"Writing? If I were writing about the same thing. Does that count?"

"It could, if we work up to it. The reason that stretching is one of the universal recommendations in war-gymnastics is that it gives you a solid basis for later exercises, but your case is unusual. We'll use writing for your meditative practice, which you can try outside our sessions, along with the stretching. For the rest of this session, I think we should see what your current limits are. Anything that requires true balance is off limits, but have you ever tried lifting things, swimming, tying knots, falling safely, manipulating small objects, or throwing projectiles?"

"I can lift things but I'm not especially strong. I can swim pretty well. I don't know any complicated knots. I do know how to roll with a fall. I'm not sure what specifically you mean by manipulating small objects. I don't really throw things much."

"Swimming might be another useful exercise during our sessions. Rolling with a fall will not be immediately useful, but I will keep that in mind as our lessons progress. The others we can do without, if they're not areas of strength. By 'manipulating small objects' I meant...hmm, it seems like a natural way to describe the skill to me, but I suppose if I had to give examples...juggling, sewing, close-up magic. If it's not a strength of yours and swimming is, that's just as well for our purposes. How much swimming have you done, and would you like incorporating more of it than stretching?"

"Our summer house has a pool and they got all the water with chlorine in it out so I could swim and I liked it and I can hold my breath a long time. There's a pool at school too but I can't use that one. So I haven't gotten to swim all that much but I know how and I'm okay at it."

And they can finish up with one more meditation session- this time no stretching, since Lintalai will be incorporating writing instead. For now, she can practice without that added difficulty, and Nue wants her to report back on any observations she has about meditation itself.

"I keep drifting to thinking of examples because that's what makes law and good feel more real and important to me if I'm imagining people they're useful for, should I be trying not to do that?"

"It's important that you not drift away from the core of law and good. You could describe the examples to me and I'll tell you if the specificity is distracting or helpful."

"Like, if somebody's missing something and they live in a very lawful place they can be pretty sure nobody came into their house to steal it and it's probably just behind the couch, and if someone gets lost it's good that there are people who they can ask for directions so they don't just have to wander around being lost for hours, and stuff bigger than that but those were the ones I thought of most recently."

Nod.

"That's alright, then. If you can practice turning your thoughts towards more...prosocial examples like the latter rather than individually good things like the former, that will help in the long run, but it's best for now to compromise between lawful good concepts and focusing more on the activity you're trying to meditate during. For your own practice, why don't you try just meditating on concepts like asking for directions, and just stretching or swimming, before you try combining them again. Next session we'll move to trancing."

"Ooh, that sounds interesting."

"Trancing involves more of the soul- or mind. You will try to enter a receptive state, and welcome in the influence of Arcadia, or of the gods, or perhaps something else. We can discuss the options next time."

"...influence?"

"Yes. Trancing is like meditation in that your body performs repetitive, simple, or calm activities while your soul focuses on lawful good in order to avoid misalignment. However, in meditation, you do this by considering the concepts you value- especially those that relate to the body. In trancing, you do this by allowing something else into your body to perform the alignment for you."

"I don't think I understand what that means."

"Well, say you found aligning your body with lawful goodness difficult. Trancing would be an incredibly efficient way of doing that, since you could simply invite a lawful good god to assist you in times when you needed your body to be so aligned. They would gain some measure of control over your body- moving your limbs, holding a posture- those kinds of things."

"I don't have a favorite god picked out. Does that matter?"

"Hmm, in that case I would advise starting with a suitable khamotzo. Have you met any hollyphants? Devas?"

"I haven't met any hollyphants and I'm not sure I know what a deva is."

"Devas are an order of angels. Have you heard of angels?"

"Yes, I met an angel."

"Then one option might be for you to allow that angel to possess your body while trancing."

"Can I stop whenever I want or does the angel have to let go for me to stop?"

"At higher levels of related disciplines and in more intense situations, there are more nuances, but in basic trancing, yes, you can stop whenever you want to stop."

"Okay, I could try that if the angel wants to."