Most people want to succeed in life; that’s a given. But actually getting to success? That part is a little trickier. What many don’t realize is that there’s an incredibly useful tool to reach success right at their disposal. In fact, the mindset required to reach success lies within.

Whether it’s in your career, family relationships, friendships, health pursuits, or any other area, tapping into your consciousness through meditation can be the first step toward succeeding in any goal. Here’s how.

1. Meditation opens you up to more opportunities.

Success in any aspect of our lives is limited by our own narrow belief systems. We create a comfort zone around our belief system and we tend to stay within that. But meditation helps you work toward a process of transformation so that you can create a new belief system that gives you the confidence to step outside of your comfort zone.

When you know yourself, and your own inner nature, the unknown becomes less scary. If you’re committed to your meditation practice, you can actually bring everything into your comfort zone. Nothing is impossible only when your comfort zone is infinite.

2. Meditation helps you to take the first step.

The first step in any process is the most important. After all, it’s a requirement for reaching the final destination of a journey, and most people aren’t clear on what the first step actually is. The first step is to know your goal. So to take it, you need to know which direction you’re taking that step in. To have that all in place, you need to have clarity of mind.

The quickest route to clarity of mind is meditation. Meditation connects you with your inner core, energy, and consciousness. It brings in a defined picture of who you are and what it is that you sincerely want deep down. This is true for any aspect of your life (work, family, health), and in turn, allows you to take that first step. Suddenly, you have the ability to map your goal, route, and destination. When you have that in place, success is yours. All you have to do is follow the map you’ve laid out.

Related: How Meditation Can Help You Work Smarter

3. The act of meditation is a success in itself.

Meditation is one thing that is not dependent on any goals because there is no failure. There is only success. The more you succeed, the easier it becomes to repeat the process in other contexts. Let’s say you start meditating with the goal to have less stress in your life. You’ll achieve that, but there are so many other fringe benefits you’ll get along with what you initially wanted. You’ll also experience more peace, a clearer mind, more energy, more kindness, more love. When you meditate, you’re connecting with your own inner core nature, which contains all these attributes, and they flourish, whether you are purposely trying to reach them or not.

Here’s the secret: To find success, you don’t actually have to try so hard. Meditation nourishes your roots and when that happens, your whole nature and potentiality blossoms.

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When you’re moving from a waking to a sleeping state, there is a very short time in between when your mind is transitioning from conscious to unconscious. Normally, you can’t directly influence your subconscious when you’re awake, but at that moment, the subconscious mind is more present and accessible than it usually is. In this brief time, you can actually get a direct line to your subconscious mind, allowing it to absorb the thought seeds you plant without being judged by the conscious mind. Because of this, the moment before you fall asleep is a prime time to set intentions—whether they’re big, small, realistic, or outlandish.

In this meditation, I’ll guide you through the process of capitalizing on this unique moment and setting intentions that can help to change your life for the better. Before starting the meditation, it’s a good idea to think about what kind of intention you want to set. You can use this technique to enhance any aspect of your life, whether it’s material, physical, or emotional. It can even be about getting better sleep! The only requirement is that you define your intention very clearly in the present tense, then do the meditation and follow the steps described.

For the best possible results, the intention itself should be short and sweet—just a few words or a quick sentence. Something like, “I always sleep well” or “I make healthy choices.” Though you can set different intentions on different days, I’d recommend sticking with the same one for 28 days, since that’s the length of the natural human cycle—making habits, the menstrual cycle, and more. Once you’ve manifested one intention, you can move onto the next, making use of this powerful natural tool for literally making your dreams come true.

WANT MORE SLEEP? Sign up here for weekly reminders featuring smart sleeping tips and guided, 10-minute meditations to help ensure a better night’s rest.

Related: A 10-Minute Meditation for Deep Sleep

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By now, you’ve hopefully gotten accustomed to preparing your body and mind for sleep by using breathing and counting exercises to clear your head. If you haven’t, check out the first 10-minute meditation in our spring Better Sleep Series here. Next up, we’re focusing on improving the quality of your shuteye to help you feel more rested.

