The Digital Dispatch

From NOEBIE.net

Meditation

What I’m Reading: An Essential Guide to Kriya Yoga Practice

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Kurczak Book CoverRyan Kurczak is one of the foremost teachers of Kriya Yoga in the world today. He is the author of numerous books on the subject, he hosts the Kriya Yoga Podcast, and his Kriya Yoga Online YouTube Channel has tens of thousands of subscribers. Ryan teaches in the lineage of Mahavatar Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, Sri Yukteswar and Paramahansa Yogananda. His own teacher, Roy Eugene Davis, was a direct disciple of Yogananda from 1949 until the great yogi’s passing, and Ryan was authorized to teach by Mr. Davis more than a decade ago.

I finished this latest of Ryan’s books a week or so ago. In addition to step-by-step instructions in Kriya Yoga meditation techniques, he presents a concise history of the lineage, along with a survey of essential teachings relevant to the practice from the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita.

The book is well-titled. It covers pretty much anything someone would truly need to know about Kriya Yoga. Although these practices are best learned under the guidance of an experienced teacher – and they usually take many years of daily effort to learn to do well – there is certainly enough in this book to begin learning, and it will also serve as a reference guide for reviewing philosophy and technique throughout one’s life.

The lineage and teachings of Kriya Yoga is a deep well, and one could spend a lifetime of study and still find something new to learn. An Essential Guide to Kriya Yoga Practice is one of the most thorough, practical, and authoritative works currently available on the subject. I highly recommend it for curious newcomers and seasoned meditators as well, though some of the content may be just a bit dense for someone who is not at all familiar with meditation or similar spiritual practices.

Chanting With The Tanpura

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We added a Tanpura/Swarmandal to our collection of instruments last week, so I’ve been spending a great deal of time getting it under hand, and using it in my daily meditation practice. It works really well for japa with shorter mantras.

I’m hoping to make it through 108 Gayatri repetitions during this month’s Key City Kirtan gathering.

An Introduction to Transcendental Meditation

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Although I am not a trained TM practitioner, the technique is (from what I understand) similar to what I practice each day.

CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, Bob Roth, recently spoke about TM in an online video seminar for folks who are interested in learning it. The video doesn’t describe the step-by-step specifics of how to meditate, but is an excellent introduction to the philosophy and benefits of the practice.

Bob Roth Nov 10 Intro Talk from Maharishi University on Vimeo.

Dimensions of Meditation

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Today over on the Shyamatara Das site, I share some thoughts on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of meditation.

As we achieve deeper and more profound levels of consciousness during meditation, it has been speculated that we can experience this field, and interact with it – perhaps even influence it – more directly than we do when mitigated by our bodily senses. Since the field is the foundational essence of all time and space, it is boundless. While experiencing these deeper levels of consciousness, we, too, become unbounded.

Read More: Four Dimensions of Meditation | Shyamatara Das

What I’m Reading: Autobiography of a Yogi

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Autobiography of a Yogi CoverAutobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda is one of the great modern classics of spiritual literature. Since its first publication in 1946, it has been cited again and again as “the” book which first set one seeker after another on their path of discovery.

Yogananda was one of the very first Indian mystics to bring the ancient teachings of yoga to the Western World. He arrived in the United States in 1920, and lectured here widely until his Mahāsamādhi in 1952.

I happened recently across a documentary on the saint’s life called AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda and became fascinated. The book, thus far, gives a great bit more detail on Yogananda’s life from childhood through his departure for America. I’m looking forward to reading the rest.

I always seem to have several books going at once, and currently, along with this one, I’ve been reading Ram Dass’ Be Here Now and Krishna Das’ Chants of a Lifetime. It’s interesting to contrast the spiritual journeys of these two Americans who both mention Yogananda as an early influence, with that of this important Indian master himself.

How to Get Started With Meditation

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Meditating at SunriseOn April 4th of 2019 I began a daily meditation practice. Since that time I’ve seen some incredible improvements in pretty much all aspects of my life. My practice of meditation wasn’t purposeful nor intentional at first. I stumbled on to it. I had no real expectations and no serious commitment. But once I began seeing the positive effects, it became a part of my life that I’d never want to do without.

I had tried to meditate when I was younger. I began the practice with high expectations and lofty spiritual goals. I read books. I obsessed over how to sit, how to position my hands, how to breathe. I judged myself over the smallest details of what I did during sessions, what I thought, and what results I was (or, more precisely, was not) achieving. I soon gave up in frustration.

This time around, I went into the experience unencumbered of expectations. I was able to practice without judgment, and I soon learned a powerful truth. When it comes to meditation, the only way you can “do it wrong” is to not do it at all. If you practice every day, and make it part of your routine, you will see surprising benefits, and likely in pretty short order.

