a judgment, or an immediate action.
02 — Sleep Sweet Sleep
Discovering Rest Through Movement, Support, and Inner Awareness
Sleep Sweet Sleep developed in 2008 as an integrative approach to exploring the relationships among rest, movement, environmental influences, and the language we use around sleep.
Preparing for rest involves more than deciding that it is time to sleep.
Our bodies may still be organized around the activities, concerns, and efforts of the day.
Our attention may remain occupied with something unfinished or anticipated.
Our surrounding environment also participates in how we experience rest.
Sleep Sweet Sleep introduces opportunities to recognize these relationships through gentle inquiry rather than beginning with another strategy we must perform correctly.
Listening to the Body Through Support
One exploration begins by resting on a comfortable surface and recognizing where the body makes contact.
We may notice the weight of the pelvis, ribs, shoulders, head, arms, and legs.
Instead of attempting to hold ourselves in a particular position, we can become curious about the support already available.
What parts of my body feel supported?
Where am I still making an effort?
What changes when I allow a little more weight to settle into the surface?
Sometimes a person may discover that muscular effort can soften without needing to deliberately force relaxation.
This can introduce a different experience of bodily support.
Movement Without Unnecessary Lifting
Small movement explorations offer another opportunity for inquiry.
An arm or leg may slide gently along the supporting surface rather than being lifted away from it.
The head may roll a small distance while remaining supported, allowing its rounded shape and contact with the surface to participate.
As the body turns, attention can shift toward the changing relationship among gravity, skeletal support, and muscular effort.
These explorations are invitations rather than required movements. Participants can choose positions and movements that are comfortable and appropriate for their circumstances.
The intention is not to stretch farther, perform an exercise, or produce a particular sleeping position.
It is to discover how the body is already being supported and how movement may become available with less unnecessary effort.
Preparing for Rest Through Recognition
Our words and expectations also influence how we approach rest.
A person may become occupied with whether they will sleep, how long they will sleep, or whether they are doing enough to prepare for sleep.
Meditative attention offers an opportunity to recognize these thoughts without continually engaging with them.
The exploration may include noticing breathing, physical contact, sensations, and the relationship between the body and its surroundings.
Rest does not have to become another achievement.
Sleep Sweet Sleep invites a more conscious relationship with rest through environmental awareness, bodily support, gentle movement, and the recognition of familiar expectations.
These experiences are educational explorations and do not replace assessment or treatment for persistent sleep or medical difficulties.
03 — Everyday Transitions
Bringing Meditation into the Changing Experiences of Life
Everyday life continually introduces transitions.
We move between activity and rest, solitude and relationships, familiar routines and unexpected circumstances.
Our responses may include excitement, pleasure, uncertainty, disappointment, fear, or concern.
Meditation in Everyday Transitions introduces opportunities to recognize these experiences without requiring that our external circumstances change first.
Recognizing the Impulse to Respond
Sometimes a situation creates an immediate emotional reaction.
We may feel an urge to explain, defend, correct, withdraw, or influence what another person is doing.
These responses may be familiar and understandable.
Yet recognizing an impulse does not necessarily require acting upon it immediately.
Through meditation, we can begin noticing the relationship between an experience, the feelings it introduces, and the actions we are considering.
What is happening within me?
What am I feeling?
What am I wanting to change?
What is available for me to choose in this moment?
The intention is not to suppress reactions or ignore meaningful concerns.
It is to develop familiarity with our responses so that action may become more conscious.
Acceptance Without Abandoning Participation
Acceptance is sometimes misunderstood as agreeing with circumstances or withdrawing from responsibility.
Within these explorations, acceptance begins by recognizing what is presently occurring.
We may acknowledge that another person’s experience, choices, or circumstances are different from what we had hoped.
We may recognize our own feelings of concern or disappointment.
And we can still choose to offer care, communicate, establish boundaries, seek support, or take action when appropriate.
Meditation may help us become less attached to controlling every outcome while remaining engaged with what matters.
This distinction is especially meaningful in relationships.
We can care deeply about another person without assuming authority over their inner experience or every decision they make.
The Labyrinth as an Experiential Reference
Walking a labyrinth offers a familiar image for this process.
As we follow the pathway inward, we may recognize what we are carrying into the experience.
At the centre, there is an opportunity to pause and become familiar with what is present.
As we return outward, we re-enter our everyday surroundings.
The circumstances waiting beyond the labyrinth may be unchanged.
Yet our relationship with our thoughts, feelings, or intentions may have shifted.
The labyrinth does not need to resolve an experience for the walk to become meaningful.
It offers an opportunity to recognize, pause, and return to participation.
Meditation Beyond the Formal Practice
Meditation can continue while preparing food, taking a walk, having a conversation, resting, or navigating a challenging relationship.
At times we may recognize a familiar reaction and respond differently.
At other times we may simply recognize what is happening.
Both can be meaningful.
Meditation becomes part of everyday living when conscious recognition is available within the experiences themselves, not only during a separate period of practice.
A Living Relationship with Ourselves
Meditation in Lived Experience, Sleep Sweet Sleep, and Everyday Transitions offer different opportunities to explore the relationship between inner awareness and everyday participation.
The body offers one doorway.
Feelings and thoughts offer another.
Relationships and changing life circumstances introduce further opportunities for recognition.
These explorations are not levels to complete or practices requiring a particular outcome.
They invite a more familiar relationship with ourselves through sensing, listening, recognizing, and responding.
The intention is not to become detached from life, but to discover how we can remain present and participate with greater conscious choice.
Related Explorations
- The Listening Field
- Movement in Lived Function
- Intention in Lived Experience
- Culture of Values
- Living Relationships with Nature
- Walking with Inner Awareness
Meditation in Everyday Life — Inner Awareness, Conscious Recognition, and Lived Participation – Renee Lindstrom, GCFP – @insideawareness – Copyright 2014 – 2026
With respect and gratitude,
I acknowledge the practices and teachings that have contributed to the ground from which this work has grown: Moshe Feldenkrais and the Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education; Marshall Rosenberg and Nonviolent Communication; Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the Shambhala teachings; and Dyan Grant Francis, Subtle Energy Solutions and Black Sect Feng Shui.
These influences are acknowledged with appreciation for the learning they made possible, while the patterns and interpretations presented here reflect my own continuing inquiry, lived experience and educational development.
Inside Awareness | Renee Lindstrom | @insideawareness
Original concepts, lived experiences, educational approaches, and program development by Renee Lindstrom.
Written and developed in collaboration with ChatGPT by OpenAI, providing editorial, organizational, and creative assistance.
Illustrations created using OpenAI’s image-generation tools, guided by the educational themes and creative direction of Inside Awareness.
