Meditation for Beginners

This Master Class was created because in the 16 years that I have been personally meditating, I have never met anyone who knew what meditation actually initially was. In the 16 years that I have been meditating, I have stood at the sidelines and watched time after time again, people receive the WRONG information about meditation. Time and time again I have watched people become frustrated at both the notion and act of trying to still or quiet their mind. That isn’t what meditation is even about, yet people of the western world have been convinced that it is. This has led to people becoming deeply frustrated, or even worse believing that they cannot meditate the “right way” at all. When people get this frustrated, they tend to give up and many will spend the rest of their lives never attempting to meditate ever again, and that would be a pity. Meditation is such a beneficial practice for so many reasons, but these beginner exercises were created specifically to raise your chi (life force energy) power. Doing these meditations on a daily basis will strengthen your mind, body, and spirit in many ways. Please pace yourself with these exercises and take your time. You aren’t running a race with anyone but yourself.

What other benefits does meditation bring you?

Meditation can give you a sense of calm, peace and balance that can benefit both your emotional well-being and your overall physical health. When you meditate daily, you clear away the information overload that builds up every day and contributes to your stress.  These benefits don't end when your meditation session ends. Meditation can help you remain calm through your day and may even help you manage symptoms of certain medical conditions. I have taught these techniques to college students who reported that they were far more productive and focused during the semester they began meditating in comparison to their past semesters.

The MANY benefits of meditation can include:

• Gaining a new perspective on stressful situations
• Building skills to manage your stress
• Reduces symptoms of depression
• Increasing self-awareness
• Focusing on the present
• Reducing negative moods and emotions
• Increasing imagination and creativity
• Increasing kindness, patience, and tolerance
• Reduce and control anxiety
• Lengthens your attention span
• You can retrain your brain
• Helps to combat brain fog
• It can help you with breaking bad habits
• Improves the ability to focus and concentrate
• Improves mental functioning
• Helps you to build your inner strength
• May reduce age related memory loss
• May help with the fighting of addictions
• Helps to control pain
• Can help to decrease blood pressure
• It helps with insomnia, and you’ll sleep better afterwards
• Enhances your immune
• Enhances serotonin levels
• It lowers cortisol levels
• Reduces inflammation of all kinds
• Enhances your metabolism
• Improves digestion while you become mindful of what you ingest
• Improves cardiovascular health
• Increasing sense of connectedness
• Improves the relationships that you have with others by helping you empathize
• Teaches you how to self-soothe in a healthy way
• Improves your ability to make a decision
• Improves your ability to be more productive
• Helps to prevent feelings of burnout
• Helps you cope with trauma
• Helps you find your “flow”
• Enhances self-control and impulse control
• Changes how the body responds to stress
• Improves awareness of your body and its needs
• Enhances the connection between the body and mind
• Increases gray matter in the brain
• Helps you to become comfortable with stillness
• Helps with becoming self-aware which leads to self-realizations
• Helps you feel more grateful
• Helps you become more open to forgiveness
• Helps you find a sense of purpose
• Helps you learn how to manifest and create your best reality
• Helps you visualize your goals
• Helps you achieve enlightenment and spiritually ascend

What is meditation? Ask most people this question and they will have the tendency to say something along the lines of, “It is when you breathe deeply, and clear all thoughts from your mind”. This notion that meditation is a “clearing of the mind” is just downright wrong! It is easy to see how people have gotten this idea when the Oxford dictionary states:

Meditate (intransitive verb): to think deeply or focus one's mind for a period of time, in silence or with the aid of chanting, for religious or spiritual purposes or as a method of relaxation. To think deeply or carefully about (something).

There’s a reason why everything western society paints in the media (movies, tv shows, books on meditation, even this definition) is not proper meditation techniques or even an accurate depiction of what it essentially is. Imagine how much more powerful people would collectively be if they were awake. Imagine how much harder it would be to control a population of awakened individuals. There are reasons why they have hidden this information from us. Knowledge is power, but so is the ability to meditate! Meditation is beneficial for the mind, body, and spirit, in so many ways. Yet, it is also the foundation of all spirituality. It is the way that we commune with our higher selves. It is our link to the universal consciousness and the collective. Without the ability to properly meditate, one would forever remain stagnant spiritually.

