Teaching Grounded Meditation

Some form of meditation practice should be introduced into your class. Meditation encourages students to apply the strength and balance generated during asana practice to learn how to manage their minds

By Dr. Swami Shankardev Saraswati

As teachers, therefore, we need to continuously remind our students to stay grounded in self-awareness under all conditions and not get lost in the experience, no matter what state arises.

Challenges to Meditation
There are several fundamental challenges facing everyone who meditates. The first is the nature of the undisciplined mind itself. An undisciplined mind tends to oscillate between two primary states in meditation: the dull, sleepy state and the restless, dissipated state. It is important for teachers to reassure their students that this oscillation is normal.

Other challenges include old mental patterns and undigested emotions and experiences that come up as we attempt to quiet the mind. As we begin to relax, suppressed experiences resurface, and we need to face, handle, and digest them. We do this by teaching practices that allow the detached witness state that lets us observe the mind without reacting.

It is also important, as teachers, to extol a yogic lifestyle and diet, a simple sattvic life that facilitates meditative experience. If we are exhausted by a stressful existence, then during the quiet times of meditation we will sleep. If we eat excessively, we will feel heavy. We will experience in meditation whatever we bring into it.

Changes in lifestyle are often difficult even when we know they will make us healthier and happier.

Meeting the Challenge
In order to achieve higher states of meditative awareness, we have to undergo a process of training and self-transformation. This is difficult to achieve alone, and it usually requires a teacher. As teachers, there are a number of things we can do to support more grounded meditation practice:

1. Inspire your students, giving instructions that invoke courage, sincerity, commitment, and determination. Paint a picture of possibility so that students know what they are aiming for and how much benefit they will achieve once they are on this inner journey of self-discovery.

2. Tell your students to contemplate what they want to achieve in life, and resolve to achieve it. They should use meditation as part of this achievement.

3. Practice asana prior to meditation to prepare the body-mind, making it easier to sit without sore knees and backs while we focus on the subtler elements of our being.

4. Use pranayama, a wonderful premeditative process that fills us with energy and gives us the strength and stamina to do the work we need to do with our minds. One of the best premeditative pranayama exercises is alternate-nostril breathing.

5. Engage in a mixture of meditative practices. Start with a concentration-based style of practice—meditating using the breath and a mantra. Then go into mindfulness practice by observing what is arising. One of the best breaths to use to stay grounded in meditation is Ujjayi, throat breathing, performed very softly and gently.

6. During guided meditation, ask your students to observe whether they are feeling grounded or dull and dissipated. If they are dull or dissipated, they are to meditate on that state to inquire why this might be happening. Encourage them to gain insight into what changes they need to make in their lives.

7. Use self-regulation techniques so that during the practice they can do what they need to do to feel more grounded—for example, use breathing techniques such as Ujjayi or a mantra.

8. A symbol of higher consciousness, such as a candle flame, or some image that attracts our minds to higher inspiration, is often a useful tool to spur us on during practice. Tell your students to hold this image in your heart and mind as they practice.

9. Above all, remind your students that whatever arises in their minds is just part of a mental process. They must try to keep their awareness on themselves as observers of the process, rather than becoming caught up in the mental states themselves.

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