Have You Tried Shower Meditation?

Your shower is your safe space.

This small chamber allows you to be free, vulnerable, exposed. The shower is welcoming, warm, womb-like. It’s where you can be alone with your own thoughts, away from the chaos of daily life, and practice self-care.

As you take your practice to the shower, ponder the wave metaphor. When one points to a wave in the ocean, the wave is its own entity, yet it is also the ocean. The wave is a manifestation or expression of the whole.

[Read: “Transformative Travel: Ideal Places to Soak, Shower, and Float.”]

Think about how you and your creativity and passion are a manifestation, an expression, of the whole. Be fluid, wave-like, and flexible. Surrender.

Try a Shower Meditation

1. Staff to Forward Fold

Fill the tub or shower with three inches of very warm water (add Epsom salts if you like) and sit.

On the inhale, push yourself into Staff pose. Perch on your sitting bones and stretch your legs forward, toes toward the ceiling. Push the balls of your feet away from you. Your hands are flat beside your hips, and as you push into the tub, feel your spine straighten, heart over hips, head over heart.

As you exhale, hinge forward from your hips and reach your heart toward your toes. Feel your spine extend even longer and then, with a slight bend in the knees, reach for your toes and drop your head.

On the next inhale, push back into Staff pose and repeat the sequence as many times as you like.

2. Hot and Cold

Cold showers are great for your immune system as well as your circulation. Alternating hot and cold water will stimulate your lymphatic system. Can you stay calm and connected to self when that hot shower turns icy?

[Read: “5 Cold Therapies for Healthy Aging.”]

Stand under the hot water and slowly turn down the water temperature until cold.

Engage full ujjayi breathing and activate your favorite metta meditation: May I be at peace. May others be at peace. May the world be at peace.

The first time you try this, say the metta meditation once before turning up the hot water. Work your way up to ten rounds.

3. Agni Sara in the Shower

For yogis, the core is not about muscle. It’s about the energy of security, sexuality, creativity, and personal power as represented by the first, second, and third chakras—the parts of the body that are imprinted with our earliest life experiences.

[Read: “Are You Blocked? Take This Chakra Quiz to Find Out.”]

The abdomen is the seat of agni, that fire that digests more than food. It processes life. Unfortunately, due to a collective shame that’s centered in the belly, people don’t seem to be able to let it all hang out. People cross their arms over their power, suck it in, or slouch. They are overly driven, self-critical, hungry all the time, or burning out. So, they beat their bellies into submission with a fervor that borders on violence—crunch after crunch. The fire keeps burning, yet there is no fuel.

Cool those flames but keep the energy with this shower meditation.

Keep the shower at body temperature. Move into a wide-legged Chair pose with the water massaging your back. Place your hands on your thighs.

Inhale with ujjayi breath and expand your belly like a balloon. When you exhale, pull your belly in with deep intention, imagining your hip bones moving inward, squeezing, and touching over your center. Then, slowly release the grip and expand the belly with an inhale. Repeat as often as you like.

4. Evening Shower Journaling

Add a small wipe-off board to your bathroom. It’s handy for any reminders for the next morning, but it’s also great for jotting down your daily successes. Try to write down at least two positives from the day as part of your shower meditation. Then, step into the shower and rinse off any negativity that lingers.

Activate ujjayi and stand in Mountain pose under the water stream, a slight inward rotation of the thighs while your heart hovers over your hips, your head above your heart. Feel the water cleansing your mind as all that no longer serves you runs off your body down the drain.

Keep your shower meditation going even as you retire to bed. Invest in a white noise machine with recorded ocean waves and rain. Allow the water’s serenity to accompany you in your dreams.

Beyond the shower stall: Try these four water meditation techniques to cleanse your energy center.