What they have persuaded western society that meditation is, IS actually a form of meditation. What people don’t know though is that this form of meditation is considered a more advanced form called void meditation. Void meditation, being an advanced form, cannot be successfully achieved without the proper building blocks. ANY beginner who attempts this form of meditation often becomes discouraged when they realize that they can’t “clear their mind”. They often get discouraged to the point where they give up on the idea that they will ever be able to successfully meditate. That has been the entire point of deeply ingraining this definition of what meditation is into western society. If you try and you fail, you are likely to never try it again. This is what they want- to keep people away from successfully being able to meditate.

Foundational breathing exercises are some of the most powerful ways of amplifying the chi. These breathing exercises also stimulate the kundalini serpent and facilitate its ascension. There are many advanced breathing exercises. In order to perform these correctly and effectively, the basics must be mastered. Nearly all of the advanced breathing techniques are built upon the basics. Once you are adept in the basics, the advanced exercises will come much easier. Your chi is built in steps, upon solid foundations. It is imperative to proceed slowly and in these steps.

The following exercises will teach you proper positioning and way to breathe through the belly, versus the lungs. Breathe is life, and it is very important that you learn how to properly breath in the beginning of your meditation journey to start you off practicing the right habits. Please get in the habit of sitting lotus style with your spine straight, allowing the energy to flow easily and properly. You can choose to stand or lie down when you do these meditations, but please get in the habit of taking proper form- which is sitting lotus position. 

Yogic Breath exercise:

This breathing exercise is the foundation and one of the first taught to beginning yoga students.

1. Sit with your spine straight, you may also stand if you wish or lay down
2. Breathe in through your nose:

• Pushing out your lower abdominal muscles, fill the bottom part of your lungs, then
• The middle part of your lungs, then
• Your upper lungs

3. Hold for 5, 6 or 8 counts [whichever is most comfortable, without straining]. NEVER push this or strain yourself past what is comfortable for you.
4. Exhale with contracting your lower abdominal muscles, then your mid-section [lower lungs], then your upper lungs, until completely empty of breath

Steps 1-4 constitute one round. Perform 5 rounds.

Alternate Nostril Breathing exercise:

1. Place your thumb over your right nostril, closing your right nostril, and inhale through your left nostril for a count of four and hold your breath for a count of six
2. Switch your thumb to your left nostril, closing your left nostril with your thumb, and now exhale for a count of four through your right nostril, slowly and evenly.
3. Keeping your left nostril closed with your thumb, inhale through your right nostril for a count of four and hold for a count of six.
4. Close your right nostril with your thumb and exhale through your left nostril, for a count of four.
5. Keeping your thumb on your right nostril, inhale through your left nostril for a count of four, hold for a count of six, switch your thumb to your left nostril, and exhale through your right nostril for a count of four.

Inhale through left

Hold at the end of the inhale

Exhale through right

Inhale through right

Hold at the end of the inhale

Exhale through left

The above constitutes one round.

Notes: For those of you who are new to breathing exercises, you should do five rounds, but no more. It can take several months before you move on to higher numbers of rounds. Experienced meditators can do ten rounds or more. Remember, with all breathing exercises, less is always better, in other words, never push any breathing exercises or do more than is comfortable. You should NEVER feel that you are getting tired, as this is a warning to stop. Never hold your breath any longer than is comfortable. Pushing breathing exercises can be dangerous. It is important to relax and take your time with this exercise.

The above exercise is excellent to perform after performing healing work, or any working requiring an output of energy, as it acts to balance the energies of the soul. The above exercise directs the prana to the head and upper chakras, balances the ida and pingala channels [sun and moon], and works on purifying them for the safe ascension of the kundalini serpent. 

Humming Breath:

This breath is essential to mastering mantras (words and names of power). Mantras should always be vibrated, NEVER just spoken as words. Each syllable of a mantra should be vibrated. It is in the vibration and frequency that sacred words and names manifest their power.

