Comment by newswangerd
6 hours ago
One thing I'd like to learn is how to effectively meditate as someone with aphantasia. I took a course in college and all of the exercises involved some variation of tuning out your internal monologue going to your happy place in your minds eye. I'd love to get the benefits of meditation, but I can't visualize anything so none of the meditation tools that are taught in these kinds of courses work for me at all.
There are plenty of competent meditation approaches that don't really require visualization of any kind. Most Western "mindfulness" meditations don't require visualizations, nor does e.g. shi-ne / opening awareness, nor most forms of concentration meditations (e.g. transcendental where you focus on a sound like "ohm", meditations that have you focus on your breath, etc).
Read the book Mind Illuminated. Visualisation isn't really necessary for meditation
There's plenty of meditations that don't need it. You don't need to tune out your internal monologue, it's generally more about awareness, so you can be using your internal monologue or just be aware of your thoughts. It's about noticing distraction, which means you are aware.
This book is a great, easy to read, science-based explainer.
https://annas-archive.gd/md5/0e405c329f33fcb63b4647e386f0ad7...