Have you ever gotten seven to eight hours a night and woken up feeling like you haven’t slept a wink? Most likely it’s because you didn’t spend much time in a deep sleep state—the third phase of sleep. The first two phases, preceding deep sleep, are waking and dreaming. Reaching deep sleep is optimal for feeling recharged. This meditation’s mission is to maximize your duration in this state.

To go into deep sleep, a few things need to happen. First, your body needs to be at total rest. Second, your mind also needs to be free of thoughts, which naturally happens when you’re asleep. Third, your mind needs to be relaxed. That means when you’re falling asleep, and in the hours before bedtime, you’re not having any stressful, worrying, or negative thoughts. These types of thoughts encourage your mind to stay at a surface level during sleep because they’re keeping you in a stimulated, agitated state rather than a calm one.

In this meditation, we’ll achieve these three requirements together. You’ll learn to run through a mental checklist to assess whether you’re really truly relaxed and ready to go to bed. You’ll start by checking your body: Where are you holding tension? Where can that tension be released? Then, you’ll check your mind: What is your state of mind? Are you carrying any mental burdens at this given moment? Next, you’ll check your breath: Is it in your throat, chest, or belly?

Lastly, it’s important to always have some happy thoughts or memories before you doze off to help counterbalance anything stressful that happened during the day. Since people normally wake up in the morning with the same thoughts they had when they fell sleep, this is even more crucial. Positive thoughts not only impact your ability to reach deep sleep, but also the entire following day. Though I won’t prompt you to think positive thoughts during the actual meditation, I will encourage you to turn your attention to something you’re grateful for or happy about should you find your mind wandering in the moments before you fall asleep.

WANT MORE SLEEP? Sign up here for weekly reminders featuring smart sleeping tips and guided, 10-minute meditations to help ensure a better night’s rest.

Related: This Is Where Positive Thinking Begins

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According to the CDC’s latest statistics, more than a third of the U.S. population is sleeping less than seven hours per night. That means that a good amount of Americans are sleep-deprived. Why is this such a big deal? When you’re sleeping, your brain is recalibrating itself, which means it’s working even more than when you’re awake. In order to start each day feeling fresh, focused, and ready for what lies ahead, good sleep is crucial.

But even when someone makes a conscious decision to get more sleep, they still sometimes fail. What you may not realize is that how you prepare for sleep—not just when you’re getting ready for bed, but also throughout the day—makes a huge difference in getting the quality and quantity of rest you need.

As for how to lay the groundwork for good sleep throughout the day, all the things you’ve commonly heard before—no caffeine in the afternoon, avoiding stressful news programs right before bed, powering down electronics a couple of hours before you sleep—will help you achieve a better night’s rest. What and when you eat, how you stimulate or relax your mind, and how much stressful interaction you have can also make an impact. Ideally, the two hours before you hit the hay are spent doing things like reading, meditating, and enjoying quality time with your family. These are all activities that can help you drift off in a positive, relaxed mood, which will only improve the caliber of your sleep.

This introductory meditation, the first of three in our spring Sleep Better Series, will help you prepare your mind for rest through breathing and relaxation techniques. Each month, I’ll be introducing a new meditation to be practiced right before bedtime as often as possible over the next 30 days, all with the aim of helping you sleep better.

In this 10-minute meditation, and the ones that follow, there are going to be some common instructions: Get in a relaxed body position, lay down in bed with your feet about a foot apart and your palms facing up and away from your body. When you have crossed legs, for example, you’re not allowing your muscles to be fully at rest. Once you’ve gotten yourself into this position, turned off the lights, and take a couple of deep breaths. Now, press play.

WANT MORE SLEEP? Sign up here for weekly reminders featuring smart sleeping tips and guided, 10-minute meditations to help ensure a better night’s rest.

Related:  A 90-Second Solution to Sleep Better Tonight

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“The only way out is through.”  – Robert Frost

It’s incredibly challenging to sit with any emotional pain, but learning to let it pass through you is the only way to truly begin the healing process. Use this short guided meditation practice from Sanjeev Verma to help you face this distress and alleviate your anguish slowly over time. You’ll come out stronger in the end for your courage and patience.