To perform the Humming Breath:

1. Breathe in as with the foundational breathing, filling your lungs from the bottom to the top.
2. On the exhale, keeping your lips closed for this exercise, HUM the breath out. This will extend the exhale. [Inhale fully, then sound HMMMMMMMM [lips closed] until you are completely empty of air].

The above constitutes one round. Do five rounds.

The following meditation exercises have been formulated specifically for the building of your focus and chi. These meditation exercises serve to set the proper foundation for more advanced forms of meditation. Without learning how to properly breath and focus, one will remain stagnant. Learning how to slow down your breathing quickly, while also learning how to hyper focus will come in handy when you develop past these beginner exercises. For instance, one cannot properly or easily do trance meditation without setting the proper foundation for it first. That’s not to say that you couldn’t try, but you would fail miserably, which would only discourage you from attempting it again. I don’t want anyone to get discouraged on this journey, so please pace yourself and have patience with your development.

Begin each of these foundational exercises by finding a calm space where you can quietly sit or lay to relax your entire body. If you don’t have a quiet place, try using ear plugs or listen to binaural beats while you do these exercises. You can choose to be sitting or lying down while you do these meditations. I find that they can be extremely effective, especially when you are having a rough day at work. Try to take five minutes to just sit quietly and do some foundational power breathing. Make these exercises a part of your arsenal for combating negative energies, and you’ll find that you master these skills even quicker. Try to incorporate these three exercises as much as you can into your daily practices. Remember, practice makes perfect and the more you practice, the quicker you will master it. When you become efficient at these skills at home, you can then take them on the go and do them while standing. I highly suggest that when beginning you start at home and practice your visualizations. Once you become adept at visualizations, you can take these exercises in public and do them while standing on a train in transit or while sitting on a plane. The auric shielding exercise in particular will become extremely beneficial whenever you are in public and are dealing with either a negative person, or negativity coming from a location.

Foundational Power Breathing:

The easiest way for people to learn how to train and condition their minds for advanced meditation is through the counting of their breathes. When you inhale and exhale, you should be counting. You should also be holding your breathe between the inhale and the exhale. For example, let's say you inhale for a count of 5, you then hold your breath for a count of 2, and then you'd be exhaling for a count of 5 to match your inhale number. The numbers should stay the same for the remainder of the meditation session. So, you'd continue to count to 5 during your inhale, holding for 2, and then counting to 5 for the exhale. Your count for the exercise should flow with ease and not be strained. Do what you feel comfortable with. That count could be 636, 545, or 727. The numbers don't matter as much as the consistency of keeping the pattern, so breathe in a way that's comfortable for you. Keep in mind this number count resets every time you meditate, so don't worry about sticking with a specific pattern.

Begin by finding a calm space where you can begin relaxing your entire body. You can choose to be sitting, standing, or laying down when you do this meditation. Next, choose the breathing pattern that you will hold during your meditation session. I prefer my beginners to start at a count of 636 but if this strains you in ANY way, please try 525.

1. Begin by inhaling slowly through your nose for your chosen count.
2. Hold your breath from your chosen count.
3. Slowly exhale for your chosen count.

The above constitutes one round. Do this for 5-10 mins daily.

Notes: During this time, it is very natural (especially for beginners) to have random thoughts come into their minds. This is perfectly OK, normal and it happens to everyone. Meditation isn't about stopping yourself from thinking or having thoughts, as much as it is about self-awareness. When you have a thought that takes your mind away from your count, allow yourself to have it. Allow the thought to finish being had. Once you've had the thought, let it go. THEN you revert back to the counting of your breath. Counting of your breathing here does a few things. Mainly, it teaches the body how to slow down your breathing. This from my experience is a problem that many people have- they don’t know how to properly breathe. This exercise forces one to properly breathe by having to slow down the breath, especially the exhale which is responsible for calming the body. It also helps with conditioning the mind to hyper focus due to the counting. Having to keep count sharpens the mind and senses. You know that you always have to revert back to your count and so over time, you find your mind wandering for shorter periods of time. Both these things will be crucial when you go further into deeper meditative practices. This technique also helps with anxiety and panic attacks by helping you learn to calm yourself. In fact, it is one of the greatest weapons in your arsenal for combating anxiety and panic. Anytime that you feel anxiety, remember to slow down your breathe!

