How to Meditate (Or At Least How I Do)

My meditation techniques are not scientifically proven.  However, they do work for me, and I have a hard time imagining that they will not work for most people.

First, you must have a little faith.  Unfortunately, meditation doesn’t work the way you expect it to the first time.  There are many things that can get in the way of effective meditation.  For me, it was improper posture, an itch here, a tickle there.  All of these things inhibited my ability to effectively meditate.  However, I did have a little faith.  I also had a motivation. 

I should explain just a little bit here.  My own meditation techniques were born out of a biofeedback tape that my father brought home one day when I was a teenager.  At the beginning of the tape, the speaker said that I could use this relaxation method to help me pick when I wanted to automatically wake up the next morning without the help of an alarm.  I am hearing impaired, so I couldn’t hear an alarm anyway.  I relied on my parents coming to my room and flashing my lights on and off.  So this was actually a high motivator for me.  It said there were a bunch of other things I could do, but setting an internal alarm clock was certainly the one that stuck out for me.

After doing the relaxation technique for the first time, and having set my own internal alarm clock to 6:30, the next morning, I woke up at 6:29!  At that point, I was hooked.  Even though it didn’t work as perfectly as it had that night ALL the time, I still really liked the feeling of relaxation that I felt.  The more I practiced it, I found that I could use to to help me get to sleep, or calm nerves, and also relieve test anxiety.  Then, I got to a point where I felt a euphoric floating sensation.  It was such a wonderful feeling that I liked doing it for that reason alone.  I have taken some long breaks from meditation, but I have always come back to it when I needed to feel stability in my life again.  Currently, when I meditate, I not only feel that euphoric floating sensation, I now feel like I am vibrating.  I have heard some meanings of this, and I don’t know that I agree with them.  For me, I feel the same euphoria that I feel when I am floating, just with the added sensation of vibrating.  The first time you feel any of these sensations are quite memorable, at least they were for me.

So here are my steps for effective meditation:

