Select Your Setting

• Minimal distractions:
• Sanctified to taste - reserved for your meditation

Asana (posture)

• Seated on chair, side of bed, or cushion.
• Erect spine (with its natural S curve). Hips slightly higher than knees facilitates proper lumbar curve.
• Relaxed with palms upturned, fingers loose.

Eyes gently toward Spiritual Eye Center

• Indispensable. Please see illustration. No straining.
• Do not mimic the Hollywood parody of the whites-of-the-eyes zombie parody.
• Hands-on teaching is helpful here, so: more on this when we meet. It’s much easier to demonstrate than describe.
• Asked by a visitor how he could best advance spiritually if he had not receive an advanced Raja Yoga technique, the yoga master said, “As often as possible lift your consciousness to the point between your eyebrows, the Spiritual Center or Kutastha Chaitanya, the Christ Consciousness Center.” —P.Y.

Set the tone with a prayer or inspirational reading.

• Refuse to parrot words: Give yourself to the meaning behind the words.
• Direct it to the most-approachable-to-you expression of The Divine / Higher Power.

Prime with deep breaths

• Slow, full, complete breaths are the most powerful releasers of tension.
• Five or six breaths with inhale/hold/exhale in roughly equal timings.
• Fill the lung from bottom up: completely filling first at the abdomen (via diaphragm), the up into low ribs, and topping it off up to the collar bones. Hold gently by closing at the glottis so that you can relax the tension in the shoulders that may have developed as you inhaled. You will know you are holding properly/relaxedly because the shoulders will flop downward as you achieve the holding in the throat (glottis).
• After these deep breaths, recheck the posture and relaxation. It may help to stretch the shoulders backward as if trying to touch wing-bones together - and then releasing.

Mantra guided by pace of breath

• Select mantra (or affirmation) with care. Make it as universally suitable to you as possible - so you don’t end up mantra-hopping during the coming days and weeks. Great benefits come from your mind having a default to which it readily returns when you sit to meditation
• Permit the breath to flow as the unconscious respiratory centers in the brain guide it. You simply observe.
• Suggested starting affirmation: “I am...” (when breath flows in); “...at Peace” (when breath flows out). [note: when classic ancient Sanskrit mantras are translated, it turns out they begin with, “I am...” Thus the breath and mind both have you gently affirming your identity with Spirit. ]
• To watch almost anything without attempting to influence it? That’s a challenge for most all humans. But that’s also the magic in breath watching: it frees us from that powerful compulsion-to-be-acting and releases breath and mind to attune to Transcendent Divinity.
• Over the minutes of a meditation sitting (and the weeks of practice) you will notice that the breath slows down as you observe it. Don’t try to encourage or discourage that slowing: keep turning over that responsibility to the reflexive centers in brain. When you adopt this passive/receptive attitude to breath you body’s metabolism will slow and less breath will be needed. Just enjoy the Peace that accompanies the process.
• Cautionary tales of self-prescribing advanced meditation techniques [insert: The sufferings of Gopi Krishna; The kundalini studies of Lee Sanella, M.D.]

Visualization | Affirmation | Prayer

• The breath-mantra work primes mind and body for fully offering yourself to Expanding Light, affirming your attunement, or radiating prayers from your heart.
• This is the time to cultivate your personal with the Infinite of Love.
• “There is a personal element in your search for reuniting with The Divine - and it is more important than the entire science of yoga.” —P.Y.

Wandering Mind

• When the mind wanders from mantra/breath to any of a bazillion ‘important’ distractions, just gently return your attention to Your Goal.
• Distracting thoughts will include those that criticize or congratulate you on how your meditation is going. No big deal: during meditation they’re all just thoughts - let the mind gently shoo them away your hand would discourage a gnat that landed on your nose.
• Check occasionally that your gaze is slightly up-turned. That simple strategy tends to encourage alpha brain waves. It reduces both mental restlessness and drowsiness.

When

• Now. Some hours of the day are said to be more vibrationally conducive to meditation, others - less so. But in my experience our single biggest enemy is the procrastination - postponing till mañana or a little later.
• Right after a meal is suboptimal: sleepiness triumphs more easily, especially after a carb-load. Also, as you will learn later, advanced methods are explicitly to be done on a nearly empty stomach.
• It is most helpful to establish a regular time or two each day that is likely to be easy to protect from other priorities. Note that many people commit to powerful rules to be sure they get their teeth brushed - like “never get in bed until teeth are brushed.” For my part, I always strive to block out time for a meditation before I have an evening meal (right-before-bed doesn’t work so well for us early-birds).

How Long. Timing.

• Depth of focus/concentration, especially for beginners, is more important than minutes-sat.
• Be reasonable with yourself. When just starting out, you may find five or ten minutes is all that mind/body can bear. Over the days and weeks you can gradually build that up to twenty minutes - a common suggestion for a basic meditation practice.
• When meditating under strict time constraints it may help to set a timer (with a gentle alarm). It avoids the distraction of opening the eyes to check, “Am I going to be late for work?”

What’s happening?

• Metabolism is slowing; less CO2 is flowing into blood stream.
• Brain waves are moving to a more alpha- and theta-filled pattern.
• [insert: my personal documentation of brain changes]
• The life energy that connects consciousness to body is drawn more inward to its centers in the spine and upward to the highest centers in the Spiritual Eye and Crown Center.
•       Long-term subtleties:
• Not only your mind, but your entire spirito-physico-energetic being is evolving. These subtleties cannot be satisfactorily conveyed by a few casual sentences here.
• The karma of many lives is chiseled away, better attuning you to guidance from your soul, and giving birth to a New You.
• Awakening. Gautama Buddha was asked what he was - a saint, a divine incarnation... what? He said he was simply, “Awake.” Hence he was called “The Buddha” - meaning one who has awakened. Meditation, especially when combined with advanced mantras and breathing techniques (properly called pranayama) rubs the sleepy bugs from our groggy eyes.

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