Foundational Grounding Meditation:

Begin by finding a calm space where you can begin relaxing your entire body. You can choose to be sitting, standing, or laying down when you do this meditation. Next, choose the breathing pattern that you will hold during your meditation session. I prefer my beginners to start at a count of 636 but if this strains you in ANY way, please try 525. Begin your foundational power breathing, and after a few minutes you should be relaxed enough to begin your visualizations practice. This will be the first real visualization practice you do that creates an extension from your body. This will be useful when doing chakra work and its imperative to master these visualization techniques before moving onto that.

1.Begin with your foundational breathing and the counting of your breathes. Do this for a few minutes so that you can calm yourself and bring yourself into a relaxed state. Once you've slowed your breathe down enough, you can begin your grounding visualization.

2. When doing this, you're going to imagine thick and strong roots of a tree growing out of your base chakra (located at the bottom of the spine) or the bottoms of your feet (depending on whether you're laying down or sitting in lotus pose OR you're standing or sitting on a chair). You're going to visualize that these roots extend from you (and your root chakra) into the Earth and dig it's way deep- entangling itself to the Earth and anchoring you to it.
3. Once you feel yourself connected and anchored to the Earth you've completed grounding.

NOTES: This is a foundational exercise and once you master this aspect of grounding, you can do many things. You can visualize that all the extra activation energy in you gets sent through the roots and into the earth. You can take in light energy from the earth reversing that technique as well where you would envision light energy from the earth coming up into you through those roots. In the more advanced techniques, you would transmute your negative energy before grounding it, but let us not get ahead of ourselves. NEVER send your negative energy into the Earth, she has enough negativity being sent in her direction. There are other ways of cleansing yourself of negativity with the sun. Grounding is NOT a cleansing technique, regardless of what you have read elsewhere. The ONLY time you should send energy into the Earth is when you are receiving downloads and activations and the energies are resonating too high for your body, making you feel overwhelmed, disconnected, or dizzy. Grounding yourself helps with feeling more centered, especially during activation times. DO NOT send Gaia none of your negative energy, she has enough negative energy to deal with and if you could actually feel her, you would know better than to send her negative energy. Use the sun to cleanse yourself instead. Grounding is used to bring you back down to Earth after activations and back to center.

Auric Shielding Meditation:

This meditation is excellent for beginners as it helps to give one a feel for energy. This meditation also strengthens the aura when done regularly. I HIGHLY suggest that if you are empathic or clairsentient that you do this exercise every day, especially before bed at night as it will keep you protected from low resonating entities.

1. Breath in and out slowly like you would with foundational breathing. Once you have calmed and relaxed your body, you can proceed to your visualization.
2. Begin by visualizing your aura, bright and powerful, radiating around you. Think of Glinda the good witch from the Wizard of Oz. Imagine yourself in a bubble!
3. This bubble is a fortress! It is strong and built upon several layers of light. Breathe in and feel its strength. Exhale and imagine it expand and get stronger.
4. Begin imagining light around you, first golden light shining brilliantly like sun. This is the light of power, strength, and the light of the creator. Then imagine yourself in a bubble of silver light, which is the MOST important as it makes your light invisible through the realms. Then imagine yourself in a bubble of white light, the light of protection.
5. Repeat this several times, each time visualizing the energy becoming brighter and stronger.
6. Say your protection prayer. This prayer is very personal to YOU. It is something that you should write out for yourself and affirm on a daily basis. How you choose to pray or what you say is up to you, the only thing that you MUST say is something to the effect of: “I command that no low resonating energies are allowed to pass through or within my light.” Other than that, you can choose to commune with whomever you wish- guides, angels, ancestors but be mindful to call ONLY the ancestors who resonate within your highest good!

NOTES: This is the shit you NEED whenever you feel as though you are under psychic attack. If you ever wake up between 3am-4am with anxiety, do this visualization (imagine yourself in a silver bubble) immediately to cut off your light from the entities trying to attack you. This is also helpful whenever you need to cut your energy off from someone who’s giving you anxiety. Or if you’ve entered a place with low energy, you can protect yourself with this. To keep yourself and inner light protected at all times, please get in the habit of doing this practice! SO many issues occur due to a weak ass aura! This is probably the MOST important exercise that I can teach you and it is the one that I am a stickler about the most. It is extremely important to both protect your aura and strengthen it. A strong aura does not get psychically attacked only weak ones do. The stronger your aura, the less shit you deal with. Make your aura a fucking fortress!

