Learn to meditate under 5-minutes 🙏
Simplifying 4000 years old meditation method from the Vedas
A little background 🌅
It’s been few years since I have fallen down the Vedic rabbit hole. My goal was to understand the reason behind the ancient Vedic practices. Vedic practices are methods designed and perfected for mental well-being through the experience of ancient seers. The transfer of knowledge was mainly oral among tribe chieftains. Each tribe responsibly managed to preserve their culture and methods through their oral hymns. After the battle of ten kings, Sudasa, the victorious king, unified all these tribal hymns into Rgveda 📚. Rgveda means knowledge.
Each hymn in Rgveda is an axiom, a proposition that is regarded as self-evidently true. All other books in the Vedic literature derive expertise and methods from these axioms. These axioms in Rgveda are incredibly diverse, explaining religious beliefs, spirituality, history, causality, and human desire. Meditative practices are derived and expanded from the hymns dedicated to spirituality. Due to the tremendous resource available on new unique meditative techniques, one can be overwhelmed and discouraged due to the complexity of getting started with meditation.
“The soul who meditates on the Self is content to serve the Self and rests satisfied within the Self; there remains nothing more for him to accomplish.” — The Bhagavad Gita
I will present a breathing meditation technique directly sourced from the Vedas. You can get started on the path of meditation in under 5 minutes.
Posture 🙌
All meditative practices recommend upright spinal cord posture. Make sure you select one of the below postures depending upon your flexibility. Vedic meditative methods would recommend full lotus or half lotus posture.
Mantra 😌
Mantra means a guide for the mind during meditation. The mantra would help to build concentration while we are meditating. We will use a simple technique of breathing from Vedas. First, we inhale with our eyes closed from both nostrils inflating our chest. Next, we hold our breath for few seconds, and then we exhale through our mouth. We will name the entire process of inhaling up to exhaling as a breathing cycle for this article’s purpose.
Repetition ⏳
After sitting in an appropriate posture and deciding our mantra, we start repeating our breathing cycle. According to the Vedic literature, completing12 x 12 breathing cycles in a single sitting establishes “dhyana” state, an early meditative state of mind. So the question arises, how do we keep a count of 144 breathing cycles while meditating.
Simple ✋ We use our hands. We use our thumb to move through creases ( line on the skin from bending at the joint ).
We can count up to 12 on each hand. We use our right hand as a pointer to count multiples of completed 12 cycles.
Our left hand we use to measure each breathing cycle up to 12.
When we move from one crease to another on the right hand signifies the completion of one rotation of 12 cycles on the left hand.
After reaching the 12th crease on the right hand, we would have completed 12 x 12 breathing cycles; and gain an early meditative state of mind.
It takes about 10–15minutes to complete 144 repetitions.
Just do it 👍
Practice makes you better. Start slow, and try to stay disciplined. I do 144 repetitions three times a day, morning, noon break, and night. You may begin with once a day, and after 15 days, you can do it twice a day.
Do clap if the article benefitted you. It would motivate me to write more about Vedic culture and spirituality.
