Root to Crown: Let’s Sit

The first two days of every phase ask us to move. The third asks us to sit. It is the phase we feel what remains when we stop doing quite so much.

Before we begin those practices, I want to make a few distinctions. Meditation, mindfulness, and breathwork are often grouped together, and sometimes used as though they mean the same thing. They are related, but they are not interchangeable. Understanding where each one sits can make the practice feel less mysterious and take away some of the pressure to do it correctly. But first. let's start with meditation.

Where meditation sits within yoga

Most of what we call yoga in the West, in yoga studios, is asana, the physical practice. Whereas, in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, asana is only one part of a wider eight-limbed framework, that is broadly called as Asthanga or Raja yoga.

The Sanskrit word ashtanga means eight-limbed: ashta, eight, and anga, limb. Just noting that this classical use of the word should not be confused with the modern, physically demanding Ashtanga Vinyasa style taught in many studios.

The eight limbs are:

• Yama: ethical restraints; how we relate to others and the world

• Niyama: personal observances; how we relate to ourselves and our practice

• Asana: posture

• Pranayama: the regulation and refinement of breath or vital energy

• Pratyahara: the drawing inward of the senses

• Dharana: concentration; placing and holding attention

• Dhyana: meditation; a more continuous quality of attention

• Samadhi: absorption or integration

I want to point out an important distinction here: pranayama (breathwork) and meditation are related, but they are not the same practice.

Breathwork is something we do intentionally with the breath. We can also choose to sit, place our attention, and practice concentration.

The meditative state itself, however, is not something we can force; it may arise from that practice.

In other words, we can do the practice of meditation, but meditation, in the deeper sense, is also something that happens (to us). This distinction shapes every third day of the journey.

A few distinctions that help

1. Breathwork is not meditation

Pranayama is its own limb of yoga. It is not simply meditation performed with breathing, nor is it only a warm-up.

Different breathing practices can steady, energize, cool, focus, or soften us. In this series, we will often use the breath as a transition between movement and meditation. The body has been active. The attention is still moving outward. A period of intentional breathing gives us somewhere simpler to begin.

But there is usually a point at which we stop managing the breath and begin observing more openly. That transition matters.

Breathwork asks us to relate intentionally to breathing.

Meditation asks us to relate intentionally to attention and experience.

They overlap, but they do different work.

2. Meditation can refer to both a practice and an experience

In everyday English, we use the word meditation very broadly. It can mean sitting down to practice, the method we use while sitting, or the quieter state that may (or may not) arise.

The Sanskrit terms can help us separate some of those meanings.

One way of understanding them is:

• Dharana is the placing of attention: on the breath, a sound, a mantra, a sensation, or another chosen object.

• Dhyana is the increasing continuity of that attention.

• Samadhi is a deeper absorption in which the usual separation between observer and object becomes less pronounced.

These are not boxes we need to force our experience into. The distinction is useful because it reminds us that sitting down to practice and entering a settled meditative state are not the same event.

• You can choose to sit.

• You can choose where to place your attention.

• You cannot command the mind to become silent on schedule.

Please remember that a practice is not unsuccessful because stillness did not arrive. The work is learning to notice that attention has moved and, where the method asks for it, placing it again. Over time, what changes may not be the number of thoughts we have, but how quickly we are carried away by each one.

3. Mindfulness is important, but it is not the whole of meditation

Mindfulness is now used so widely that it can sound like another word for meditation itself. It is better understood as one important family within a much larger landscape.

Mindfulness practices generally cultivate present-moment awareness and a less automatic relationship to thoughts, sensations, and emotions. They are deeply valuable, and they will appear throughout this series.

But meditation can also involve:

• sustained concentration;

• sound and mantra;

• visualization;

• compassion and devotion;

• self-inquiry;

• sensory withdrawal;

• open awareness;

• contemplation of a question or teaching.

There is no need to choose one of these as the single correct form. They train different capacities and arise from different traditions.

Why practice at all?

There are at least two lenses through which we can answer this.

The traditional lens

The classical traditions give meditation a much larger purpose than relaxation.

Across Indian philosophical systems, that purpose is often described through ideas such as moksha, liberation, or the freedom from the patterns of misidentification and grasping that bind us to suffering.

