Dear Friend,
Think about it: Whatever method of meditation you practice, your results depend on two factors: your level of prana (energy, life force), and your ability to channel that prana in the right direction.
For example, if your practice calls for concentration—on the breath, a mantra, a spiritual quality, a scriptural passage, a candle flame, or even energy itself—it’s focused energy that enables you to concentrate. If your practice is all about relaxation, then you need to be able to release energy that gets trapped as tension in various parts of the body. If you do visualization or affirmation, it’s energy that will give power to your practice. If your method calls for detached awareness, your success will depend on your ability to shepherd your energy so it will not engage with distractions.
In fact, any true meditation practice requires all of these abilities—and the Energization Exercises of Paramhansa Yogananda can help you develop all of them. Here’s a brief overview for those who are not familiar with Energization.
On October 12, The Expanding Light Retreat at Ananda Village will launch the 30-Day Energization Challenge, as a way to help you take your practice to the next level. The Challenge is free, and it’s guided. All participants will benefit, regardless of whether or not they already know and practice Energization. In addition, when you complete the Challenge, you’ll receive a discount on an upcoming program at The Expanding Light.
Click here to sign up, or for more information, and begin to experience what Swami Kriyananda said of his 64 years of dedicated Energization practice:
Through the work of energizing our bodies, we become aware of our bodies as energy—more than as just physical things. And we can use that knowledge of energy to heal the body. It has enormous ramifications: how to use energy in order to control your destiny. You’ll be amazed to see how, once you learn to direct energy to your body, you can direct it also mentally toward events, toward what you want to make happen. And it works.
Joy to you!
Nayaswami Gyandev
for The Expanding Light Retreat
www.ExpandingLight.org
4 Comments
I am in need of clarification of the statement” once you learn to direct the energy of the body, you can also direct it mentally. My confusion is that I have always believed that the mind directed the body and not vice versa. Any clarification you may provide will be much appreciated! Thank you.
Dear Jan,
Thank you for writing. You are absolutely right that the mind controls not only the body, but also energy. Or at least, it should control both.
The problem is, not everyone has learned to have conscious control of the body, or energy, or even the mind; they live more by habit. But once we have learned to be aware of and control energy within the body, it becomes easier to be aware of and control the energy that we send out to the world around us: to people, to situations, to get things done, and so on. With that expanded capability comes the possibility of living in greater harmony with others, and with greater effectiveness in all that we do.
I hope this clarifies.
Blessings,
Gyandev
I am in the process of reconstructing my life, so that I am less distracted and can put more time into becoming a true devotee of God.
I could use help in how to better my meditation process to become completely adsorbed in spirit, thereby not hearing, seeing of feeling any outside distractions of life around me. In other words directing those energies to my medulla oblongata.
I can love God with my mind but have a hard time with my heart. I have been saved in the past and have had a wonderfully forgiven life and felt sparkling white and precious all over, but lost it after pushing it onto my relatives. Any advice would be deeply appreciated.
I would prefer to be anonymous, if this is posted.
Thank you, for this information