Meditation Tutorial
Mentoring
There are various tools and methods that anyone can use to learn to discipline their mind to enter a physiologic state of meditation. First and foremost, I would ask that you read our "Understanding Meditation" page as we are striving to draw back the curtain of confusion that meditation is NOT prayer, contemplation or visualization.
Through practice and application, we have outlined several very easy exercises that will aid in extending your concentration and focus.
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Section I - Focus
There is a practice called "Sitting Zazen" so I will tell you how you can learn to do that on your own. There are two methods but both essentially are tricks that you can play with your eyes that will allow you to focus your concentration and attention. This is an excellent tool that you can use in any setting where there is a bright light source. Do NOT stare at the sun as I learned this from someone who thought we would all be smart enough to close our eyes quickly but I ended up causing a burn on my retina so I know it is not a wise idea to use the sun.
Candle Method
Sit on the floor with a candel on a table in front of you around eye level. If you cannot sit on the floor, you can find a way to place a candle on something slightly higher than your chair so that it is at your eye level.
Dot Method
Take a 4 x 6 white card and using a dime, draw a circle in the center. Then, fill in the center of the circle with a magic marker so that it is completely black. Tape it on the wall at approximately your eye level. Again, if you are not comfortable sitting on the floor, use a chair and place the card as close to eye level as possible.
Remove any other distractions that are in your range of vision so that you can focus on the flame or the dot.
Focus your eyes on the flame of the candle or the black dot in front of you. Just sit quietly staring at the flame/dot for several minutes. It doesn't matter what you are thinking about, just keep staring at the flame/dot. Breath quietly and relax. Continue staring for at least two minutes - don't worry about your thought processes, just focus.
Now, close your eyes and look at the blackness right in front of and in the center behind your eyes. You will begin to see the outline of the flame or the dot. It will start as one color with a different color edge around it. As you continue watching, the color will change to another color and another and another. The longer you can keep your attention on the dot/frame outline, the more colors will form. If you break your concentration the field will dissipate; so go back and stare at the flame/dot to reset your focus. This exercise will be extending your concentration. You will find you can do this in any setting at any time with just about any light source.
This is an excellent tool to teach children, especially in light of all the attention deficit problems from TV and the fast moving pace of life around them. Don't worry about the length of time, the important thing is to focus, focus, focus as it will bring more and more right brain activity and intuition into play.
Section II - Breathing Pump
All magnetic fields are polar and moving vortexes. A vortex is a depression where energy begins to spin and spinning energy is our definition of matter. It depends on the speed of the atoms whether we can see something or not. If you watch water going down a drain, it will be moving in a clockwise direction (in this hemisphere) but if you were lying beneath the vortex, you would realize that from that vantage point, it is going counter-clockwise. The point where we become aware of the dynamic of the center of the vortex is called the Zero Point.
The center of our bodies electromagnetic vortex is at the bottom of our heart. It is the energy spin out of this vortex, the only geometrically correct spot in the body where the blood changes direction from the veins to arteries. What pumps this energy into spin is our breath. The deeper and slower you breathe, the more evenly that electromagnetic field is distributed.
As the heart is striving to broadcast out this spin into the endrocrin glands, we can block it with muscle tension from anxiety. The leading cause being fear - and the thing most of us fear is change. In response to any threat, our fight or flight reflex will tense in preparation for escape but when you go day to day with this tension being controlled by our conscious ego mind, so that we are essentially doing things all the time from which we really would rather flee, the result is that we inhibit the spin from the heart and our bodies react. Illness is a subsconscious strategy to circumvent what is blocking our physical and mental well being and a sense of wholeness. It works if we will open the energy fields with our heart and mind in communication. Learning to focus your attention on your breathe and letting go of the muscle tension from stress and anxiety is a pathway.
Exercise 1
Lying in a comfortable position, place our left hand over your navel; the right hand on your upper chest. Take in a long slow breath to raise your left hand FIRST; then continuing the same breath, raise your right hand. Do NOT hold your breath but when you feel that you have taken a complete breath, begin to exhale; pretend you don't have a nose and exhale out through your whole body. Do this slowly. When you have exhausted that breath, repeat by breathing deeply to raise the left hand first; then continue the breath to raise the right hand. Exhale out through your whole body.
Try this three or four times when you lay down to sleep or when you wake up in the morning until you train yourself to breath deeply. When we become stressed, the tendency is to breath in a shallow manner using only the top of the lungs. When this happens, the chest will tighten, making breathing more and more shallow and it can trigger nor-adrenelin which taxes the body even further in its attempt to escape the tension and anxiety.
Learning to breathe deeply is an exercise to train yourself and your body to experience relaxation and recall that feeling and breathing when we feel stressed or anxious.
Remember, you are facilitating the natural spin coming from the heart and it is seeking to balance your whole electromagnetic field. If you strive to allow this, you will increase your intuitive, creative and peaceful thoughts.
Section III