Related: The Power of Breath for Physical and Emotional Balance

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When bears hibernate, their metabolisms slow to about 25 percent of their normal, active rates for some, reports one study, which may explain why they wake up so rested and ready for spring. We, humans, can’t quiet our metabolisms the same way, nor do we want to, but we can nourish every aspect of ourselves (mentally, emotionally, and physically) so that we, too, can feel incredibly relaxed, present, and rejuvenated without hitting snooze all winter-long.

Cold weather can be exhilarating, but the lack of strong, consistent natural light and warmth can easily get you down, making you feel as grey as the clouds, uninspired, and vulnerable to illness. Wintertime invites a pace that is slower than the other seasons, reminding us that it is the best time to rest, recover, reflect, and plan for spring and beyond.

In the science of life, known as Ayurveda, we think of mid- to late- winter as a kapha (earth and water) season characterized by cold, damp and heavy qualities. When balanced, kapha qualities offer stability, lubrication, vigor, immunity, and strength. When out of whack, however, these same qualities can turn negative, contributing to sluggishness both physically and emotionally. A build-up of mucus can result in bronchial issues, colds, weight gain, and, overall, negativity and depression.

Ayurvedic principles say it is important to take advantage of the natural instinct to hunker down while keeping positive and bright and the immune system fired up. Here are three ways to make the most of winter and set a healthy, vibrant tone for a lush and fruitful spring, and rest of the year.

1. Exercise and self-massage daily to maintain all systems go.

Start with a short, yet invigorating, morning practice to lubricate cold joints and keep all systems—from circulatory to lymphatic to nervous—clear and flowing. Focus on grounding and centering even as you get your blood pumping. If you’re into yoga, begin with sun salutations and warrior poses to open the chest, throat, and sinuses. If you’re not a yogi, then go for any simple series of movements that get the blood flowing, such as jumping jacks, pushups, leg lifts, and sit-ups (check out this Essential Bodyweight Workout video!).

Related: Yoga Tutorial: Sūryanamaskāra A

Follow-up your practice or workout with a warm oil self-massage. Use sesame oil, which you can heat up by running hot water over the bottle. Sesame oil has natural warming properties, too. Shower, then trap the warmth by wrapping yourself up in cozy clothes and a blanket. Don’t forget to keep your head warm, too, especially when you go outside!

2. Stock up on these three nourishing nutrients.

Vitamin D
When you don’t have enough daylight hours to absorb the sun’s benefits, which include relaxing the muscles, soothing Seasonal Affective Disorder, and helping the body maintain healthy sleep rhythms, you must turn to vitamin D supplements for extra help. Take these vitamins either alone or in combination with calcium and magnesium.

Ginger Tea
A staple in my winter arsenal, this herbal tea tastes delicious, acts as an anti-inflammatory, aids with digestion, and eases cold symptoms.

Turmeric
This immune-boosting spice can be taken in capsules or as added seasoning in food. A teacher showed me this recipe to keep my kids healthy years ago, and I’ve relied on it ever since.

Recipe for Turmeric Paste

Ingredients
Turmeric powder (organic)
Honey, raw or Manuka
Black pepper

Directions
Combine equal parts of turmeric with honey and a pinch of black pepper (not cayenne). Store the paste in a glass jar. At the first sign of a cold, lick a teaspoonful every couple of hours.

3. Meditate as a tool for introspection.

Tap into an underlying sense of peace that is always present within, but gets drowned out by the busy life and the overactive mind with this easy, deep meditation called Yoga Nidra, or Yogic Sleep. Plant seeds for the future in a calm, rested, less stressed mind. Start by developing an intention for your life and for the practice. Learn to focus your awareness on your breath, bodily sensations, emotions, and thoughts. This is an ideal way to learn to welcome whatever is present without getting caught up in it.

This is the art of conscious relaxation and it is a completely guided restorative practice that you do lying down. It will guide you toward a state of mind that naturally allows you to liberate the tensions, stresses, and anxieties we all hold deep within. In this peaceful, guided relaxation process, the brain waves drop into the theta state, where deep levels of healing take place on the emotional, mental, and physical planes.

Listen to the Just Sit meditation (check out the video above) and feel the benefits that will give you a healthy grounded base from which to greet the demands of spring when it comes around.