Meditation for Wellness

Although meditation is certainly a spiritual practice, it can be helpful to think of it first as a wellness practice. There’s lots of good research on the effects of an ongoing meditation routine. Here are just a few of the benefits (some physical, some emotional, some social) that have been documented.

  • reduces cortisol – the stress hormone
  • reduces cytokines – inflammatory chemicals
  • increases oxytocin – the love hormone
  • better sleep
  • less anxiety
  • reduced inflammation and pain
  • lower blood pressure
  • balances autonomic nervous system – sympathetic and parasympathetic
  • gets you out of fight or flight response so your body can rest and heal
  • stimulates the pituitary gland
  • more electrical activity in the areas of your brain related to positive thinking and optimism
  • increased intuition, insight and self-awareness
  • improved self-esteem
  • more creativity
  • better focus and attention span
  • better memory
  • increased compassion for others
  • compulsions, bad habits and addictions tend to go away

How I Started

I didn’t know any of the above information at the time I started a routine of daily meditation. I began almost by accident. I was reading a book called Wheels of Light. It describes the seven bodily energy centers identified in ancient wisdom as the chakras. In one particular passage it described a set of symptoms that are typical of blocked energy at the second (sacral) chakra. High blood pressure, inflammatory issues, painful joints, heartburn, etc. It might as well have been describing my daily life. So I got the idea in my head that if I could get the energy flowing through that blockage, maybe I would feel better. At the same time, this seemed a little weird and New Agey and pseudoscientific for my tastes. Also, even if there was some validity to the material, I had no idea how to approach the issue. So I hesitated.

In another of those odd coincidences that seem to happen in situations like this, I ran across an audio program from BrainSync with a guided meditation that was supposed to help “open the flow of energy to your chakras.” I figured that for ten bucks, it was worth the risk to see if it did me any good – and it would certainly be easy enough to sit and listen to an MP3.

So I downloaded the file, and after work one day I got into a comfy chair and put in my earbuds. Here are the notes I made later on.

“I felt incredibly light afterwards. My eyes seemed softer, somehow, and it seemed like my brain was moving in slow motion. It wasn’t that I was confused or dull, more that I was very relaxed and taking time to just experience what was going on.”

What was happening here, was that I was getting to something called the “relaxation response” and my brain waves were slowing down. This is something that happens during meditation practice. I still had no  clue what was going on at the time. It just felt really good so I kept doing it.

Before long, my blood pressure was down, I began losing weight, I began feeling less anxious and angry, depression subsided, I was sleeping better, I had less joint and back pain, everything started looking up. I added other audio programs to my practice for variety. I learned some Tibetan and Indian mantras, and began sitting and chanting for ten or fifteen minutes during a morning break from my workday. Before long I was hooked, and multiple short daily meditation sessions of one sort or another were a habit.

Some Suggestions on How You Can Start

The reason I wanted to share my own story above is that it’s a pretty clear demonstration that meditation practice is an easy thing to start, and that even someone with little knowledge or instruction can benefit. Here’s what I would suggest to someone who is interested in giving it a try.

Set aside time every day to practice. Ten or fifteen minutes is plenty for starters. You can eventually work up to twenty or thirty minutes a day, and you may find yourself enjoying it so much that you look for opportunities to work in some additional sessions each day. But if the time commitment bothers you, just keep it to ten minutes at first.

The idea is to get your body relaxed, and your brainwaves slowed down. That’s all. You don’t have to empty your mind of thoughts, or cultivate mindfulness, or seek some great mystical breakthrough or anything else. Some of those things may eventually come to you, but for now it’s just relax, breathe, slow down.

Our brainwaves, when we are awake and active, are most often in what is known as the beta range (12 to 38 Hz). During meditation, we can slow those down to 8-12 Hz (alpha) or even lower (theta). Time spent even in the alpha range each day offers significant benefits, and the benefits can become really profound when we can get down into the theta range and stay there for awhile each day.

Using traditional methods, it can take years to develop a meditation practice that routinely and reliably brings a person to these brainwave states. Fortunately, there is technology available to us now that can help us achieve them much earlier in our practice. It’s something called “entrainment.” It uses audio signals to create the proper wavelength in sound, and the listening brain follows suit.

There are a couple of different approaches to these audio programs. One approach simply incorporates tones of the proper wavelength into the sound signal. The other one does something a little more complicated, but exceptionally interesting. It uses one tone in one ear, and one tone in the other and your brain splits the difference, creating the perception of a third tone that doesn’t actually exist in the audible recorded signal. For instance, if there’s a 200 Hz tone in your left ear, and a 207 Hz tone in your right, you perceive a pulsing 7 Hz tone. This has the effect of drawing your brainwaves into the neighborhood of 7 Hz (theta range). Pretty cool, yeah?

