Med It A Tion....(2012 article for a Yoga Journal)

Written and published for a Yoga Journal in 2012. This is an unedited version. My first draft!

Meditation is a widely popular word these days. In this era of busy external and social media life Meditation definitely, stands as a unique aspect of not letting your being gets entangled with the hectic and distracting outer world. Meditation in the real world has no easily understandable meaning. We might consider it as contemplation or concentration but in reality, meditation is totally different compared to these terms. 

Meditation means being aware of that tiniest phase or moment which exists between two thoughts. It is not easy to understand and even to apply it practically will take a lot of time. The reason is to be able to meditate, you require a basic understanding and control of three aspects of yourself. The three aspects of yourself are Body, Breathing process and Mind. When you gain control over these three aspects then only you will be able to dive deeply into deep meditation. Let us try to look at each of them and understand them.

1.) Body: The most visible and closest part of yourself in the outer world is your body. When you look down you can see your hands and belly and feet. The very first vital point in meditation is having control over your body i.e body movements. We spend an immense amount of energy in moving restlessly, twitching, scratching, tapping, etc. Without our knowing the hand goes into our nose and starts picking in public. Not that it is a bad thing to do when you are attending a board of directors meeting but the main concern is without your conscious decision the hand goes into your nose. Thus the very first rule for very successful meditation is to control your body movements. 

A Yoga teacher in ancient times used to test the student interested in Yoga by making him/her sit in certain asanas for few hours. If he/she was able to do that then only he/she will be admitted into the Yoga school. We are not talking about freezing yourself for hours but for a deep meditation process, you do need control over your hands, legs and entire body movements. 

The technique to control your body: You can learn to control your body by the method of self-sensing. Self-sensing means to sense your entire body. You can start by being aware of certain parts of your body. Let's start with the head. Try to feel and sense your forehead. Then move onto your eyes, nose, ears, and lips. Try to sense and feel those cheeks on your left and right. Next sense your throat and neck. Move onto the shoulders. Sense your hands, arms and fingers. Move onto the chest and then sense your stomach and lower belly. Feel your back and bottom. Move onto your thighs and feet. Try to get a sense of your body. You usually are never aware of your body parts. Now go back to sensing and start from feet and end at your forehead. Do this self-sensing exercise 3 times. You may do it lying down or sitting in the famous Lotus Position of Yoga. 

After self-sensing try to remain still. Make a firm determination in your mind to not move for few seconds. See what happens. If you are not able to remain still for 65 seconds without even trying to itch or scratch then you have to practice a lot. Keep practicing this daily. It is good if you can spare special time for this but if not then you can do this exercise while doing your daily chores too. It is all about using only the body parts which need movements. Tai-Chi is a perfect exercise to control your body movements. It slows you down which is necessary for meditation.

2.) Breathing: It is such an automatic process in your life that you barely notice it and yet a lot depends upon it. You rarely feel yourself breathing during the day. You may have noticed changes in breathing patterns during certain emotions that you might have felt. The breathing changes when you are angry, fearful, irritated, or jealous. Breathing changes when you are silent and are at a natural habitat. 

There are numerous techniques to control breathing. You can start by observing breathing and noticing how the chest and your stomach move in and move out.  After doing the exercise for making your body still move onto the exercise to observe the inhaling and exhaling process. The observation will bring subtle changes in your body and surroundings. Pranayama is an important second exercise for breath control. After you have controlled your breathing and body we can move onto the mind.

3.) Mind: A very complex and difficult aspect of ourselves in the mind. The thinking instrument, the decision-maker and the main agent to make us experience the outside and inside world is possible because of the mind. The mind has a very unique thing called thinking which goes on automatically without our intention or participation. Thoughts for normal human beings are on auto-mode. One after the other the thoughts keep on coming towards us. It never stops. Thoughts about anything and everything may come at any time. Most importantly while you are attending the meeting with your boss the thought about the beautiful vacation may come up and you may find the meeting useless and worthless whereas when you will be vacationing in Hawaii, thoughts may come up about the upcoming meeting and being at the office with the boss. It is a mad whirlwind of unconscious association.

Meditation plays a vital role in gaining access to a thoughtless state. The moment or phase between two thoughts is a very important and unique aspect of life. Only meditation can give us a conscious glimpse of that state. Only after successful control of the body and breathing, you can gain access to observe the gaps between the thoughts. 

Observing whatever thoughts come into your mind is a very basic step towards a successful meditation. Keep on observing the mind chattering and rumbles about the world and yourself in general. Do not pay attention to the content of the thought but do pay attention to the context of thoughts in general. Slowly and gradually you will gain power over your thoughts and within few months you might be able to have original and intentional thought of your own!

Deep Meditation Technique: When you have successfully completed the exercise and are able to control your body, breathing and mind then you may move onto deeper aspects of meditation. After stilling your body and breathing and mind you can start by concentration on a specific point or object in front of you for few minutes. After being able to concentrate all your attention on that object you may have a glimpse of a very subtle atmosphere and mood around and in you.

Then there are tons of other exercises which are beyond the scope in this article. You may gain access to those after successfully being able to do the exercises mentioned in this article.