Meditation is the practice of focusing on something consciously such as natural breathing. It usually involves a person sitting in a fixed posture for a certain period and learning different ways of interacting with their thoughts. Since this activity requires people to calm their mind, they find it helpful to deal with the problems of their everyday life. This is not a worship of a God, individuals seek their own path to enlightenment.
I have been practicing meditation for sometime. My office calendar notifies me daily at 11:55 am that it is time for me to be immersed into this relaxing and self-learning process.
Mr. L P Bhanu Sharma, president and life coach at Jeevan Vigyan Kendra visited our workplace on 13th of July, 2018 to teach us the basic techniques and importance of meditating. After this, some employees of our office formed a small group and we have been practicing regularly as he taught us. I joined this community a few months back and I feel that regular meditation has brought positive changes within me.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude towards Anish Gopal Vaidya (Engineering Manager at Cotiviti) for guiding us and putting in the effort to expand this circle.
The meditation session is divided into following parts:
- Namskar Pranayam
- Brij Pranayam
- Annapan (Mindfulness)
- Maitri
Namaskar Pranayam is a process of warming up before meditating. In this exercise, we keep our feet apart at a distance of about 1 feet. To begin this process, we touch our middle fingers of both hands to form a horizontal line and breathe in simultaneously. The next step is to breathe out and bend our knees slightly and closing our palms to do a “namaskar”. While looking someone perform this exercise, it almost looks like a bird flapping its wings. We repeat this process for 3 minutes this is helpful in stretching and aids blood circulation as well.
Brij Pranayam is the next step of this session. In this process, we sit on the floor with our legs folded and keep our neck and spine straight. After this, we take long deep breaths while focusing on the area between our eyebrows where the pineal gland is located (the third Eye). This process lasts for 3 minutes.
Anapana (Mindfulness of Breathing): This technique is easy to understand but very difficult to master. It is also the main part of the entire session. In this part of meditation, we maintain the posture of brij pranayam and shift our focus to natural breathing instead of long deep breaths. We do not control our breaths in this process. While doing this, it is natural for a person to be engulfed with other distracting thoughts. As soon as we realize this, we shift our focus back to natural breathing. The process of drifting into thoughts and being aware of natural breathing is continuous and a vital part of meditation. By being aware that we are distracted by thoughts, we thereby increase our awareness. I believe that this exercise helps us to understand ourselves better and gives us an insight into the workings of our own mind. We perform this mental exercise for 15 minutes.
After practicing Anapana daily, people can profit from its benefits such as increased concentration, awareness, alertness and so on. One can also observe decreased anxiety and tensions. By being aware of our actions, we make a habit of anticipating the consequence of that action. This helps us to improve our decision-making ability.
Maitri: This is the final part of our daily meditation routine. During maitri, we wish good to ourselves first. We pray for a healthy, wealthy, happy and a joyful life to ourselves. After this we repeat this process by spreading our goodwill to other people we like and even for those we don’t like at all. Finally, we wish well for all the organisms of the universe. This is a process of expressing our gratitude to others. It is believed that the more we wish well to others, the more positive our life becomes.
