Posted on December 15, 2009 - by Jennifer

30 Day Meditation Challenge: Day 9

Monday December 14, 2009: Since it’s Week 2 of the challenge, I decided to change a few things to see what effects the changes might produce. ¬†First, I am going to meditate during the day. ¬†Secondly, while I will continue to use chakra meditation techniques, I am using different techniques. ¬†My Monday meditation was about mid-day which is a nice time of day in my home yoga studio since light streams through the window making the room feel bright and airy. ¬†And it’s in strong contrast to last week’s meditations, which were all done in the dark. ¬†I practiced a bija mantra meditation where you use different mantra sounds for each chakra. ¬†The particular mantra you chant for each chakra actually creates a physical sensation at that chakra. ¬†So, for example, you chant “ham” when you focus on the throat chakra and when you make the “ham”sound, it causes you to slightly contract your throat muscles, facilitating a connection to the physical space where that chakra is located. ¬†I decided I would go through 2 cycles of the bija mantra, raising the energy up the spine, bringing it back down, and then repeating. ¬†On the first round, I repeated the sound mentally rather than chanting out loud. ¬†One thing I noticed right away was that the energy in my body seemed eager to rise. ¬†In the evenings, I had sometimes encountered a resistance to moving the energy up my spine while drawing the energy down was relatively simple. ¬†But now my energy seemed ready to fly up. ¬†I encountered no resistance as I moved past the throat chakra (a point of blockage in last week’s meditations) and when I got to the point between my brows and the crown of my head, I could feel a very strong pulsation in my entire head and face. ¬†As I held the energy there for a sort time, I began to feel a very strong pulsation behind my eyelids. ¬†It almost felt like a tic, an uncontrollable blinking. ¬†But, my eyes were closed and I was not actually blinking them. ¬†The sensation was very intense (similar to what I had felt at my heart chakra in Sunday’s meditation) so I sat with it for a few minutes and then began to descend the energy. ¬†As the energy moved down my spine, I felt an intense pulsation in my mid-back. ¬†The second round I chanted out loud so I could really notice how each sound activated the area around each corresponding chakra. ¬†Again, my energy was quick to rise and this time when I reached my uppermost chakras, the sensations were even more intense. ¬†The feeling was concentrated in the space from my shoulder blades to the crown of my head. ¬†In between the crown and the shoulder blades, energy seemed to start at my midline and radiate out in opposite directions, almost like wings. ¬†Then, after 5 minutes or so, the energy shifted and instead of radiating out from the midline of my body, it started to pulse in towards my nose. ¬†The physical space in which I was experiencing the sensation also shrank to just my face. ¬†So, I felt waves on energy pulsing in towards the point between my brows. ¬†And then it seemed that I could bounce or shift the energy from the right side of my face to the left side of my face and I began mentally repeating “left, right, left, right”. ¬†As I said left, the energy went left and vice versa. ¬†After playing with this sensation for a few more minutes, I moved the energy back down my spine and then just sat still for a little while longer.