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All too often, the joys of the season are overshadowed by the nasty rebound effects of hectic schedules and all-around overload, including over-indulgences in rich foods, social and family pressures, more parties and late nights, etc. When combined, it’s a recipe for stress, which we all know to be the enemy of well-being with its hallmarks of depleted energy, undernourished nervous system, sleep disturbance, crankiness, and a weakened immune system.

In Ayurveda, we understand that the mind is very strong and can have good and bad effects over well-being. During this stress-inducing holiday season, mastering the mind is more important than ever to overcome the aforementioned debilitating effects. When faced with these known obstacles, try this fundamental reset tool and four basic tips from the world of Ayurveda to ensure a more vibrant and joyful season.

1. Initiate a mind-body reset.

The primary tool for grace under pressure is breathing. It’s guaranteed to change the mind, nourish the system with oxygen, and switch it all up. It’s quick, simple, and effective. Thirty seconds of fast, deep breathing followed by thirty seconds of slow, deep breathing. Use the video below for a quick and easy tutorial.

A note on breath-work in general: We all do it naturally, but when you learn to control and use it, you have a powerful weapon that can easily help you generate and maintain calm positive feelings, sleep better, and soothe the nervous system for optimal organ function. Your mind will thank you, your skin will glow, and you will think more clearly and move through the day—and all its obstacles—more effectively.

2. Make a plan.

Anticipate the issues that may arise from family tensions to menus, travel plans and gifts, and remove the doubts and anxieties by making a plan. Make a master calendar of dates, gifts to buy, things to get done. Just having a list can bring clarity as to what might not be necessary as well as organizing yourself for better pacing.

3. Stick to your routine.

As much as possible, maintain your regular schedule, planning around events that will disrupt them both physically and mentally. You may have to do less, but make sure that you keep the general exercise, breathing, meditation routines, which are often the first to go, but the most essential for your sanity.

RELATED: Don’t Let Others Push Your Buttons

4. Know your demons and how to neutralize them.

Say “no” to perfection, unrealistic expectations of family and friends, over-scheduling, day-after-day of over-indulgence. And when you do indulge, know that this is part of the fun, and embrace it, but then compensate the next day by, for example, eating super clean and getting extra rest whether by napping, a soothing 20-minute of meditation, or just a walk around the block to clear the head. A simple practice while taking that walk is to remind yourself to be content with whatever comes your way. Gratitude is an amazing elixir.

5. Try this pressure point self-massage.

Squeeze the fleshy part of your hand below the thumb to release stress. Hold for 30 seconds and deliberately think about the one thing causing you the most stress. Take a few deep breaths and, with every exhalation, actively think about letting go of that pesky thought or feeling. Dissolve it and let it leave your mind and body.

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Whether you have a thin or thick skin is irrelevant. We all experience uncomfortable emotions, from time to time, triggered by another person—be it someone close to you or a complete stranger. The individual who initiated the troublesome thoughts swirling in your mind right now, might not have had malicious intentions, but that doesn’t mitigate the negative effect of their words or actions. In some cases, they might have wanted to cause you pain. Rather than let these hurt feelings linger, use this short guided meditation by meditation master Sanjeev Verma to dissolve their negative influence over you, so you can move on with peace of mind.

RELATED: How Do I Stop Feeling So Hurt By Others?

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Five minutes on any social media feed or sitting with a boastful friend or relative is enough to make anyone feel insecure, inadequate, or resentful. In this world of have and have nots, reinforced by bragging status updates, it’s easy to harp on the desires that you have yet to achieve, but seem to come so effortlessly to others. Theses negative thoughts arise in us all from time to time, but you don’t have to let them consume you. Next time you feel these strong emotions bubbling up—whether it’s at your desk or at the dinner table—take a time-out to do this three-minute meditation to center yourself and replace those toxic thoughts with positive ones.

Related: How to Truly Be Happy for Others When They Get What You Want

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Before we get started, lets recap how far you’ve come these last few weeks. The first mediation in this fall series asked you to recall your surroundings with eyes closed while seated. The second meditation asked you to focus on staying present with eyes open, again while seated. For the last mindfulness-building exercise in this series, we ask you to try something a little different: To walk as part of a moving meditation that is designed to foster the important connection between the mind and the body.

