Meditation for Prosperity

Five or so days before my yoga teacher training started, I was attending a ton of yoga classes, including kundalini yoga. I was still partially freaking out all the time about OMG WHAT AM I GOING TO DO AFTER TRAINING so when my kundalini teacher said, “We’re doing a kriya set for prosperity today!” I was all, “Yessss.”

She advised we do this for 40 days and then it would help bring us prosperity. I believe we’re all energy so anything to change my energy in the direction of prosperity sounded all good to me. I decided to try it. I was supposed to be done the day before Valentine’s Day, but I missed a few nights here and there so I continued doing it through last Friday. 

Now it’s over and I feel good about having done it for 40 or so days. Hopefully the ‘prosperity’ part will kick in soon. The actual meditation is past the jump!

Sit comfortably, placing your left hand over your left hand on your heart and close your eyes. For at least 3 minutes (11 minutes maximum), repeat to yourself: “I am bountiful, I am blissful, I am beautiful. Excel, excel, fearless!”

After that, flip both of your palms so the pinkie sides of your hands are touching and on your next exhale, flip the palms so the index sides of your fingers touch, and your left thumb is crossing over your right thumb under your palms. 

The word you chant, out loud this time, is “har,” which when pronounced correctly sounds like “hud.” So, for 3-11 minutes, chant “har” on your exhale while flipping your palms to face up and down. 

They say that doing this for more than 11 minutes is considered greedy, but 3 minutes is the absolute minimum.

Happy chanting! 

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Life-Changing: 5-minute Journaling

J and I made a resolution to start a habit of journaling for 5 minutes a day – not to each other, but on our own, and to be honest, it was his idea that he was doing and I piggy-backed on it.

Because I suck at journaling. Seriously, I have a gold journal that I bought at the end of December 2013 that I still have yet to fill in it’s entirety. It is 2017 now. BUT with my new habit of daily journaling, and recording my food diaries in the same journal now, I’m on my way to finishing it in the next week or so. Five minutes goes by really quickly. It feels like too short of a time to record all the thoughts in my monkey mind. 

Anyways: journaling for just five minutes a day helps me get my thoughts onto paper and it’s also made it much easier to write in general. I have another blog that I’ve written two entries for in the last week after posting maybe 3 times in the last 6 months. And my last entry about Warsaw? Completely in-the-moment. There was no planning and queuing of that entry. 

Another new habit that I’ve taken on is a kundalini meditation for prosperity. I’m on day 4 of the 40 day practice. I need it now more than ever before. 

If you can make one last-minute, semi-late resolution, I couldn’t recommend a daily 5-minute journaling practice more highly. 

Naam Sound Meditation with Gong

On Tuesday I was Googling meditation classes in my ‘hood and I came across a yoga and meditation studio on West 72nd Street called Naam Yoga. My usual meditation group (which I inexcusably haven’t been to in, like, a month) wasn’t meet until 7pm and I didn’t feel like killing time in the area of my office for that long.

I went home, cooked dinner (zucchini noodles and chicken with tomato sauce and mozzarella chunks, so good), relaxed for about fifteen minutes and got back on the train to head to 72nd Street.

The studio is on the second floor of a walk-up between Amsterdam and Columbus, and there’s dim-lighting and a zen vibe when you walk in the door. I was greeted by a happy yogi in yoga pants (duh) and I said I was there for the 8pm Sound Meditation with Gong. I filled out some paperwork and decided to go for the special offer they’re doing right now: $30 for unlimited classes for 30 days. Otherwise this one class would’ve been $19. Pretty good deal!

We all sat up and started a series of meditations that incorporated sound and movement while sitting on our blankets/bolsters/various other props. After a half-hour or so, we laid down and started to “go inside” and he started to play (?) the gong.

I may or may not have fallen asleep during it. All I can be sure of is that I woke up in a much more relaxed state than I went in with.