Thoughtless awareness & Looking after yourself.

Dear All,

A key verse from an ancient book on yoga - The yoga sutras of Patanjali , is : " yogaś-citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ" - which means that Yoga is the arresting/stopping of the continuous flactuations of the attention/awareness; notice the connection between yoga and meditation. How is this realised in practice?

The reason you don't need to spend a long time seated in meditation is because all the benefits come, not from how long you can sit, but from whether or not you achieve, even for a few seconds, the state of thoughtless awareness ('Nirvichar Samadhi') - the ripple-less lake

The thoughtless awareness state can be achieved anywhere for a few seconds , for example, while queuing at the supermarket checkout, while walking to the tube station, while eating lunch etc. etc.

A tangible description of thoughtless awareness is : do you feel a gentle  cool breeze blowing at the top of your head when you pay attention there? If so just be absorbed in it for a moment. After a moment all your awareness is that cool breeze, and nothing else. It may last for a few seconds, but that is it , that is your thoughtless awareness.

If you can go into this state, during 'non-productive' moments of the day, you'll find it easier to meditate when you actually do your twice daily meditation practice.

Your secret resource is thoughtless awareness. If undergoing any immediate difficulty, problem or challenge at work or in your personal life, just go into thoughtless awareness and marvel at what happens next.


The first wealth anyone can have is their health. It's also been said that this body is a temple, so the least we can do is look after it. The vibratory awareness developed through meditation gives you an early-warning sign about your state and if there is an imbalance somewhere you can very easily correct this using the techniques demonstrated in class. So you have the means to understand and look after yourself that you didn't before.

Related to health, there's a whole branch of knowledge concerning 'food as medicine' (' you are what you eat'), called 'Ayurveda' . Without needing to go too deeply into the subject, there are certain principals of Ayurveda consistent with our own experience of sahaja yoga, which are easy to adopt and can have some beneficial effect to how you feel.
Here are a few:

1. If you tend to be lethargic/introverted then try more protein in the diet eg . chicken/fish

2. Look after your liver ('the seat of the attention') by moderating your intake of coffee (&tea) , and alcohol

3. Drink more water. Within the body water acts as a coolant, emolient, dissolvent, cleanser, lubricant. If we don't drink enough water, no wonder we don't feel so well - it could be low-level dehydration that's the cause.