Sitting
(Duration: 45 minutes + 15 minutes rest)
Sit in a comfortable position, spine erect, facing straight ahead. Keep your eyes closed and breathe normally. Stay still without shifting positions.
Watch the rise and fall of the belly when breathing in and out.
Don't concentrate on the breath, just watch it. If you find other thoughts, feelings or physical sensations coming up, allow them. Witness those also and then return to watching the breath.
It is the process of watching that is important, not what you are watching. Witness everything!
(After 45 minutes, drop even the watching. Simply drop everything. Relax and let go.)
Walking (Duration: 20 minutes + 10 minutes rest)
Here your awareness is totally on your feet, as they touch the ground.
You can walk in a circle, or in a straight line of about 15 steps, going back or forth. You can practise this meditation simply going from room to room in your house, or out in your garden.
Eyes should be lowered, and focused on the ground a few steps ahead. Just as you watch the belly in sitting meditation, watch and be aware of the contact of each foot with the ground. If other thoughts and sensations come up, allow them. Nothing is to be seen as a distraction. When you have finished witnessing the sensation or the thought, go back to watching your feet.
PRANA SHUDDHI
ABOUT THE MEDITATION
This technique focuses on exhaling – deeply, completely. All our life, we focus on inhaling. Inhalation is life, exhalation is death. Life is tension, effort. Death is relaxation.
Because of our fear of death, we are afraid even to exhale! The emphasis is always on inhaling; exhaling happens because we can't help it.
Research shows that we simply don't exhale enough. Of the six thousand sacs in your lungs, only two thousand are emptied when you exhale. The other four thousand remain filled with stale air. That poisonous air stays in your chest, causing diseases, causing anxiety.
In this meditation, you stop inhaling and turn your focus on exhaling. You experience the opposite dimension. You experience the total emptiness of exhalation.