How-to: Meditating

I have found early morning meditation to be an effective "grounding" practice for me. It tells me if I'm in an unsettled state (something that is hard for me to pickup early-on absent meditation), and it calms me.

Ingredients:

• a quiet, undisturbed place
• a chair, pillow, floor, or other device that allows you to sit with minimal effort
• comfortable clothing
• 10-15 minutes

Steps:

1. Go to your quiet, undisturbed place
2. Sit, with your eyes closed, in a position in which you can keep still for 15 minutes
   1. I sit on the floor, with a pillow under my butt, in the so-called "half-lotus" position (see photo)
   2. Alternatively, I could sit in a chair, wth hands resting on my lap, with back straight
   3. Alternatively, I could kneel, with my butt sitting back on my heels, maybe with a pillow between my butt and heels if my knees are too sore
3. Breathe in and out through your nose, with your belly expanding on the in-breaths
4. "Work" on getting your mind not to work (ie. not spinning around on thoughts about the past or future) and instead observe yourself in the moment
   
   1. e.g. observe your in-breaths and out-breaths wihout controllling them (very hard to do) (Herbert Benson recommended thinking the word "one" on your out-breaths as a technique for quieting the mind)
      
   2. e.g. observe the pulsing of your heart-beat in your fingertips (easy for me if I'm relaxed)
   3. e.g. observe the soft pounding of your heart against your chest wall (possible for me only if I'm really relaxed)
5. Keep doing this through complete relaxtion of all muscles -- legs, abdomen, chest, shoulders, arms, neck, and face -- except for the muscles around your spine which are keeping you seated straight up
   
6. Optional: Toward the end, as relaxation has set in, on your in-breaths, picture a white light entering your body at various points
   1. I picture this light coming it at points corresponding to the various endocrine glands (ie. "chakras")
   2. If I am really relaxed, this imagined white light will "turn into" pleasurable tingles that run up and down my arms, my back, and the back of my head
   3. The positions of this imagined white light that seem most effective at generating this tinglng for me are: (a) into the heart (thymus); (b) between the eyebrows (pineal), and down through the top of the head (pituitary).
7. When you are done, get on with the rest of your day.