Get ready to start walking, and count your steps from this moment on. Count backwards from 100 to 1. Consider every step you take with full awareness. Feel your legs moving. Notice when your feet touch the ground. Pay attention to how your arms swing back and forth and how your hands feel. Observe your breath.

Now count from 1 onwards. Bring your awareness to your toes and see how your joints move. Notice your calves, knees, thigh muscles, and hamstrings. Watch your chest go up and down with each inhale and exhale. Take in every little detail about the movement of your body and how it feels in this instance.

What’s the end-goal, besides getting from point A to point B?

Heightening your awareness of your own body is one of the best ways to ensure your body and mind are in sync. Developing this type of awareness allows you to feel more present and better in control of how you move through space. Whether you’re a fitness enthusiast or you just want to stay mobile and avoid injury, a keen sense of where you are and how you’re moving will serve you well.

What’s more, many of the emotions you feel manifest in your body. When you’re stressed, you can feel the tension physically. When you’re happy, you might feel a sense of lightness. In the same way, we can bring a sense peacefulness that happens in the mind during meditation to the body. Like any other mindfulness practice, the key is consistency. Bring this counting exercise into your everyday walk to work, strolls with your pet, or your daily jog.

>>Sign up to receive free weekly reminders and guided mindfulness meditations to help you and your family improve your focus in just nine weeks.

Related: A 6-Minute Meditation to Change How You See The World

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The first meditation in this fall mindfulness series asked you to practice recalling your surroundings with eyes closed. If you haven’t tried it yet, you can go back and give it a whirl right now. Or you can move on to the next one; it’s not necessary that you do these mindfulness exercises in order—as long as you do them. For the second meditation in the series, we’re going to work a different part of your awareness muscle with eyes open. The purpose is to enhance your memory as well as your ability to notice your surroundings.

Start seated, looking at a single point on a wall in front of you. Try feeling everything in the room. Hear all the sounds. See everything in your peripheral vision. Feel the clothes on your body. Feel the air around you, and the smell of the room. Activate all five senses, focusing on being very present for the next six minutes.

Why is this important? Take the example of my client’s son: After beginning practicing mindfulness, the little boy vastly improved his soccer performance, and he credits his success to better awareness of what’s going on around him. This newly heightened sense allowed the child to anticipate his teammates and opponents’ moves on the field, which, in turn, allowed him to be more strategic and react without hesitation.

Similarly, when you dedicate time to increasing your environmental awareness, you are more readily prepared to handle any obstacles that may unexpectedly get thrown in your path. When you’re living more profoundly in the moment, then you are working toward creating a life that you truly appreciate—literally, every second.

The end goal? Living each day with as much awareness as possible. Not only will this bring you advantages on the playing field of life, but also you’ll be able to look back on memories easily and in detail. Life won’t feel vague. It will feel rich, clear, and well-lived.

>>Sign up to receive free weekly reminders and 6-minute, guided mindfulness meditations to help you and your family improve mental sharpness in just nine weeks.

Related: A 6-Minute Meditation to Build Recollection Awareness

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In the spirit of getting back in the swing of things, I’ve put together a new kind of meditation series for fall. If you participated our meditation challenge this spring, you know that the practice is usually done with eyes closed, focused on going inward. However, the three meditations we’ll be doing over the next nine weeks are more centered on the outside world and your relationship to it. This series is designed to be shared with anyone, including your kids, partner, or friends, though you can certainly enjoy it on your own. No previous meditation experience is needed to sign up for this series.

Each meditation is focused on a different type of awareness. This first one taps into your memory and is meant to help you connect with your environment in a way that brings you firmly into the present. Normally, when you enter a room, you most likely see how it’s set up and decorated, but then quickly forget. Even with spaces that you visit daily, you probably can’t remember all the small details, like the placement of furniture or the order of the art hanging on the walls. In this mindfulness exercise, you’ll work on noticing those little elements that make up your surroundings and learn how to recall them without looking.

