Below, check out a handy guide on how to meditate—real meditation, not the guided visualization exercises that so often get passed off for meditation in the marketplace. It'll get you up to speed on everything you need to know to start a solid meditation practice.
Included are:
The reasons to meditate. These are gaining a sense of focus, learning to let go, and a growing, ever-deepening process of maturation.
The fundamentals of Raja Yoga: basic asana (motionless sitting), pranayama (deep breathing) and dharana (one-pointed consciousness).
These basic skills should be the foundation of any spiritual practice; as I wrote in this article about the 7 Master Keys of Spiritual Growth, meditation is the skill that can unlock all areas of life, from your focus on your work to your emotional health to your ability to your sense of spiritual connection and well-being. There's a reason so many Silicon Valley companies are recommending mindfulness meditation to their employees and executives: It works. It makes you a better human being.
But this isn't just mindfulness meditation—this is something much better, and older. Check it out—once you learn how to meditate the right way, you'll be light years ahead in the human experience.
This free video is more than enough to get you started on a lifetime of fruitful and deep meditation practice. For those who are interested in accelerating their understanding and progress, this video is a great primer for my in-depth course Mastering Meditation.
In this five-hour class, we'll cover not only deeper material on how to meditate but also the ancient and sacred eight limbs of Raja Yoga (the true, Vedic system of meditation) step by step. The course material is divided into simple sections that you can watch at your own pace, in whatever way works best for you. We'll cover:
- Yama. How to structure your life so that you can meditate daily.
- Niyama. How to keep drama out of your life so that your meditation isn't disturbed.
- Asana. Physical postures for meditation.
- Pranayama. Breathing techniques for stilling the mind and body and producing neurosomatic rapture.
- Pratyahara. Withdrawing the senses from the external world.
- Dharana. Concentrating the power of the mind into focused awareness.
- Dhyana. Achieving single-pointed concentration.
- Samadhi. Union, the Ultimate Goal of Yoga.
You'll get a solid grounding in the true theory and practice of meditation, far beyond what you can learn from a book. Check out the course here and learn how to meditate like the masters!
