Control of Breathing  |  ESP and Mental Awareness  |  Manipulation of Energy

Exercising during meditation seems to most a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron if you will. But the mind is capable of so many things that few, if any, every fully realize its many facets. The types of exercises one can do during meditation have to do with coming to an understanding of your mind and body, how they work together, and how you can control them. Take for instance T'ai Ch'i. The movements that T'ai Ch'i incorporates are designed to develop a sort of "moving meditation". The subject attempts to meditate while performing the movements, and the movements are designed to aid the meditative state as well as enhance energy flow through the body during the movements.

There are many exercises one can do in a meditative state. The three main facets are control of body functions, extra sensory perception (ESP) and mental awareness, and manipulation of energy in oneself and others. This section will detail one exercise from each facet.

To begin with, it is essential that you know how to control what happens in your body. To do this, you must have an understanding of how your body works. Everyone's bodies generally work the same, but due to medical conditions, bone structure, etc., everybody operates just a little differently. You can begin to understand others by first understanding yourself. Control of your breathing is the place to start. You have to understand that everything in your body relies on and is dictated by your respiration. We are going to start from there. The following exercises are put forth with the assumption that you can get yourself into a meditative state. If you are having trouble with this, review the first two sections of the Meditation chapter.

I. Control of Breathing

One would assume that since they are in a meditative state they have already gained control over their breathing. But this is not necessarily the case. It is true that proper breathing aids entrance to meditation, but once you are in a meditative state you can begin to learn about your respiration.

First, with your mind clear, listen to your heart beat. Make it the only thing you hear. Feel its rhythm, but do not necessarily pay attention to it. Just feel it. Everything you do in meditative exercises should be done with your senses, not with your mind. As soon as your mind engages, you lose your meditative state. You will have to get the hang of this during these exercises, so don't be frustrated if you lose your meditative state a few times.

Once your heartbeat is the only thing you can hear, feel your breathing. Is it shallow and fast, shallow and slow, deep and slow? Just feel it. Here is where the real exercise begins. Your heart and your breathing are directly related. Begin by making your breathing shallow and fast. DO NOT PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR BREATHING OR MENTALLY TELL YOURSELF TO BREATHE! Just do it! You will feel certain things begin to happen in your body. Feel, them, but do not pay attention to them. You will first feel your heart speed up. You will also feel your muscles start to tighten slightly, especially in your lower abdominal and upper chest areas as well as your shoulders and upper arms. Then you will begin to feel warm, especially in your middle chest area. After a while you will begin to feel like you have a lot of energy circulating in your upper body. The first place you will feel this energy is in your hands. They will be warm and develop a tingly sensation. You will experience the urge to move your hands or body to use the energy circulating in it. This will happen, no matter whether you feel it at first or not. All the while, you should be breathing shallow and fast, hearing your heartbeat speed up with the rhythm of your breathing. 

The point of this exercise is to feel what happens to your body when you subject it to different stressors or non-stressors in order to control your body's reactions to these stimuli. If you don't feel these things happen to your body at first, don't fret. You will feel these things more as you do the exercises more. 

The next time you do the exercise, make your breathing shallow but slow. You will still feel muscles tense up, but you will get warm slower. The tingling sensation will not only be in your hands. Energy will build slowly and fill your whole upper body with a feeling of power and energy. You may even feel like your torso is heavy. Again, you will feel like moving around. But you will feel like you have more control over whether you want to move or not than when you were breathing shallow and fast. The exercise here is still to be breathing shallow and slow. Feel everything else that goes on in your body, but do not mentally take notice of those things.

II. ESP and Mental Awareness

Yes, there is such a thing as ESP, and it can be developed. Many people have this as a natural ability, but everyone has the ability to develop it. ESP, very simply stated and by no means fully defined, is a recognition of your environment on a subconscious level. The mind "sees" everything, but it filters out what it does not feel is relevant to whatever task is being performed at that moment so that you can concentrate more fully on the task. Just because you do not notice the bird sitting in the tree chirping as you are talking to someone or listening to their response to you does not mean that your brain has not recognized and registered it. Your lack of attention to this is due to your brain filtering out what it has decided would most likely be a distraction. Thus, the old quip, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?", could be restated as, "If a tree falls right next to me and I don't hear it, does it make a sound?". The answer is that it does, your brain just decided that it was irrelevant to whatever you were doing at that moment, and does not perceive it as a threat, so you ignored it. This is what is called selective hearing.

The problem with selective hearing is that everything in your environment dictates what occurs each and every moment. There is a timing to everything around you that your mind reacts to and causes your body to adjust to in certain ways. If you are not aware of these things, you are missing the "big picture". Once you realize this, you can begin developing your awareness.

Some places have sensory depravations rooms or chambers to assist with the development of ESP and awareness. Most people, however, do not have this luxury so a room with as few things and as much quiet as possible will be just fine.  This room should preferably be a familiar room, one in which you feel totally safe.

Once you are in a meditative state, take inventory of your senses. What do your eyes see? What do your ears hear? What does your nose smell? What does your mouth taste? What does your skin feel? Everything generates energy that at least one of your senses will be able to identify.

Now pay attention to the overall feeling in your body. Are you relaxed, or is there still a little tension in your body or mind? If you have some tension, which sense is causing the tension? If something you see is sharp or has sharp corners, you may tend to feel a little uneasy, especially if that object is close. If something you hear is high-pitched, you may feel uneasy. If you have anything with a fairly strong alkaline or acidic smell, you may feel uneasy. If something you are touching is coarse or rough, you may feel a bit uneasy. Pay attention to how everything affects your body individually.

Once you achieve some mastery of this, you will understand the application that can be made to reducing stress. If you are able to identify stressors in your environment, you can remove them or reduce their effects. Most people know this as the art of Feng Shui. This is a very real science, and once you learn how things in your environment effect you and how effect them, you will discover how to live more harmoniously and with less stress.

Ready for the next step? At some point in your exercises, you will almost inevitably be interrupted. Feel the effect of various interruptions on your different senses - someone walking in the room, the phone ringing, food being cooked, someone touching you. How does your body react? How does each sense react?

The more aware you become of how your senses, the more acutely you will will feel and react to things that affect them. You will see things with more detail, hear things that you thought were impossible to hear, smell the intricacies of food and other things in your environment, and feel the movement of the slightest breeze.

II. Manipulation of Energy

Yes, chi is real. What is it? It is an energy that moves in each of us. Some define it as our life-force. Others believe it is an electrical field our bodies generate. I have defined it as associated with each of your body's systems - circulatory, respiratory, digestive, etc. Energy moves in your body different ways according to the well-being of each of these systems, but it moves individually in each of these systems as well. Energy moves through your blood, in your breathing, in your muscles and organs. Thus it cannot be defined as a whole without being recognized for its parts.