This “binaural beats” technology is what’s used by BrainSync in their recordings. They have a wide range of products available, and meditations for almost any concern or purpose. Some are simply music or nature sounds and the binaural beats. Some include subliminal messages. Some are guided meditations.

To begin, I would recommend either Grace and Gratitude or Exalted, but take a look around their website and see what appeals to you. You can listen to examples for free on their BrainSync YouTube.

Begin by sitting comfortably in a spot where you won’t be disturbed. Shut your eyes. You can just put on the headphones and listen to the audio, or you may want to go through a short relaxation routine. I usually start with some square breathing as the audio begins. Then I draw my attention to areas of my head, one-by-one, scan for tension and tell the area to relax – scalp, ears, forehead, eyes, cheeks, jaw, etc. Just a few seconds of attention to each area will do. If you want to continue to scan your body for tension and relax each area, you may. I usually find that I’m pretty relaxed by the time I’m done with my head, neck and shoulders.

Then just breathe, and if your mind begins to wander off in thoughts (about work, or what you’re going to do after you meditate, or what you’re going to fix for supper, or whatever) just gently focus on your breath by following it in and out. If you’d like, you can visualize that you’re in a peaceful natural surrounding, or even visualize the breath as a soft beautiful light that’s entering your body through your heart and nurturing you each time you inhale. The main thing is to just relax and try not to latch on to linear thoughts.

Some people like to chant, either with or without prayer beads, but that’s absolutely not necessary. A simple mantra can help give your brain something to do so it can’t get caught up in thinking. But again, this is a personal choice.

The main thing is just to sit quietly and comfortably and breathe, and listen to the audio. If your mind does wander, it’s okay. That still happens to me, and it happens to even experienced meditators from time to time. Try not to latch on to thoughts when you notice them, but don’t fight yourself and don’t judge yourself. This is a PRACTICE, so it takes practice. 🙂

Even if you fall asleep, don’t judge. If you do, you probably needed the nap worse than you needed to meditate.

Be kind and gentle with yourself. Just make sure that you set aside time to meditate every day, and you’ll be on your way to better health and well being soon. There’s no way to fail, no way to do it wrong, and no way to miss the benefits, so long as you get in the habit of meditating every day.

But I Don’t Have Time!

A final note here that may be helpful. Some of us who would benefit most from meditation – who really NEED meditation – don’t do it because we’re already so stressed trying to keep up with everything in our lives that we just don’t think we can spare the time. The thought of committing to even ten minutes a day actually increases our stress.

When I began my practice it was an incredibly busy and stressful time at work. I was working long hours and barely keeping up. Oddly, on the days when I took time to meditate during a morning break I got more done and felt less stressed at the end of the day. Things just seemed to work out better on those days. When I skipped a day, it was always nightmarish.

I don’t have any actual data on this other than my own experience, but my conviction is that you’ll make up any time you dedicate to meditation with better focus and less wasted time due to stress.

I hope that this information is helpful to you, and I look forward to hearing how it goes!

Sat Nam

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Gentlest breeze and sweet smell
of incense
I am
the silent sentinel
at breath’s gate

Before the seat of the soul
mandalas flow and resolve
the orbit of a far off prayer
wheel their motive

the True Name
the Holy Name
is revealed once more

Chant and Grow Healthy

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In April of 2019 I began a daily practice of meditation. I believe that it has saved my life.

For years I had been in constant pain from joint inflammation (lower back, knees, feet). I often had heartburn. I suffered from high blood pressure. I was usually silently filled with rage. Any irritation during the day would prompt me to curse (sometimes audibly, sometimes under my breath). I routinely started my day with Alka Seltzer, typically followed by Tylenol, and later in the day threw in an Aleve or interic aspirin to manage pain and stiffness. Some days also required Hydrocodone or muscle relaxants. My systolic blood pressure reading averaged in the high 140s, though I took a daily dose of Valsartin. I was often depressed, and usually miserable.

Attempts at diet and exercise to help alleviate or manage these symptoms never seemed to help. I could never seem to walk enough, to eat enough raw fruits and vegetables, to deny myself enough to make things better. I had resigned myself to the idea that I was at the beginning of a long, inevitable decline. I would never get better. I would never get fit. I would never have any energy. I would always be in pain, and suffer from stiffness and limited mobility. I would suffer, more or less, until I died, and if I survived another decade, that would be more than I should expect.

I thought that this was normal.

Through a series of seemingly chance happenings, I began reading a book on the Chakras called “Wheels of Light” and I came to the notion that I had an energy blockage at the Root Chakra. The sorts of symptoms that I experienced are often associated with such a blockage (all that fire has to go somewhere).