Mindfulness activities offer many benefits. First, they develop your awareness, presence, and memory. Just through this one exercise, you can begin to improve your concentration, focus, and ability to remember details. You can also practice this method anytime, anywhere, which means that you’ll have an endless supply of new environments to test it out in. After awhile, you’ll notice that it will become a habit to live in this constant state of awareness. For children especially, this is a huge advantage because they’re developing a lifelong tool. When you have extreme awareness, you notice everything, not just the objects around you, but also what’s happening, what people are saying, and how they are saying it. You listen better when you’re aware, which in turn helps you formulate your thoughts more clearly.

>>Sign up to receive free weekly reminders and 6-minute guided mindfulness meditations to help you and your family improve mental sharpness in just nine weeks.

Related: The New Science Behind the Benefits of Meditation

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Although Michael eventually recovered, he was left with agonizing chronic nerve pain in his left knee. Upon the advice of his doctors, he returned to his hometown of Ottawa, Canada to undergo several operations including a patellectomy, the removal of his entire kneecap. Staying active initially helped manage the nerve pain, but over time, it worsened. The constant discomfort affected his friendships, his marriage, his confidence in his doctors, and his faith in the divine.

“Pain is an excellent manipulator of emotion,” he says with perhaps a hint of a smile in the gentle tone of his voice. Even the smallest changes in temperature, like a walk down the frozen food aisle at the grocery store, tormented him. At night, when agony stole his sleep, he would roam the empty halls of the military quarters, where he once worked, in an effort to pass the time. He was given anti-depressants, but the meds didn’t help. He turned to alcohol to cope.

His doctor prescribed meditation as a last resort. Michael had heard of it before, but in the mid-80s, meditation was hardly mainstream.

“Hocus pocus,” he recalls thinking to himself. “Maybe some monk in Tibet can do meditation, but in North America?”

Michael was desperate, so he left the doctor’s office with a cassette tape in hand. Immediately, upon laying his head back in his favorite La-Z-Boy chair and closing his eyes, the soothing voice of meditation teacher Sylvie Lemelin began. The instructions coming through the headphones were clear and comforting. His breath started to naturally slow and become deeper. His thoughts softened and anchored. For 12 minutes, the techniques of autogenics, tension relaxation, and active progressive relaxation guided him into a whole new world. A world where his mind was no longer at war with his body, and where he no longer sought refuge from his own mind. Meditation was working.

Related: Can Mindfulness Really Reduce Pain?

Looking back, Michael credits Lemelin’s tape with saving his life. It transformed him, not only allowing him to manage the pain in his knee, but also making him less prone to bouts of anger, fear, and self-loathing that had long plagued him. Several years later, after undergoing full knee replacement surgery, he started yoga classes at a local studio at the urging of his daughters. It seemed to be the perfect companion to his meditation practice. He started taking classes daily, but felt something was missing.

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“The classes were secular,” Michael says. “They had no room for the divine. No chanting, no meditation, no yamas, no niyamas.” Three years later, he came across the Ashtanga method via a Facebook friend and was hooked from the start at age 58. He was fascinated by the emphasis of Patanjali’s Eight Limbs within the Ashtanga method. He was also drawn to its grounding in lineage or parampara, where knowledge is passed on from teacher to student. “This wasn’t just exercise, it was poetry,” he says. “It was exactly the complement to meditation that I had been looking for—intense concentration and mindfulness in motion!”

This May, Michael, now age 61, met Sharath Jois, the grandson of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and the current lineage holder, for the first time. Through Google searches and word of mouth, Michael had learned about Sharath and the Ashtanga lineage over the years, but attending Sharath’s three-city tour in the U.S., where he participated in all six primary series classes in New York City, was a completely new experience. He was blown away by the energy inside the gymnasium of the Chinatown YMCA, packed with students and teachers of all levels who had traveled from all over the world. They were here for the same reason: To study with their teacher and practice with their community. To Michael, this was a new kind of love, not only for the practice, but also for each other.

“When I watched the more advanced second series class practice, the devotion was evident,” Michael says. As a relatively new Ashtanga yoga student, it must have been overwhelming to join his new peers, who had been practicing for decades. He admits with a laugh that he went into it with the mindset to try his best. “I focused. I stayed in my practice and thought about being in the moment. Breathe, Bandha, Drishti. If something bothered me, I’d think about Ganesh and carry on,” he says.

