Practice at Dawn

Last night was most satisfying. Recently, my meditations are rather shallow and a strange drowsiness is engulfing me everytime I try meditation for long hours. My master passed away six years ago. So there's no one to turn to for instructions. A week ago I dreamt of my Guru. This dream had a deep impact on me. I began to consider taking up the practices he taught me. He used to encourage me to meditate at midnight and during the hours of dawn. I looked around the house and found my rosary beads. After four long years last night I spent the whole night doing Japa. When I began the session, I had a splitting headache and feeling very ill. I continued the mental discipline with the rosary anyway. I couldnt sit straight because I was feeling too tired. So I leaned on a pillow and stuck to the practice.As the morning light appeared, I went to the roof and sat on an prayer mat. I started doing japa again with the mantra master taught me. I was now feeling a lot better. After an hour, I decided to do some pranayama. I was thinking about doing it for almost a week now, as I was feeling a loss of breath quite frequently. Anyway, I started with my own style, anti-acidity breathing. Next, I began doing Nadi-cleansing pranayama. (last time I did it some six years ago!) I had my armpit rest (Yoga-danda) to help open the proper channel. But I was feeling breathless. Some difficulty was there in the practice. I found my brass water receptacle (with a nozzle) from a shelf. I cleaned it; it was quite dirty. I went to the kitchen and boiled some water with a teaspoon of salt. Then I added some cold water in it. I poured this warm liquid into my snouted receptacle. After almost 8 years of being out of practice, I performed Neti. I put the nozzle to one nostril and tilted my head. To my surprise, the water came out smoothly through the other nostril. I alternated the nostrils several times and my sinus was clean at last.I went to the roof again and performed pranayama again. Smooth and perfecto! :) I completed 20 cycles, as tradition goes. The sun was up and sparkling now. I glimpsed at it now and then and did some more Japa. Happiness was engulfing me, my physical sensation was one of perfect well being. The wind carried a strange divine fragrance. Happy happy happy.

Eightfold Path

• Yama (Cleansing the character. Being truthful, honest, kind and so forth)
• Niyama (Increasing the mastery of will over the body by taking up vows.)
• Asana (Fixing a posture in which one can sit absolutely still for 3 hour. The yogi should feel comfortable and the spine should remain straight and perpendicular to the ground.)
• Pranayama (Breathing techniques to calm the mind and heal the body. It also increases concentration and the alkaline nature of blood.)
• Pratyahara (Withdrawal of the conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind from any kind of distraction and focussing it on a single object.)
• Dharana (Achieving some amount of one-pointedness. Its analogous to the concentration of sunrays through a magnifying glass.)
• Dhyana (The complete focussing of the mind-stuff on a single object. Its like a laser beam.)
• Samadhi (Becoming one with the object of meditation. To accomplish samadhi is to attain full knowledge of the object and have full power over it.)