When I learned that there might be a relationship between this energy blockage and my poor condition, I went looking for a way to get myself aligned and unblocked. Though I knew relatively little about such things, I was vaguely aware that Kundalini practices were connected to Chakra health. Since I was familiar with the audios from Brain Sync, I decided to start with their “Awakening Kundalini” program. I had no idea of what to expect, and no real hope that it would help, but figured that it was worth ten bucks and a half an hour of my time to find out.

The first time I did the meditation, I felt incredibly light afterwards. Glancing in the mirror, my eyes seemed softer, somehow, and it seemed like my brain was moving in slow motion. It wasn’t that I was confused or dull, more that I was very relaxed and taking time to just experience what was going on, instead of thinking about everything. I had no idea what I was doing or what was happening to me, but I felt calm and hopeful.

So I began to devote a half an hour every day to the practice. At the end of the workday, instead of mixing a cocktail, I brewed a cup of tea, lit a stick of incense and put in my earbuds.

A few weeks later, again through a series of chance happenings, I stumbled on the movie The Secret  which focuses on something called the “Law of Attraction.” I was more than a little skeptical about some of the claims, but also intrigued by the idea that we attract what we think about. One of the simple suggestions in the movie was to focus on gratitude, including gratitude for things we desire that haven’t come to us yet. I decided to stop thinking about how fat I was, and how I was angry and frustrated, and how high blood pressure was going to kill me. Instead, I would be thankful for increasing good health, and for calm, and for all of the blessings in my life. I began to keep a gratitude journal.

I also remembered that Brain Sync had an entire catalog based on the Law of Attraction. On April 29th I downloaded Kelly Howell’s “Gratitude” audio, and her “Universal Mind” as well. Both of these required no participation other than listening, and could even be used while falling asleep. Again, I figured that they couldn’t hurt, and I was already feeling a lot better from using the Kundalini audio every day, so I thought these may help me too.

I listened to the Universal Mind while falling asleep each night, and began to carve out time to listen to the Gratitude recording (which uses subliminal messages rather than audible prompts) during the day a couple times a week.

I also began reading the book that was the source material for some of Kelly’s affirmations, Three Magic Words   by U.S. Andersen. One of the things that he recommended was to go on a “mental diet” for thirty days, during which one absolutely banishes negative thoughts or words, directed toward anyone or anything. I confess that I haven’t been able to achieve the thirty days yet, but I did find myself becoming aware when frustration started to turn to anger, and found that I was able to stop myself from cursing or feeding the anger most of the time. I was beginning to feel calm, centered, positive, relaxed, joyful even – as if these feelings were choices, or habits that could be cultivated.

At some point I noticed that my blood pressure was trending lower, and I wondered what would happen if I quit taking the medication that I’d been on for more than a decade. Knowing that I could monitor it daily and resume the medication if needed, I decided to give it a try. I did well for several days, then had a frustrating day at work and began to worry that it was going to have a bad effect. I took my BP and sure enough it was high. I began to doubt and panic. What if I had a stroke or heart attack in the night because of my foolishness? I took a pill that evening.

By the light of the next day, I realized that the “high” reading from the evening before was lower than my usual daily average had been from when I was taking the medication. I decided to not yield to doubt and fear again, unless the reading got dangerously high.

I began to set aside an additional half hour each morning to the gratitude audio. Since the audible portion is only ambient sounds, I started using a mala to chant either the Om Mani or the Adi Mantra while listening to the recording. This only takes five or ten minutes. I devote the rest of the time to calling to mind things for which I am grateful, fond memories, or sometimes just letting my mind drift. I generally try to do this mid-morning as a break from the workday.

So this has become routine, now. Half an hour of gratitude in the morning, half an hour of Kudalini guided meditation after work, and listening to another audio while drifting off to sleep at night. I’ve added a few other of the audios to my collection to keep things fresh. It’s not a chore, just a habit. If I’m unable to do one of the sessions for the day, I don’t beat myself up about it. I know that I’ll at least get the other two in. 🙂

I have not done anything else thus far, at least intentionally, in terms of dietary restrictions or increases in exercise, etc. I did decide along the way to leave off alcohol, but that’s another story. I have denied myself nothing, and have not found this routine to be burdensome.

My blood pressure readings now are generalły 125 or less over 75 or less. I no longer suffer from heartburn. I have less stiffness and pain, and find that even after strenuous activities (yardwork and such that would have required pain meds and an ice pack a few months ago) I seldom need so much as an aspirin. I have yet to have an episode of depression since I began this regimen, and those were common before. I have lost 15 pounds so far in about two months time.

Most important is that I am no longer just waiting to die, and counting on a steady decline. I have every reason to think that I will continue to get fitter, feel better, and improve in energy and well being every day.

Is this a miracle? If not, it’s certainly a wonder.