When you hear the word "Meditation", what comes to mind? Is it chanting? Is it listening to someone's airy voice telling you to focus on butterflies, inhaling goodness and exhaling the BS? Or is it just too much to think about sitting still for hours?

Meditation is a practice and a skill. It is a way for your brain to detox from all those bombarding thoughts keeping you up at night. It's the tools you access when sh!t is hitting the fan and your body is going into panic mode. It's what brings your heart rate back down when you find yourself reacting to a situation.

No wonder there are monks out there devoting their entire lives to quieting their minds. (How else can they serve the world if their own minds are clouded?)

Take it from me, I am STILL trying to get the hang of it (and it has been years). But, don't worry if it takes you years (which it probably will). This isn't about perfection. It's about progressing towards your ideal version of "peace".

Meditation takes on various forms, but the goal is to realize something and/or to quiet the mind.

What Meditation doesn't do:

• It doesn't make your problems go away
• It doesn't make you a saint
• It doesn't fix you

No matter how you choose to meditate (or practice a meditative-like activity), you can get better with time and consistency. It's like working out at the gym. The brain is like a muscle.

What Does Meditation Have to Do With Yoga?

The original Yogis weren't doing vinyasas or crow poses. They weren't wearing tight and bright leggings, either. They were dudes. Guys with matted hair and intentionally unattractive appearance. They felt they were seeing the same patterns of world suffering, and when they realized they were a part of the problem they shunned desires and retreated away from civilization to meditate. For hours. And hours. And hours.

When you're sitting for that length of time, your body can go into hypertrophy...withering away. So, there was a need to integrate physical activity to keep the blood flowing. Every part of the body needed to be stimulated and kept healthy. This was the only way these guys could keep meditating any further.

So, Meditation came first. Then, the moving meditation of "Yoga (Asanas)" came after. The Yoga you see in studios, YouTube and Instagram (IG) is really more of a "modern" invention that incorporated calisthenics in order to be more appealing to the masses in India. If you're lucky, you can see some teachers still keeping the essence of meditation in their classes. If you've only experienced classes that treat yoga as a workout with loud music with fast beats that distract from your ability to meditate, then it's understandable why the two things may not seem connected. A solid thing to note is that your ability to meditate on the mat is what will keep you from injuring yourself. More on that later...

This module aims to teach you this fundamental skill, so you can apply it not only to your mat practice, but also to the way you handle stress, eating, and living the rest of your life.