When choosing to work with various colors for your aura, visualize the color becoming more and more powerful and vibrant. You will notice each color has a different feel to it. Colors can be used to attract according to their nature. Choose whatever other colors resonate with you! You can google aura colors or colors in magick, and to get a feel for what the different colors mean and how you can incorporate them in your auric protection.

Auric Protection of Space:

Not only can you protect your aura and fortify it with the auric protection meditation, but you can also do this to your sacred space or home. You can do this to any space that you would like to turn into a sacred space as well. I highly recommend that you do this to your home, or at least your bedroom. It will help to raise the frequency of that space, while keeping you protected while you sleep. I recommend that you get in the habit of doing auric protection of your space whenever you meditate at home and are doing auric protection. There are two methods that you can use to achieve this. The first method builds upon the expanding aura exercise, but the other consist of you mentally drawing a circle around your space in a clockwise position. You can do which ever one resonates most with you. The visualizations are a bit different though so I will explain further how it is done. With both methods though, you would start with auric shielding of your aura first and build from there.

1. Once you have finished your auric shielding, you can choose which method resonates with you and go from there. If you are choosing to expand your aura, then you would move onto the expansion exercise and begin expanding.
2. If you are going with the circle visualization, you’re going to want to do a different visualization. In this visualization, you will choose a “starting place”. I like to imagine light coming from my pointer finger as I visualize the drawing of my mental circle. I go around once in gold, then silver, then white lights.
3. As you are expanding or mentally drawing your circle, you should be saying the same protection prayer that you say when you are aurically protecting yourself.

Note: While some people like to expand their aura when doing this exercise and I think it’s great if you’re basically trying to make a place that isn’t your home a sacred space- like your workplace, I don’t like this method for protecting one’s home. When it comes to your home, I believe that it should have its own aura that you have created and fortified. The more you fortify your space, the stronger it becomes energetically, and low resonating energies won’t be able to stay in that space for too long. This is true of both spirit and actual people. Spirits are far easier to banish from your space than an actual person, but if the person resonates low, they can become visibly uncomfortable sitting in your space. At this point, a low resonating person can’t sit in my space for longer than an hour before they have to leave. They can’t stand my space, because it resonates too highly, and it makes them sick. They either feel it in their stomachs, or they feel anxiety from the higher vibrations hitting their physical body, either way they always feel like they need to get the fuck up out of my space and so they do. Every time. It never fails. The stronger the aura of your space, the more it can’t be invaded by low resonating energies. Think of your space as an extension of you. The same way you protect yourself, you also want to protect your space. If you are highly sensitive this is especially important to combat negative spirits from crossing your threshold.

The exercise is especially good to know if you feel as though you are always being drained by others within your environment. Learning how to open and close your aura is extremely important, especially when you need to close yourself off to a toxic environment or negative energies. This is a great meditation to keep in your back pocket whenever you feel unsafe and need to close yourself off energetically. This is also beneficial with expansion for those who are empathic or clairsentient because it allows you to cast out your energy net and receive downloads about those around you. This is a great way to figure out the people around you and discern their energy.

Auric Expansion + Contracting exercise:

This is a great way to learn how to control your auric field and how close or far it expands. People who have their auras expanded wide, usually tend to feel the most drained as their aura meets those of others. To do this exercise you will be focusing on your aura like in the auric shielding exercise.

1.Do your auric shielding exercise.

2. Feel and sense your aura. Start to breathe in energy from the front and back sides of your body at the same time to meet in the middle. Then breathe in the energy from the sides and top and bottom bringing them all to meet in the middle. The middle in this exercise is your solar plexus.
3. After this, visualize your aura expanding outwards like a balloon being filled with your auric energy.
4. Then visualize your auric energy being brought back into your center and contracting close to your body.

