Preface

I took Kendo classes(? lessons?) in a dojo for 2-3 years as a teenager. During that time, I was introduced to a type of meditation I had never heard of before. It involved staring at a specific point. In our case, we stared at the wall for ~30 minutes.

Before then, I thought meditation was the stereotypical "close your eyes and chant Om." As an adult, I've learned that meditation can be done while doing pretty much anything, and find it a little disappointing that in popular depictions you're limited to either chanting or focusing on breath.

AMVs as Meditation

This entry isn't going to be that long.

I am by no means a meditation expert. I don't research it, listen to others talk about it, or even officially partake in any sort of group meditation, despite being Buddhist myself.

I just kind of... do it. Is staring into space meditation? In my opinion it is, but I'm not going to tell anyone I meditate 2-3 times a day, as that just sounds absurd.
~~And yet, here I am.~~

Anyway, onto the point:

There are several different types of meditation, Here's a list of 9 popular ones I quickly found via google.

The first time I found myself slipping into, we'll call it, "meditation mode" with an AMV was last year when I watched CrackTheSky's AWA PRO video, Repeater (VPR all).

I am normally not a fan of long videos, especially not videos like this one, with a song that literally repeats itself several times. But at about 3 minutes in it kind of got me zen for lack of a better wording.

Another editor who seems to go for this type of feeling is Synæsthesia, who makes a combination of "mood" videos and "normal" videos (for lack of better terminology). Some meditation-y vids from Syn include Blossom (VPR particles), My Everyday Vibes (VPR peripheral, jump cuts), Love of Two is One(VPR for some subtle vignettes, zooms, and brief flickering at 2:01, photosensitive-friendlier version in description), Spellbound (VPR black dips, blurs, fast cuts & particles at 2:20), and D U S T(VPR particles, fades, minor peripheral, minor flashing, photosensitive-friendlier version in description), just to name a few.

There is also a sort of subgenre of minimally edited AMVs. I'm not sure how to categorize them (or even search for them specifically). Maybe atmospheric? This genre of AMV is ripe for use with meditation. There are plenty of editors who go for this type of video, and for those recommendations I'd recommend looking at CrackTheSky's Retrospectives and Seasons's "Favorite AMVs of [year]" blog entries, as both their lists usually feature a lot of them.

However, the reason I made this entry was due to an editor who pretty much makes only these types of videos (there are a sparse few non-meditative/mood ones). An editor who has become one of my best friends and I recently decided isn't getting enough views for his content (LOL).
Vivafringe is a somewhat newer editor, having started AMVs about 2 years ago. Viewing his videos, you can see his youtube channel pivoted from game streams to AMVs rather abruptly.

Viva is all about psychedelic AMVs, but the psychadelia is usually the climax instead of the focus. He also highlights the appreciation for nature (Deep Wild) and gives abstract representations about complex emotions and/or life events (Birth and Rebirth, among others).

Viva is a super interesting person, but unfortunately as a fan of short AMVs, I hardly ever view his content. His best works are 5-8 minutes long, and thus seems like I've really gotta set aside some time to take in his stuff. I feel about about it, because all of his videos are amazing, and are excellent for meditative use.

So without further ado, here's his latest video:

VPR: patterns, particles, especially at 3:17 - 3:40, 5:19 - 5:52 (also peripheral & flickering), 6:04 - 6:22(also major red), and 6:23 - 6:55. Peripheral blurs & patterns at 7:49 - 8:08.

Ram Dass was a spiritual leader who first got kicked out of the psychology department in Harvard for allegedly giving a student psilocybin. After that he helped popularize eastern philosophy in the west. He's featured on this haunting track by Jon Hopkins, which is one of the most profound songs I've ever listened to. It comes from the album "Music for Psychedelic Therapy," which was my favorite album last year. This is what Jon Hopkins has to say about the track:

"Sit Around The Fire" exists from one of the deep synchronicities that ushered this thing (Music For Psychedelic Therapy) into being. I was contacted by East Forest, who had spent some time with Ram Dass in Hawaii before he passed. He was given access to several lesser-heard talks from the ’70s, and asked to set them to music. He sent me some starting points, including the beautiful choral vocals he recorded which open the piece. I put my headphones on and with Ram Dass’ voice inside my head, I sat at the piano and improvised. What you hear is the first thing that came out — it just appeared in response to the words.

I usually don't make single anime amvs, but in this case the themes of the song resonate so much with the themes of the eva rebuilds that it was really a perfect fit. A lot of the memorable scenes from the rebuilds seemed to just slide right into the song.

In a lot of ways this feels like a sequel to "Spiritual but not Religious" (one might call it a spiritual successor, harhar). "Spiritual but not Religious" ended up being one of my more popular amvs, which surprised me. I'm not sure Sit Around the Fire is going to match that but maybe it will surprise me too. It seems like the kind of video that most people will just bounce off of. But if a couple people are moved by it, that feels like it would be enough. (Source)

Do you know any more editors who make these types of videos?
Please give recs in the comments.