Simple meditation techniques for profound changes in you.

Swami Satyananda Saraswati revolutionised yoga by making it simple, practical and scientific.

Here are some very simple meditation techniques that can be found in the numerous books he has written, like, Meditations from the Tantras, Yoga & Kriya, Sure Ways to Self-Realisation, Kundalini Tantra, ( all published by Yoga Publications Trust, Munger, Bihar).
The wonderful part is, you can devise and evolve your own techniques with a little bit of imagination & inventiveness. Moreover, you need very short time slots and can be done almost anywhere.

Before we go on to the techniques, just some hints on preparation, posture, etc.
Meditation can be done in any of the classic yogic poses, padma asana, sukhasana, vajra asana. But those who are not able to sit in these poses, they can sit in a chair, or even lie down in shavasana. What is important is that you are comfortable, relaxed and your spine and head are in a straight line. 

Breath awareness techniques:
1. Sitting quietly with eyes closed, merely watch each and every inhalation & exhalation. Observe the rhythm of your breath, is it wet or dry, fast or slow, soft or sharp, equal in both nostril or one is more open than the other. Is watching it bringing about change? If your mind wonders off, bring it back to the watching. You can do this anytime, anywhere for 10 to 20 breaths or for 3-5 minutes.
2. With eyes closed, watch every inhalation and exhalation at the nose tip. Apply same parameters like above to observe the breath at the nose tip. Do it for 3-5 minutes or 10 to 30 breaths.
3. With eyes closed, watch the passage of breath in your body from nose tip to lungs and lungs to nose tip as you inhale and exhale. Maybe read up on how every breath passes through the nostril to the lungs. For example, how the respiratory tract cleans, warms and moistens the air . From the nose to the nasal cavity, pharynx (throat), larynx, the upper part of the trachea (windpipe), lower part of the trachea, bronchi and the lungs ( which contains bronchioles and alveoli).


Body Awareness:
1. Eyes closed, become aware of your whole body from head to feet. Then systematically starting from the top of your head come down in slow deliberate steps to the different parts of the body to the tip of the the toes, at each part of the body become aware of that part and relax it. For example, start from  top of the head and then descend to scalp, forehead, both eyes, nostrils, cheeks, jaws, throat, shoulders, both arms, chest, stomach, hip, both legs. 
2. Chose any part of the body and internally with eyes closed examine it in detail. For example, the palm of your right hand. The colour texture of the skin of the inside of the palm, the lines on it, the skin on the outside of the palm, the shape of fingers and nail, the structure of the bones holding the palm together. Then shift to the left palm. 
3. You may look at your digestive system, the excretory system, the liver, heart, etc etc.

Visualization:
This is very important part of meditation as it also helps in all other techniques because most techniques involve keeping eyes closed. This is also fun practice.
1. With eyes closed try to visualise the most beautiful place you visited lately or any scene. Then recall each detail. For example, if you were on a beach at sunset, then visualise the the sun, the changing colour of the sun, the sky and the sea, as the sun went down, waves, the beach, the people on the beach, the sound of the waves, the sound of people, etc etc.
2. A book you have read. Try to recall what you have read with complete picturization  and every emotion and feeling the book evoked. Recall some profound sentences or aspects of the book and mull over it.
3.With eyes closed try to relive the happiest moment of your life or the most painful. Again evoking all the emotions, feelings, sensations, etc felt then.

Mantra chanting ( Jaap):
1. The simplest of mantra chanting or jaap is Om chanting. It can be synchronized with the breath in different ways, like, taking a deep inhale, then as you exhale, internally or audibly chant Om ( A-A-U-U-M-M). Or with every inhale and exhale Om.
2. Another simple mantra is So Hum. With every inhale, internally, mentally say the mantra So and as you exhale, the mantra Hum. 
OR one may chose any mantra from your religion like, Amen, Amin or Buddhist mantras.

These are all simple meditation techniques for which not much preparation or slots of free time is needed. In the daily rush of your work-a-day life you can practice these when commuting, taking short break in work, etc.

Meditation & your brain

The article puts together scientific experiments being done in some top universities of USA on the effects of simple meditation techniques on the brain thus resulting in profound changes in the very being of a person. 


There is a lot of experiential evidence on how simple meditation makes people feel peaceful, joyful with increased efficiency levels in mental capacity.
Now there is stunning scientific evidence to prove these experiential claims.
Here is some scientific evidence on how simple meditation techniques can have far reaching effect on the functioning of the brain. The touch word here is simple techniques which can mean just 3-10 minutes of simple awareness plus relaxation techniques, known as Mindfulness Meditation, Zen Meditation,etc.
Now, research by various universities in the USA have found that simple meditation results in "amazing neurological benefits right from changes in gray matter volume to reduced activity in the 'me' centre of the brain to enhanced connectivity between different brain regions." ( Forbes, Feb 9, 2015.) A point to be noted is that most of the subjects under study had practised few weeks or months of simple meditation techniques for the changes in the brain to show up.

Here is the list of changes tracked with the help of MRI & EEG

1. Sara Lazar, Researcher, Harvard University, subjected people to 8 weeks of mindfulness meditation and found increase in cortical thickness in the hippocampus, which governs learning and memory. Also, it affected certain areas of the brain that plays role in emotion regulation and self referencing.
2. Sara's team also found decrease in brain cell volume in the amygdala, the centre for fear, anxiety & stress.
3. Madhav Goyal, Researcher, John Hopkins, found that the effect-size of meditation on patients of depression, anxiety, pain was 0.3. This is impressive considering that effect size of anti-depressant drugs is also 0.3.
4. A Yale University research was both amazing & significant. They found regular simple meditation decreases activity in the "Me" centre of the brain. The default mode network (DMN) also (in)famously known as the 'monkey brain', is responsible for our wondering brain jumping from one thought to another when we are not particularly focussed on anything specific. Meditators are able to snap out of this because of decrease in activity in the 'me' brain and also new connections in the brain that inhibit the monkey brain activity which can be pointlessly exhausting.
5. UCLA School of Medicine, Eileen Luders, a researcher in the department of Neurology, published the following findings in the journal Neurolmage, stating several differences between  the brains of meditators and non-meditators. They made comparative study of the brains of 22 meditators and 22 non-meditators of similar age group and found that long term meditators had better preserved brains  than non-meditators as they aged.
6. Meditators have increased gray matter- making it more powerful & efficient at processing information, increased attention, better management of their emotions resulting in mindful choices.
7. Last but not the least, these clinical findings of changes in brain mass, structure and new connections matched with the subjective positive changes reported  by the people under study.
There is a separate write up on simple mindfulness techniques for meditation on this blog.