Meditation Options

There are too many meditation techniques to mention from relaxation, mindful, energy raising/chakra working, pathworking to chi kung or other martial art types of meditations. For me, I primarily use mantra japa (repetition of mantras) and void meditation with the primary purpose of controlling the patterns of my mind by overriding it with a mantra of my choice.

My full meditation routines is well over an hour which usually starts with bardon's pore breathing meditation to ground myself for up to 5 minutes, a void meditation for around another 5 minutes to further focus the mind, then I'll grab my rudraksha mala (prayer beads) and mentally chant the mantra "nama shiva ya" for one mala (108x), sometimes for 3 rounds. Then I'll do the mantra japa of a specific (and longer) mantra for 3 malas/3x108 (which takes about an hour to complete) and finally close again "nama shiva ya" mantra. Normally, these routines took me one and a half hour up to two hours which I do a few times a week. Half an hour the shortest when I'm not in the mood (IMG:style_emoticons/default/13.gif)

At first, it is a challenge to just sit there with my asana since the pain and that barrages of irritating nudges of discomforts from my guts urging me to quit and go back to my comfort zone is overwhelming. With time and persistence, I managed to be able to make a little boxes/room/partitions in my mind where I can literally seal and contain these illusions of pains and discomfort there. It does seperates itself from me. There seemed to be two of me. The whining one and the wise ass chanting away single mindedly:D Does the pain really gone? Not quite and it will come back full force with only a slight thought of it, and all I did is to suppress it is with overriding/barraging it back with a single dominant - a more powerful and disciplined thought. That's the way you do it! I said to myself and I can imagine if I ever be in a torture camp, I already know and practice the pain management techniques (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

On mantra japa, in my experience - surface thoughts will naturally starts and persistently try to sidetrack me from "inflaming" myself with the mantra, but this will become less with persistent practices. By inflaming myself with the mantra I mean that I think nothing but the sound of the mantra. I hear it vibrating and expanding in my astral ears. I single-mindedly think nothing else but the sound of the mantra and the mala to keep track of the rounds. Keeping the tounge s t i l l from even moving a a bit to recite it and solely hear and feel the thoughtforms of my mind work to weave the mantra thus building up in power.

Once I did attempt to complete a 9pm-5am nonstop meditation but 3 hours which is the longest meditation I can withstand (the pains of the asana) before I have to stand up and relax the muscles and let the blood flows before continuing with it. I was 30 minutes short and finished at 4.30am with lots of muscle cramps and strains, mind farts (ie. oooh... what was the mantra? which part of the mantra was that again? how many beads did I missed while my mind wanders off?) and a variety of different asanas change to help ease the pain. In the end, it was truly like trying lifting a weight - literally a mind weight, I can no longer lift. My mind was really tired and exhausted for lack of meditation practice back then. A failure, but, for a full week afterward I did get the benefit of awakening a LOT more fresher, focused and awake! after for only 5 hours of healthy sleep, before my body and mind gradually reverting back to my lazy 7-8 hours of regular night sleep.
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How about sharing your own routines and your experiences?

My routine of late has been the Vajrasattva Meditation Practice, also called the Dorje Sempa Meditation Practice. This involves four stages of visualizations accompanied by the repeated recitation of Vajrasattva's Hundred-Syllable Mantra. Since I make a point to do one full mala of mantra recitation, along with setting the motivation and dedicating the merit, this practice takes me close to an hour to complete every night.