INSTRUCTIONS🔗

DURATION: 20 min

Sit straight with your spine relaxed. Just be completely comfortable in the posture. Close your eyes gently. Inhale and exhale slowly and deeply. Continue for a few breaths. Now, visualize your body as if filled with nectar! Enjoy the sweet feeling, as if your whole body is smiling. Feel as if your whole stomach is filled with nectar. Let this nectar wash your limbs, fill the space inside your head. Taste it on your tongue, in your throat! Visualize that your whole body, head to toe, is filled with nectar. Enjoy this pleasant feeling. Just be completely filled with nectar. If you have pain or irritation in any part of the body, concentrate on it and feel the sweet nectar pouring into it. Gradually, you will feel a gentle explosion of bliss in your body – as if a ripe fruit has burst inside you, sending its sweet juice to every pore. Your every pore will feel this sweet ecstasy! Feel the sweetness, the bliss in your body. Your body has become pure sweetness, pure bliss. This bliss is your true nature! Your body is just reflecting the bliss that is constantly happening inside you. Experience your body with deep pleasure. Now relax from your body, relax into the sweetness and experience the bliss within.

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

We never explore or utilize the tremendous potential that our body has. We live in such a defined way that we never need to use all our body's resources. For instance, even though we have five perfectly functioning senses, we really only use one! We have become so dependent on our vision that we have practically forgotten to use our other four senses. When you shut off the dominant sense, all the other sense functions come into play. In this interesting technique, you will get in touch with all the ‘hidden resources’ that your body has!

INSTRUCTIONS

DURATION: Not Applicable

This is a ‘blindfolded’ meditation. You don’t need to actually use a blindfold; even if you keep your eyes closed, it is enough. Whenever you are in a familiar environment, like your home, try to move around with your eyes closed. Just try it! Even five or ten minutes at a time is enough. Even if you bump into the furniture occasionally, it doesn't matter! Try to absorb your environment without using your eyes.

When listening or smelling or tasting anything, do it intensely. Can you tell if there is enough salt in the food, just by smelling it? It is possible! When you are speaking to someone, listen to their voice intonation rather than watching their face. You will be able to catch their actual meaning much better. When picking out clothes to wear, try to tell which is which, just by touching. You will be surprised! Your fingers have already memorized the texture and feel of the clothes that you wear regularly. Explore all the possibilities! Try writing in a straight line without looking. Try pouring water into a glass without looking. Keep on experimenting in whatever way you can. Enjoy your strange new world!

In just a few days, you will find that all your other senses have been heightened. Not only your senses, but your physical coordination, your sense of direction and your general awareness will be much improved. Above all, you understand that your body has tremendous latent potential that you never imagined!

This is a simple way to raise your awareness in your daily living. It is a way to live your life in meditation. Every activity that is performed without your awareness is a waste. Every moment that you are unaware of is a wasted moment. Every act, every moment that has your awareness is meditation. You will be surprised to know that even simple, day-to-day activities like eating and drinking can be turned into deep meditation! We always use our senses in a superficial manner. We use them as gateways to pleasure. In reality, they can be gateways to deep awareness. Beneath each of the senses lies the center of our being, the seer who is seeing through the particular sense. All senses reach to this level although we are not aware of it. When we become aware of this phenomenon, every sense-activity can be a way to fall deeper in. Everything we perceive, we start perceiving with deep awareness. We fall in tune with our very being.

DURATION: Whenever eating or drinking

When you start a meal, do it as if it is the first time you are tasting food in your life! Normally we don’t chew our food, we just throw the food into our body. We hardly taste the food. Now whenever you eat, eat with awareness. Be aware when you are picking up your food. Enjoy the feel of it in your mouth. Roll it on your tongue and taste it. Taste your food completely. Become the taste. We never really taste our food, because our attention is somewhere else. When you really feel the sweetness of the food, you can feel it not only in the mouth but also in your entire body. While drinking water, feel the fluidity, feel the coolness of the water as it goes down your throat and into your stomach. Close your eyes and drink it slowly, enjoying every sip. Feel the coolness intensely, not only in the mouth but also in the entire body. When you eat with awareness, with respect, your food itself becomes amrut, the elixir of immortality. In Sanskrit there is a saying, Annam Brahma (Food is God). When you approach these simple activities with awareness and reverence, you will experience this truth.

