Straight Back
Once you learn to meditate with a straight back, you become qualified to do many advanced yogic practices. If you are serious about progressing on the path, a straight back is a non-negotiable requirement then. A straight back helps in channelization of prana and samana vayu, or vital life force and thermal energy respectively. Thermal energy further acts as the bridge to allow fusion of vital life force and descending energy. From that fusion begins the arousal of the primordial energy, more famously known as kundalini or the serpent power.
Relaxed Arms
Do not stretch your arms. The natural shape of your elbows is slightly bent, so keep it like that. Keep them relaxed. The posture of keeping your arms stretched and straight, where your wrists touch your knees, is not a practical posture for intense meditation. If you keep your arms perfectly straight, soon they’ll get tired and cause distraction.
Joined Hands
Your hands can cross each other or they can be one on top of another. Putting your left hand on top of the right keeps your body warmer, influences the right brain and fuels your feminine aspect. Resting your right hand on top keeps your body cooler, affects your left brain and boosts your masculine energy.
These differences are quite subtle but as you progress, you will notice even the subtlest of changes caused by the minutest of modifications in your posture. Ideally, your thumbs should join each other at the tips.
Straight Head
Your neck and head should be in straight line. It facilitates channelization of the udana vayu, ascending energy. When the primal energy travels upwards through the central channel, it needs a straight line; think of laser beams. Neckandhead, therefore should be straight. Further, it facilitates easier movement of the vayana vayu, diffusive energy from neck upwards. A subtle but critical point to be noted here is that your neck must not be stretched. Your neck has a normal minor hook that should be maintained. Basically all parts of your body should be relaxed and in normal position; still, but relaxed.
Still Gaze
This is the unfailing sign of a true yogi. With practice and experience, you will find your gaze becoming increasingly still. A still gaze channelizes the five secondary energies. Any hurdles from hiccups, sneezing, burping are removed by perfecting your gaze. Still gaze aids superior concentration which in turn helps the free flow of energy in your body, and when energy starts to flow freely, pain and numbness begin to disappear. Restraining movement of the eyeballs is one of the last hurdles in perfecting a still posture.
Gentle Smile
This may seem insignificant but it’s an important factor in acquiring overall stillness of the body and mind. Once you are firmly seated, keep your body firm but relaxed. Relax your facial muscles and just smile gently. A subtle breeze of calmness starts to flow when you smile gently. You can try it right now; just relax your face, lower your gaze keeping your eyes half-closed and smile. The frown, the tension will disappear immediately.
Position of Tongue and Teeth
Your tongue should touch the front part of your palate. It is particularly important because formation of saliva can interfere with your perfect stillness. If your tongue touches the palate, any saliva keeps moving down on its own. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself swallowing every now and then. The act of swallowing raises body consciousness. Teeth should be slightly parted and lips just joined – no clenching of teeth, no pouting of lips, just a normal, natural body posture.
Your posture should be firm but not tense. It should be steady and comfortable. You should neither be stiff as a robot nor pliable as a child’s plastic doll. And, please don’t forget to smile gently while you meditate; there’s enough sadness in the world as it is. Meditation may be hard but it’s not sad. When you sit down to meditate you exude a certain energy, a good posture with all the above mentioned eight elements greatly helps in the free flow of that energy. With your legs crossed, hands joined, still gaze and straight back, channelization and retention of the energy occurs most naturally.
With a comfortable posture and natural stillness, it becomes much easier to build the concentration required for great meditation.
Concentration
Three monks were meditating together by the riverside. Two of them were senior and considered themselves to be more advanced than the third monk, who actually had remained doubtful of their claim. Their monastery was on the other side of the river.
“It’s normal to have supernatural powers when you are enlightened,” one of them said. He got up walked on water, across the river, and came back walking on the water. “I’d just gone to bring my shawl.”
The second monk showed no reaction but the junior one sat agape. Before he could get over the miracle, he had just witnessed, the second senior monk also got up and performed the same feat. “I’d forgotten my alms-bowl back there,” he said in a matter of fact tone while sitting down.
Now, the junior monk was almost shell-shocked. He realized it was their confidence and conviction that they could walk on water. Not to be outdone, and to test his powers, he too got up with the intention to walk on water. Two steps from the bank and he fell down in the river, his robe soaked in water. The senior monks laughed hysterically. Still not giving up, he came out and tried to run across the river. He fell down again.
“Do you think we should tell him,” the first monk said to the other, “where the stones are?”
Building your concentration, the most important aspect of a good meditation, is like walking on water. But once you know where the stones are, it becomes a lot easier to do so. Concentration is focus with precision–one careful step at a time, one moment at a time. The only way to retain your concentration is by retaining it in this moment, the present moment, and then the next moment, and the next, and the next and so on. If you maintain the sharpness of your concentration from one moment to the next, you stand to gain extraordinary rewards from meditation.
In our current world where you have millions of websites and mobile apps, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Twitter and other distractions, achieving concentration is more difficult than it has ever been in the history of our race. Yet, if you wish to meditate, you have to go back to the basics, to an ancient lifestyle – frugal and simple. This lifestyle is not to be followed necessarily at all times (good if you do that though) but certainly while you meditate.
Becoming a good meditator requires great concentration and to become a great meditator requires supreme concentration. Concentration, especially one pointed concentration, comes with practice. Quality of practice leads to abundance of results. Please note the term ‘one pointed concentration’. This is the primary form of concentration we are concerned with. Before I go on to share the five types of concentration in an exposition never done before, allow me to share a famous story from the great epic Mahabharata. I must point out that this knowledge is neither documented in Buddhist texts nor in the great Patanjali’s YogaSutras. It’s the result of my carefully distilled practise of over twenty years.
Arjuna, the great warrior-archer, his brothers, his cousins – all from the royal family – and many others were taught by the incomparable archer-guru Dronacarya. Guru Drona spent years training them. One day he decided to test them. He hung a bird, carved out of wood, on a high branch of a distant tree and gathered all his students. They were asked to stand in a line. The task was to hit the bird’s eye.