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Michael came to Ashtanga yoga much later in life, and his humility, sincerity, and sense of devotion to his practice is infectious. While the community welcomed him with open arms, he recognizes it isn’t always easy.

“Ashtanga has been nurturing, but not without its difficulties,” he explains. “When the chronic pain returns [as it often does], I realize that I need to get on my mat, breathe, and begin the chant in praise of my local teacher—Janice DeFilippi, owner of Astanga Yoga Ottawa—and my teacher’s teacher. Adversity has taught me a great deal.”

The post It’s Never Too Late to Learn Yoga appeared first on Sonima.

Likewise, many yoga philosophers say yoga is within you. The supreme is within you. Therefore, the state of yoga is to realize the supreme inside you. So how do we connect to the supreme soul?

Most people are caught up in so many delusions, which won’t allow them to understand their inner purity. I love children because just to see a child or to carry a child is like carrying the divine. He or she is untouched by anything. There is no greed, no envy. But as we grow into adults, we become consumed with delusions and this inhibits our pathway to samadhi, the final limb of the eight-limbed Aṣṭāṅga method.

Related: The Eight Limbs of Yoga Explained

Ancient texts have identified six poisons, or arishadvargas, that we must rid ourselves before we can see the divine. They are kaama (lust), krodha (anger), moha (attachment), lobha (greed), matsarya (jealousy) and mada (pride). We are not born with these things, but over a period of time, we get influenced by all of them, and they stay within us. Greed comes, lust comes, anger comes. In fact, these poisons can consistently grow within us. This is not good. This is not healthy. A person might be physically healthy, but mentally, he or she is not healthy. This is why āsana is only one part of the Aṣṭāṅga method. A healthy body cannot realize the divine if the mind is not healthy.

Aṣṭāṅga yoga is a method to understand your inner self. Through the eight limbs, we can rid ourselves of the six poisons. He or she who tries to get rid of all these things, we call them a sādhaka. A sādhaka is more than a practitioner. He or she is focused on how to eliminate the six enemies within. This effort, when undertaken, is called sādhanā. Sadhana is the state of the yogi. A sādhaka lives differently because he is striving to a higher level of being. Through dedication and devotion to his goal, his perception changes, his views change, his thoughts also change—everything will change within him as he goes to higher levels. Yoga liberates us from the poisons within ourselves. The purification happens in the body as well as the mind.

A yogi is untouched by poisons. This is the purpose of doing yoga and this is the state of a yogi. We must always put more effort towards this through dedication and devotion to experience clarity within ourselves. It doesn’t matter where you are. If you come to Mysore and you don’t see me, you’ll think yoga doesn’t happen. Then you’ll start blaming me. “I went to Mysore, you were not there, and yoga didn’t happen,” you might say. But yoga is within you. The supreme is within you and all of us.

Photography by Jesse Gordon

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Meditation can be confusing, especially if you’re completely new to the practice or are coming back to it after some time off. In the most basic words, meditation is a way of calming down the activity of your mind, slowing the speed of your overwhelming thoughts and enhancing your overall awareness. Normally, your mind is constantly active and continuously coming up with one thought or another. You can’t leave your mind completely blank. But when you meditate, you calm down both your body and the processes of your mind.

Here’s an example of how that deceleration process works. Imagine you are turning on a faucet. Your thoughts are like the drops of water that come out of it. You can only see each drop clearly if the stream of water is slow and every drop has a gap between itself and the next. On the other hand, if you have the tap open full-throttle, there’s no way you can distinguish one drop from another. If you want to have clear, uncluttered thoughts, they need to be like drops, not like streams. Meditation helps with that process.

Through meditation, you can really start to slow down and find that gap between each thought, so that your awareness of your body, breath, and individual thoughts really grows. As that awareness becomes greater, your body becomes more relaxed, your breath becomes deeper, and so does the clarity of your mind. Eventually, your whole life becomes very clear.

With that end-goal in mind, this short “body point awareness” beginner’s meditation will help you start the process of calming down, gaining awareness, and soon, achieving overall more clarity.

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Related: Think You Don’t Have Time to Meditate? Try This

The post A 5-Minute Meditation to Start Building Your Practice appeared first on Sonima.