MEDITATION - You need to practice before

Whether it is driving a car or learning to play a musical instrument, you need to practice before you do the actual act. Any learning is a cyclical process of successive corrections till you achieve perfection. 

In meditation too you need to first learn how to focus. This is a conscious and effortful practice that needs to be done regularly and frequently till you get the ‘hang of it’.

There are various ways you can do this. The one suggested by Patanjali is to practice controlled breathing or Pränäyäma. Buddhist meditation also is preceded by attentive (or mindful) breathing or Änäpäna sati

I have discussed some of these and other techniques in my book “How and why of Yoga and Meditation”.

For more body conscious people, learning to focus may need some explicit physical acts. Many modern Yoga teachers make you go through an elaborate sequence of physical acts - some body postures, some mysterious breathing, making some sounds, and so on. 

Though these sequences are hyped as some secret mystical techniques (often used buzz word is Kriya), these are just some permutation and combination of various well known Hata yoga steps. If you are a very body conscious person, probably you find them beneficial. But they are not really needed. A simple controlled breathing or mindful breathing would do as well.

What is essential though is the regularity, frequency, and duration. Why is that so? We will see that in the next post.

Start(Meditations)            Previous              Next