Embodied Liberative Meditation

A Foundational 10 week course focusing on meditation through Yoga

(As presented by Noah Juian)

 with advice for weeks 11 and on

What to expect from this course

This self directed course requires 5-15 mins daily of your time for the first 5 weeks and never exceeds 30 minutes in a single day for the 10-week course. You will need a timer and a journal / phone note / or calendar for scheduling and tracking progress. It is recommended that, unless you have a pre-existing movement practice that allows for alternative options, you sit in a chair keeping the spine tall and alert for all seated meditation assignments. The benefits of meditation are widely discussed and are briefly mentioned below; I promise no “siddhis” (magical powers), since a calm, focused and non-reactive state of mind is a power attainable without any of the “tricks” that magic implies. If you follow the course, on week 11 you will know how to continue a meditation practice independent of external stimulus. Instead of a recorded human voice telling you what to do you may find it is now you that sits in the driver’s seat of future mental development.

While there may be great benefit to a relaxation practice; Meditation and relaxation are not the same thing. It may be helpful to consider relaxation as the first tool developed and implemented in building a meditation practice. Much as we know the difference between Stage 1 non-REM sleep and the REM sleep that can occur 90 minutes into a restful night, guided relaxations and meditation have different results affecting the brain and nervous system on different levels. The first four weeks of this course will develop an independent practice in achieving an alert sense of relaxation, an essential stage of meditation that the best guided meditations or apps look to simulate through timed cuing. 

Through āsana (posture) and prānāyāma (breath control) you will develop tools that will assist you in developing an independent sense of your state of being. Savasana (corpse pose, or total relaxation) will serve as an introduction to the next stage of meditation: pratyāhāra (concentration) Pratyahara is the main subject in many schools of meditation, an open awareness that doesn’t attempt to restrain consciousness but instead aids in developing the awareness of an observer that is independent of the thinker. Pratyahara is generally credited as the stage of meditation where existing habitual patterns become conscious. 

In our final week we will briefly touch on dhārana (focus) which might be thought of as the third active stage developing mental agency, āsana and prānāyāma formerly having built the mental but by way of the physical. From pratyāhāra where one takes in a peripheral view of the forest that is mind, dhārana will choose one tree to focus upon to the exclusion of all other influence that looks to impose itself upon the observer. With dharana ends the last practical phase of Yoga meditation and thus our course. 

Dhyāna and Samādhi, the next two phases of Yoga, while very interesting, may be perceived not as specific practices but rather as states of being entered into by virtue of developing a foundation of material such as that laid out in this course. As I suspect Dhyāna (union with the object studied) and Samādhi (union with all) are pointing to experiences elucidated in spiritual and religious text across culture they may likely show up as topics of inquiry in future courses and retreats.