1. Lie down facing up with arms and legs spread slightly out to the sides – makes sure no part of your body is touching any other part, including your fingers.  Don’t worry about your toes!  Some people don’t like lying down for meditation because they are afraid they will fall asleep.  If you are afraid of that too, then by all means, sit in a chair with a straight back.  Make sure your posture is upright and your head is lined up over your backbone correctly.  You do not want your head tilted so you would be looking down if your eyes were open.  You want to be looking straight ahead – with your eyes closed of course.  If your chin is down, your neck will usually experience fatigue.  So it is important to be sitting upright when doing this.  I eliminate this problem by lying down.  Do I fall asleep?  Sometimes, but I don’t mind.  I just found it to be something I was not willing to beat myself up over.  I had a hard time keeping a straight posture when I was sitting – my back muscles would always start to ache.  I don’t use a pillow when I do this, a pillow will cause your airway to be obstructed and make it difficult to breath.  You want your body to be as straight as it possibly can be.
2. Start relaxation with your toes then work up from there.  One of the biggest mistakes beginning meditators make, in my opinion, is trying to meditate their whole body at the same time.  This is difficult for even seasoned meditators.  However, eventually you will be able to do full body at once.  For now, however, start with your toes.  Say in your mind.  “Feel you toes relaxing.  Feel the stress and strain going out the bottom of your toes.  Feel the toes getting heavier.”  Then move to the feet, and say, “Feel your feet relaxing.  Feel the stress and strain leaving your feet and going out through the bottom of your toes.  Feel your feet getting heavier (Don’t push them down, but you should be able to feel a sensation of them sinking into your bed.).  Continue with your calves, then your thighs, then your pelvic area especially including your rear end.  Then your stomach around to your  lower back, then your chest around to your upper back. From the shoulders, you want to start feeling the stress and strain going out your finger tips.  work down to your upper arms, then lower arms, then hands, then fingers.  From the neck up, you want to feel the stress and strain going out of the top of your head.  Relax the neck, then your jaw, then your cheeks, then your ears, then your eyes, then your forehead, then your scalp.  I know this is a lot!  But this is the way you have to start.  If you try to skip a part, such as the jaw for example, you will not be experiencing complete relaxation.  Without complete relaxation, you cannot experience a meditative state.  If you feel an itch or a tickle, try to ignore it for a moment.  If you cannot bear it, by all means, scratch it.  But try as best you can to get back to the same level of relaxation – it won’t be easy, but it will only happen if you try.
3. At this point, your body should, at minimum, feel a sensation of sinking into your bed.  Check all parts of your body to make sure they are completely relaxed – kind of like a review – are my feet completely relaxed?  Are my legs completely relaxed?  Etc.  When you do this “review” you will feel some muscles loosen and feel the sensation of that body part sinking into the bed a bit more.
4. Now, you want to focus on your eyes for a moment – for some people, this means focusing on the third eye – just above your brow, between both eyes, for some reason, for me, it is my eyes.  I don’t know why.  You may or may not notice these waves of light passing across the surface of your closed eye lids, or your third eye.  For me, they sometimes look like ripples in water, other times, they can “wave around” rather sporadically.  I don’t know the significance of this, I just know that it occurs for me, and focusing on them takes me deeper into my meditation.  If you are new to meditation, this is a good time to ask a question about something – or tell yourself what time you want to wake up in the morning!  Try to keep the questions simple at first:  “What should I do with my free time?”  “What should my morning routine be?”  If you ask simple questions and follow the “advice” you feel or hear, then you will be more likely to move to the next steps in meditation.
5. Remember those light waves across the eyelids?  As you are focusing on those waves, you also want to be aware of how your body feels.  Does it still feel heavy?  This is good – for now.  Eventually, you will begin to feel yourself doing these brief “lightness hops.”  You will feel like you are suddenly floating, but it will be quite momentary at first.  It may take a few meditations before you actually feel yourself leap into a state of floating.  Included in this state of floating will be a sensation of not being able to tell where your body parts are.  The reason for this is your energy field is shaped kind of like an egg around your body.  This is what I feel when I reach this state – the egg shape around your body.  This egg shape is, by the way, the energy field that can be seen in full body aura photos.  When you feel as though you are floating, you will feel a tremendous sense of euphoria.  In my early days of experiencing this, I would imagine that I was a hawk soaring over a forest – this is one of the most pleasant scenes I could imagine – maybe you have a different scene in mind, a beach, or snowy mountains, or an island – you choose.  This state of euphoria is my favorite part of the meditation – so far.
6. As you reach a state of euphoria (which may be months from your first attempt, by the way), this is the time to ask the difficult questions you want answered.  This is the time when you can really feel God, or The Source, or your Higher Power speaking directly to you.  Some people hear a voice, others just feel the answer.  This is kind of hard to explain, but I actually just feel the answer.
7. After you have successfully reached the stage that you feel the euphoric high of floating, you will have attained a level that many others who start meditating never reach.  Enjoy this period.  It will feel so good that you actually won’t worry about “reaching the next level.”  At least, I wouldn’t worry.  Nothing changes at this level except that you feel your body vibrating.  Now, when I think of vibrating usually, I think of my cell phone.  It vibrates at a pretty high rate.  This vibration is actually more of a wave like sensation.  It is more pulsating than anything.  Yeah – you feel your body pulsating.  Currently, I feel a low level pulsation that gradually increases in speed and intensity.  Since I have my eyes closed when this happens, I do know how long these pulsations last – but my guess is between one and two minutes.  At first, the feeling comes as a shock – I thought a dog was leaning against my bed scratching itself – except that I don’t have any dogs.  Then I thought it was a cat licking itself, but I also didn’t own a cat!  It wasn’t until after I had felt the sensation a few times that I realized it was actually my body.  Now, the body doesn’t physically pulsate – at least I don’t think it does.  I think it is a mental thing – or a spiritual thing – a state that is reached after feeling that euphoric state for some time. 

I am of the belief that anyone can experience meditation the way I have.  I think it just takes that small faith – at least until you reach a state of “lightness hops.”  I would imagine that most of you would, “Wait – this is the way Dave said it would happen.”  Hopefully your faith will have increased a bit, and you will experience the true floating shortly. 

It is easy to quit trying to meditate – itches, tickles, and bodily functions such as burping and passing gas can create annoyances when trying to meditate effectively.  For some, it gets so annoying, they just don’t bother trying anymore.  I think this is a shame.  Meditation has value on so many levels, that it would be a shame to not experience it solely for the euphoric state alone.  However, the greatest value of meditation is, in my opinion, getting your tough questions answered.  This is because now, the answers to your questions are being answered directly to you from your source.  You no longer have to rely on some other human being  for your answers – and this is the way it should be.

I hope you find these steps to meditation helpful!  I welcome your feedback at any time.

Namaste

P.S. please excuse errors in this draft – I had to get to bed!