Note: With this meditation, you practice expanding and contracting your aura. This is extremely beneficial when your aura is too open or expanded. You want to bring it closer to your physical body. Think of your aura as a net, and when its open or expanded it tends to pick up so much more energy than when it is contracted closer to the body. If you have issues with being highly sensitive or feeling drained all the time, then this exercise will be especially beneficial for you.

The soul is made of light and the Sun contains all of the visible and invisible colors of the spectrum, which is also an integral part of the soul. Visualizing light as bright as the Sun and or sitting in the Sun during your meditation session is very powerful in cleansing the mind, body, soul, and aura of all negative energies. During your meditations and visualizations, if you see your aura as dirty or gray, and have trouble cleaning it, this can be a warning. Illness and other negative things appear in the aura before they manifest. Take extra immune boosting supplements and be extra careful of what you ingest for the next few days until it clears.

Many times, the aura gives a warning that won't manifest if the right precautions are taken. Tune into your intuition. Quite often, if there is a problem, such as sickness or if there is a lot of negative energy, one will have difficulty in visualizing, especially light energy. If this is the case, the please take a salt bath or shower as soon as you can. With practice over time and once enough energy builds up from repeated meditation sessions, visualizing the light will become much easier. Seeing the light in your visualizations is an indication that the visualization is doing its job. Regardless, whether one can easily "see" the light or not, you should do your best to visualize it, even in the most difficult of cases.

Now, with so much emphasis on the Moon, as an extremely powerful source of pure energy, the Sun is often overlooked. I have found the energy of the Sun to be the most powerful between 11am and 3pm approximately. This is when the Sun is directly overhead, depending on the time of the year and your region. When the Sun is rising, or setting is also an excellent time for meditation and sun gazing specifically as the rays are the least damaging to the eyes at this time. Start paying attention to the sun and where it is at what point of the day, especially when it comes to where the sun shines into your home.

The Sun has fire energy, the element of fire, which is the spark of life. This is a great source to use when doing a thorough aura cleaning and stepping outside into the Sun on a sunny day can work wonders. For this to be effective though, you must be directly in the Sun but don’t fret if you can’t make it outside! Standing in the sunlight streaming through a window can be just as effective. Start paying attention where the sun streams into your home as those places will be the best to do Sun meditations in. Doing sun meditation is easy, all you need is a sunny day. The next time there is a sunny day, sit under the sun and try out these exercises.

Sun Cleansing Meditation:

1.Close your eyes and feel the sun as it radiates onto you. Do your foundational breathing exercise to calm the body. When your body calms, you can begin your visualizations.

2.As you breathe in, breathe in the solar energies you feel into your aura and soul, engulfing your very being in the solar energy. This is easiest felt when you are sitting, standing or lying in the brilliance of the Sun.

3.As you exhale, visualize yourself breathing out all of the negative energy that has been stored in your body and aura. I like to imagine the heat of the sun burning away all the negative energy when I breathe it out.

Do this for 5-10 minutes.

Sun Charging Meditation:

1. Follow the instructions for the Sun Cleansing Meditation.
2. After you have cleansed yourself, you can now charge yourself. You can now charge your aura itself. Your auric body will be the focal point of your visualization here.
3. Visualize the energy from the Sun being absorbed into your aura with every inhale you take. Feel the warmth and powerful energy from the Sun enter your being. Visualize yourself pulling power from the sun and into the aura. Feel your aura being filled with the Sun’s light energy.

Do this for 5-10 minutes.

Note: That’s it, it’s that simple. This is what solar meditation is all about, really feeling that energy as it hits your face and skin! Bonus points if you can do these exercises while naked to fully feel the energy on your entire body. This is a foundational practice that we will be building upon later. From this mediation practice we can both cleanse and charge your chakras using the power of the sun and the chakra spinning method, which is a more intermediate way of doing Sun cleansing and charging.

Well Soul Fam, I hope that this information has helped you with connecting some dots. Remember, remain consistent because practice makes perfect. The more consistent you are with these exercises, the quicker you will acquire the skills. The more time you invest, the faster you will perfect the techniques. It will become like muscle memory, but ONLY if you remain disciplined and consistent with your meditation practice! Until next time… Sending mucho luz + amor always!

XoXo,
Luna Estrellas