Building Skill vs. Long Meditations

Summary

April 30, 2021, 14 min

Why building meditative skill in short, comfortable sessions beats forcing long sittings. Pushing past comfort switches on the sympathetic system and breeds a love-hate relationship with practice; the Gita's Pandavas stand for the parasympathetic army to stick with. Recommends compounding skills and stacking short sessions with breaks in between.

In this video

Teaches

Skill vs time

Discusses

Kriya numbersSympathetic nervous systemBhagavad GitaParasympathetic nervous systemStruggle in meditationMeditation habitShort meditations

Mentions

SamadhiHRV ResonanceFour Proofs of MeditationSitting Very Still (SVS)Tranquil BreathFreeze ResponseOM Japa in the ChakrasDorsal Vagal ComplexFive Breath States

Key moments

00:00Short, skillful meditations versus purely long ones 00:43Two kinds of students and the goal of sitting six hours 01:50A better goal: a handful of kriyas into absorption 02:24Pushing past comfort wakes the sympathetic system 02:43The Pandavas as the parasympathetic team in the Gita 04:08How strain builds a love-hate relationship with practice 05:21Addictive practices: resonant breathing and the four proofs 05:48The risk of a habit of being half there 06:45Build skills one on top of the other so they compound 08:36Pick the Pandavas to win the war of meditation 09:39Bite off a comfortable chunk, then stretch and celebrate 10:29Want more? Stack sessions with breaks in between 11:23Students who sense that forcing time is wrong 12:02The building blocks and the seven steps playlist