The traditions do not all define liberation in exactly the same way. They differ on the nature of the self, consciousness, reality, and what is ultimately being liberated.

I do not want to flatten those differences, and at the same time, I do not think you need to adopt a complete metaphysical system before you are allowed to practice. I hold these teachings with respect, but also with humility. In my opinion, they give us a direction to consider rather than a belief we must immediately claim.

The practical lens

Meditation creates a little space around that process of thinking and the person who is doing the thinking.

Most of the time, we do not experience a thought simply as a thought. We experience it as truth, instruction, danger, identity, or prediction. We do not notice an emotion and then decide how to respond. We are already responding before we recognize what has happened.

Without asking us to withdraw from life or stop caring about outcomes of our choices, meditation gives us a place to practice caring fully without being completely governed by what we want to happen.

This is where meditation meets non-attachment.

We still choose. We still act. We still love, prepare, hope, and make an effort. But we begin to see the difference between participating in life and trying to control all of it.

So, overall the traditional and practical lenses are not identical. One speaks about liberation at the deepest level. The other speaks about how we meet a thought, an urge, a disappointment, or an uncertain morning.

This series will hold both.

There is no single meditation

There are many meditation techniques because attention can be trained in many ways.

There are also many kinds of minds, and even many states of the same mind.

A practice that feels stabilizing one day may feel inaccessible on another. Someone who is restless may benefit from a clear object of concentration, while another person may find that kind of effort agitating. Open awareness may feel spacious at one point and overwhelming at another. A body-based practice may be grounding for one person and uncomfortable for someone whose relationship with the body is complicated.

When a method does not fit, it does not necessarily mean meditation is not for you. It may mean that the method, the timing, the length, or the way it was introduced was not right for you in that moment.

Across the seven phases, we will work with several broad families of practice:

• Grounding

  • Using the body, contact, and breath to establish steadiness

• Sensory awareness

  • Listening, feeling, and noticing more carefully

• Concentration

  • Gathering attention around one point, sound, image, or mantra

• Steadying

  • Remaining present when discomfort, resistance, or impulse appears

• Open awareness

  • Allowing experience to arise without immediately narrowing around one part of it

• Compassion and sound

  • Working with warmth, relationship, resonance, gratitude, or chanting

• Inquiry

  • Examining the sense of self, the observer, and the assumptions beneath experience

The goal of the journey is not to declare one method superior. It is to let you experience enough variety to begin recognizing what different forms of practice actually do.

The shape of each third day

The details will change from phase to phase, but the general rhythm will remain familiar.

1. We will begin by settling in the body.

2. We will use a breath practice suited to the quality of the phase.

3. We will allow the senses to become quieter or more focused.

4. We will sit with a meditation technique.

5. Then we will leave a little time to rest and notice what remains.

Some practices will feel immediately accessible. Others may ask for more patience. You are not expected to master each method in one sitting. These are introductions, and some of them may become practices you return to long after the twenty-one days are over.

Before We Sit

Before we begin, please know that:

• You do not need to empty your mind. You do not need to sit perfectly still, and you do not need to hold yourself in one position after it becomes uncomfortable. You may close your eyes, keep them open, or let your gaze soften. There is no single way your body has to look for you to be meditating.

• Some days your attention may settle easily. On others, the mind may continue moving from one thought to another. You may feel calm, restless, curious, resistant, or very little at all. None of these experiences determines whether the practice counted. Remember, we choose to sit, breathe, and place our attention. We do not require any particular state to follow.

• Throughout the practice, the breath should never be forced. If a practice creates strain, dizziness, agitation, pain, or the feeling that you cannot breathe comfortably, we return to our natural breath. We may also choose a gentler variation, pause, or simply rest. Listening to what is happening is (a very big) part of the practice.

• Across the seven phases, the techniques will change. We will ground through the body, explore the senses, gather our attention, meet resistance, soften, open, and inquire. But the invitation will remain the same: to notice what is here without demanding that it be different, and to begin again whenever the attention moves.

So, I invite you to come with the mind you have today, your current energy, and whatever is already present. And that is enough.

Sit whenever you are ready, wherever you are. And I’ll meet you there.