Home & Sanctuary

Find Your Meditation Sanctuary at Home

Published on June 19, 2018

Article by Sarah Ban for Bodhi Tree

We pretty much all know by now that we should be meditating—twice a day. One of the smartest ways to guarantee a regular ritual is to create a dedicated area to practice inside your home, so you’ll actually want to be there and meditate. “People need a space to find a deeper connection to themselves, especially in the highly pressurized madness of the modern world,” says Guru Jagat, kundalini yoga teacher and founder of RA MA Institute for Applied Yogic Science and Technology in Venice, California. Here’s how to create yours:

7 Steps to Creating Your At-Home Meditation Sanctuary

1. Begin with intention

The most important thing is to create a space with your intention in mind, says Meredith Sloane, a Los Angeles–based rainbow energy healer. “All energies follow intent,” she explains. For meditation, an intention could be security, peacefulness, enlightenment or joy. “If you want to bring security in your life, for example, you put that [energy] out into the world as your intention and you’ll start attracting that sense of security,” Sloane says.

2. Choose inspirational objects

“Our physical space is absolutely, 100% a reflection of our inner space,” says Jagat, so customize it. The objects you choose don’t necessarily need to be spiritual, she says. “It could be artwork—I have record covers of the greatest musicians around my home,” and adds that every area in her house is an “altar of inspiration.” She encourages choosing whatever creates joy, energy and inspiration. In her RA MA studios, each corner is its own little temple with certain crystals, plants and flowers and pictures of the spiritual masters.

3. Make your own power vortex

“A power vortex is a place of heightened resonance for a certain type of activity,” says Scott Blossom, traditional Chinese medical practitioner and founder of Shunyata Yoga in Berkeley, California. There are places all over the world deemed power vortices, but you can also create your own inside your home. Jagat strategically built her RA MA studio on the 33rd parallel (an incredibly powerful vortex) and makes additional vortices inside her space as well. “Each little area I created in RA MA and all the pictures of the masters, they are little vortices that broadcast a higher consciousness,” she explains. Another great example of a vortex? The original Bodhi Tree bookstore in Los Angeles. “Bodhi Tree, at that place in time where that was, that became a vortex,” Jagat says. “[You’d] walk in there and you felt what was happening. It’s not location-specific; it was more about the intention of people gathering for spiritual purposes and the higher consciousness.”

4. Stimulate your senses

Meditation enables you to tune into all five senses—touch, hearing, smell, sight and taste—so your space should do the same. “The space that you create for your practice becomes a portal to spiritual inquiry primarily by the way it impacts your senses, so those are very important considerations,” says Blossom.

Sloane shares some of the items she includes to stimulate her senses:

  • Touch: pieces that feels cozy, safe and loving, like blankets or pillows, or pieces of nature like crystals, rocks, plants and flowers
  • Hearing: high-vibrational music, violin or a fountain with water
  • Taste: fruit offerings, like a tangerine or apple
  • Smell: a diffuser for oils like sage or palo santo, or a rosewater spray
  • Sight: clear out the space and remove anything you don’t love—especially clutter—and replace with meaningful items like photos of family, statues of deities, or candles for beautiful lighting 

5. Consider adding crystals

“If a crystal reminds you that the earth is unbelievably beautiful—and if that vibration does something for you, then you should use it,” advises Jagat, who sprinkled amethyst crystal dust underneath the floorboards of her Venice studio. Judy Hall—healer, psychic and author of the three volumes of the Crystal Bible—writes that amethyst is an excellent crystal for meditation: “It turns your thoughts away from the mundane and toward tranquility and deeper understanding. It can help you to recall and interpret your dreams and, when placed over the third eye, it aids visualization.” For a simpler crystal source (that doesn’t involve removing floorboards), try a Bodhi Tree meditation cushion with selenite crystals (known to aid in mental clarity and psychic abilities) sewn inside.

6. Pay homage to your teachers

“If you have a teacher, it’s beneficial to have a photo or reminder of the source of knowledge that leads to wisdom,” says Marla Apt, a certified Iyengar yoga teacher in Los Angeles. But a teacher doesn’t necessarily have to be someone who is a mentor to you in real life. Jagat, for instance, covers her personal space with all the masters, from Jesus to Paramahansa Yogananda, along with her lineage masters and teachers.

7. Keep it clean

All our spiritual experts underscore the importance of keeping your space tidy. “If you want to create a space that’s sacred, you want to treat it honor. It’s also about respect,” Sloane says. “You are leaving the outside world outside and stepping into a symbolic space.”

Published on: June 19, 2018

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