THANK YOUR BODY

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

If God were an engineer, he would have made us all with the same mold, like in a production line. Fortunately, He is not an engineer. He is an artist! He has created each one of us to be unique. Each person is a masterpiece of god. That is why no two bodies look alike. But you never feel that your body is good enough. You always focus on whatever is missing in your body! We constantly compare ourselves with others and try to look like them. Sometimes people who have a physical handicap are more grateful than those who have a perfect body. The handicapped person knows what it is to miss a body part, so he is automatically grateful to the other body parts. Your body can listen to you! Every cell responds to your thoughts and feelings about it. When you feel gratitude towards your body, it responds by radiating well-being. When you ignore your body, it responds by shrinking with disease. When you pray intensely to your body, it responds to your prayers and requests. Its intelligence will activate its own healing.

Step 1:

This is to be practiced every morning, as soon as you wake up. Without getting out of bed, without even opening your eyes, visualize your body. Visualize your body as clearly as you can. Next, touch each part of your body with deep love and gratitude. One by one, touch your body parts with great love. You never touch your body with love! Never think that your body can't feel your touch or your love. No! Your body is a conscious intelligence that is continuously responding to you.

Step 2:

Carry this deep attitude of gratitude with you throughout the day. In each of your daily activities, keep your awareness on the body part that is performing the activity. When you are walking, silently thank your legs for carrying your load, for supporting you. When you are working, eating, taking a bath, reading, be aware of how much your body is supporting you. Keep with this feeling alive in you every moment, till you go to bed.

In just a few days, you will notice two wonderful things happening in you: First, you will notice a new grace in your body. Your body will start looking more beautiful, and radiating health and wellness. Second, when you continuously watch your body, you gradually realize that the body is not you! As of now, you are unhappy with your body because you think of your body as yourself. You feel the changes happening in your body as changes that are happening to you. That is why you struggle to keep your body young and beautiful and constant. You don't allow your body to change naturally, to age gracefully. When you know that you are apart from your body, you appreciate and enjoy your body without feeling dependent on it. You release yourself from your body, and release your body from you!

Sometimes, all your body needs is a little rest, a little pampering, a little attention from you. Rejuvenation techniques help to relax, refresh and recharge the body after a hard day. These techniques can heal physical and mental stress silently and effortlessly.

(Since you never know when stress can hit you, more rejuvenation techniques are given in the 'Anytime, Anywhere Meditations' section of this book.)

SPACE OF PEACE

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

Attention is exclusive, awareness is inclusive. When you concentrate, immediately your body and mind fall into a state of tension. When you need to understand something with your mind, some amount of tension is necessary and even desirable. The problem is, we carry this tension even into our meditation!

To know whether you are in attention or in awareness, just watch your eyes. If your eyes are focused on one spot, if your forehead feels tense – you are concentrating. When you remain alert, but your eyes are de-focused, you are in awareness. The moment you diffuse the focus of your eyes, you experience a great relief. If you see the pictures of saints and realized beings, they always have a peaceful, faraway look in their eyes. Their eyes will never have that focused look that our eyes have. The reverse is also possible! Just by de-focusing the eyes, we can fall into the same space of peace.

INSTRUCTIONS

DURATION: 21 min

Sit comfortably with your spine upright and your eyes closed. Bring your arms up to your head. Clasp your hands and let the palms rest lightly on your head. Now, turn your eyes gently inward and fix your gaze in your armpits. When you try to gaze at both armpits together, naturally your focus will become diffused. Your gaze will take in the entire area between the two armpits – your heart region. The instant your focus is diffused, you will experience a great peace, a great relaxation, as if your whole being is sighing with peace. Let this peace pervade the region of your heart. Let your heart expand with peace. Fall deeper and deeper into this peace. Let your mind be absorbed in this peace. Without even realizing it, you will enter the space of no-mind.

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

Some postures can instantly put you in a state of relaxation or peace. One such posture is the baby posture. It is the posture in which you lay in your mother's womb. It is the posture you used to sleep in when you were a baby. Just falling into this posture can evoke powerful memories of peace and bliss.

INSTRUCTIONS

DURATION: Not Applicable

Sit on the floor with your eyes closed. Slowly bring your knees to your chest and raise them gently. Gently rock forward and backward with your eyes closed. Don't allow yourself to fall asleep, just enjoy the rocking movement.

Now slowly, gently, fall to the floor on your side Curl up on the floor in the same posture. Just enjoy the absolute stillness, the peace. You are just a baby, so what problems can touch you? Just watch the things of the world with the total unconcern of a baby.

A few thoughts may rise and fall. Let them. They won't be able to stay long in this atmosphere of peace. After a while, you will slowly dip into silence below mind. Enjoy this silence with peaceful awareness.