Tips for Your Meditation Practice

You shouldn’t NEED a mountain of patience — or discipline

When you focus on energy flows, meditation becomes a whole lot easier — and enjoyable. If you enjoy it, you do it regularly. And because you do it regularly, you reap the rewards. But if the rewards are your goal, then you need a lot of both discipline and patience — and faith, too, because there’s no way to be certain it will do you any good.

Image by Sabine Zierer from Pixabay

Note: This article contains Amazon affiliate links.

Like many of my articles, these tips began life as an email to a friend:

1. When you wake after sleeping a while (the “first sleep” they called it, in olden days), that’s the best time to meditate. It’s quiet. You’re awake but relaxed. And you are close to the quasi-sleep state that is synonymous with deep meditation. (In fact, the whole reason for sitting to meditate is so you don’t simply fall asleep!)
2. Focus on energy flows in your practice. Select techniques that activate them, and encourage you to be aware of them. You’ll know they’re working when they start making you happy. When you begin to experience the joy that comes from that kind of practice, you won’t need patience — or even much discipline — because the fact of the matter is that you will want to do it.
3. For that purpose, I highly recommend Moola Bandha (like a Kegel, but with the separation required to produce a “Perineal Lift”). I’ll be covering the subject in future volumes of my Subtle Energy Yoga series. In the meantime, you can’t do much better than Moola Bandha:The Master Key — a thin volume that can open you up to a whole new world of internal energy experiences.
4. But Moola Bandha is just the start! Once you have it, other energy-activation techniques are a lot easier to learn. (I can help with that.)
5. The best way I’ve found to get it to all come together was something Ipsalu had me doing for a chanting practice: Set up a spreadsheet with 7 columns, 4 rows, and 3 extra cells. That’s a 31-day month. Do your practice each day for 31 consecutive days, and check off a cell each day you do it. That process gives you incentive and a sense of accomplishment. It works. And at the end of 31 days, you will have established a positive habit — one that is easy to continue, because it is “just what you do”.

About Eric

Eric Armstrong is the author of Bench Yoga (volume 1 of the Subtle Energy Yoga series) and the creator of the “Instant Alignment” Yoga Meditation Bench. A former volleyball coach, martial arts instructor, and “internal yoga” practitioner, Eric Armstrong has spent 30 years studying the internal energy arts, with practices as varied as Ipsalu Tantra Kriya Yoga, Ananda Raja Yoga, traditional Kriya yoga, Bihar Raja Yoga, Taiji, and Korean Jung SuWon. He works to convey his deep understanding of the subject in workshops, articles like this one, and in his books. To join his mailing list (and get a series of free gifts) go to MeditateBetter.com.

Learn More: The Many Facets of Eric