This guide is created using the guidance of Swami Sarvapriyananda on how to improve your meditation. These ten points are the groundwork — small, repeatable habits that, over a lifetime, quietly turn practice from effort into effortlessness.
I have also added some of my own personal notes from experience, which could be helpful for those who are getting deep into the meditation.
1. Regularity
Meditate every day. Begin early in the morning to open the day, and sit again toward the end of it. If you can manage a third session, add one around noon. What matters most is that it happens daily — consistency outweighs duration.
Waking up at Brahma muhrat for morning meditation could be really rewarding. Here is why
Notes from Harsh:
For me, since I have a kid at home, there was a time when I was waking up early (basically finish sadhna before he wakes up) in the morning around 4:30, and those days the meditation was happening without much struggle. I was also fortunate that I had a meditation centre close to my house. What I used to do is wake up, freshen up, drive to the meditation centre (which is 10 minutes away), meditate there, and then come back home. It added an extra 30 minutes, but it was really rewarding for dropping deep into the meditation in the right setting.
Also, one of the challenges which I often felt when trying to be regular with my early morning routine is to sleep early, as I am following the Ayurveda way of living. For this, what I did was I first managed my sleeping time, so I tried to hit bed by 9:00 PM and make sure that my dinner happens around 7 PM (After 6-7 Meditation). This basically gave me a two-hour window after eating where I can do some walking, light reading or writing to take care of the body and support the digestion.
2. A fixed time
Choose a set time and hold to it. We are creatures of habit, and the mind learns the hour. Over the years, that hour alone will begin to carry you into deep meditation, and what once felt routine and mechanical becomes effortless. This is a lifetime practice, and this steadiness becomes one of your greatest assets.
3. A fixed place
Set aside a shrine or a sacred spot used only for meditation — a small room, or a corner of one. Keep a photo, a rosary, or whatever you hold sacred. Over time the place absorbs the vibration of your practice and becomes your doorway to inwardness.
Notes from Harsh:
It would be useful if you use that meditation space for nothing else, and the reason for this is that everything is energy, and if you use a particular space for a particular activity, that space is getting that particular kind of energy. Now imagine if one day you’re looking to relax or just connect with your being. You can simply go to the same place where you meditate regularly and sit even for 5-10 minutes, and it would help you to reconnect with yourself.
Also, you can make that space personalized by using the statues, any incense stick, crystals or essential oil that you want to keep around, or other objects that you can use to purify the space or increase the vibration of the space.
Right now (July 2025) I’m using following:
- Amethyst Crystal (calm an overactive mind, ease anxiety, and activate the Third Eye Chakra)
- Moonstone (Supports my sunsign)
- Cloth with Sacred geometric pattern
- A statue of buddha
And this is why using the same meditation cushion could be really rewarding.Especially for people who travel a lot, using the same meditation cushion basically carries your vibrations when you’re in a deep meditation state. Even when you are traveling, you can just sit on the same meditation cushion. It helps you to get into deep samadhi quickly.
Another trick that I often use when I am traveling is I try to find a meditation or yoga center around me, or even a temple around me. Or if I am in a hotel, I would prefer going to a yoga studio if they have. The idea is that in these places the probability of doing worldly things would be lower, and there would be a vibration which is conducive for meditation or even yoga.
4. Feed the positive
Feed your positive thoughts. Feed the good wolf, not the bad one; when a negative thought arises, gently replace it with a positive one. Keep images of the divine — of God and the Goddess — where you can see them. Read the life stories of those who have walked the path to enlightenment.
Notes from Harsh:
Another way to look at it is that we are thinking all the time, sometime knowingly and sometime unknowingly, and as you meditate, you get to a state where you are observing your thoughts. And here you have to differentiate between your skillful thought and unskillful thought. Sometimes you would have thoughts which are skillful thoughts, so you can build on those skillful thoughts. At the same time, when there are unskillful thoughts, you can let go of those thoughts, like the way they have entered. You can let them release.
I have often found some benefit when dealing with unskilled thoughts, which are regular, by applying the technique of IFS.
5. Avoid bad company
Seek out holy company and like-minded people. When they aren’t near, immerse yourself in books, talks, and teachings instead. Social media feeds the bad wolf directly. Materialism, too, is a kind of bad company.
Notes from Harsh:
There is a famous saying that you are the sum of the five people you hang out with. And when you’re meeting somebody and if you don’t like their habits or their ideas of life, it would be best to keep your meeting limited to the goal of the meeting and do not build upon it. At the same time, when you are meeting somebody for a particular goal but their idea of life or their outlook towards life is something that you really enjoy, it would be a good idea to build a better relation with such people.
If you are doing meditation in a particular tradition, it is a good idea to be connected with the other people who are in the same meditation technique. As it helps you to enhance your regular meditation by being in the company of like-minded people.
For example, when I quit alcohol or smoking, or when my lifestyle changed completely, I became very mindful of the people I hang out with.It also means that I made some really conscious decision of letting go of a lot of people from my life. Even though it created an emptiness in some place, it was completely okay in long term and became very rewarding with time.
6. Avoid constant consumerism
Cut back on parties, endless engagements, too many transactions, and eating out too often. Ask yourself honestly: what is it you truly want in life — and does the way you spend your days actually point toward it? If it is spirituality you want, let your choices reflect that.
Notes from Harsh:
And this part would come naturally to you as you start getting deep into your meditation. A lot of beliefs, a lot of conditioning, a lot of programming will automatically break. If you are starting a deep sadhana, it would be a good idea to consciously stop it or cut it from your life.
If you cannot remove it completely, that is also ok, but reduce the amount of your engagement with parties or clubs or activities which do not really support your sadhana or your meditation. Think of this way: is somebody who’s trying to build muscles and going to the gym daily? He would first manage his food and his sleep to support his muscle building in the gym.
Similarly, when you are looking to grow in your meditation, you would be restructuring your life to support this goal.
Another biggest challenge which I have often found myself dealing with is my smartphone. It is such a dopamine hit, especially after a longer meditation retreat, that I get attracted towards the phone. It could be using AI, or it could be using social media. And I don’t have any problem with this unless they are being used at the time when it is not useful, or being used for the activity which is not going to yield any good result, or you can call it mindless use of the phone. And what it does is that it removes the presence from the reality which is happening in the moment. Also, using phone screen later in the evening disrupt sleep or early morning activates the mind energy way before your self energy could be enhanced.
So I bought a phone locker for almost two years before, and even though I don’t use it regularly, it has been a very useful companion for me every now and then. Especially after a meditation retreat, when I resume working, I do realize that I’m getting sucked into using my phone way more than I intend to. This is where I use this phone locker to put my phone into it for almost 8-10 hours. I usually put it at 7 pm in the evening and take it out at 8 am in the morning. Think of this as intermittent fasting for my phone.
7. Settle before you sit
Be quiet for a little while first. Meditation is not a trampoline — don’t come bounding into it. Approach it with detachment: set down all your roles, and only then meditate. And when you rise, don’t leap straight back into high-stimulation work.
Notes from Harsh:
Okay, this is very interesting because often, when we are coming from a very high active environment and we sit down for meditation, it takes a lot of time to really settle down. There are different techniques you can use to settle down your mind and body before getting into meditation, or consider that process itself as a part of your daily meditation. So, for example, doing something like child’s pose or cat-cow stretching to support the body and doing alternate nostril breathing to support the mind before dropping deep into your meditation could be really helpful.
I’ve also been told by an Ayurveda practitioner to do humming after your meditation sitting to tone the vagal nerves.
8. Take care of your posture
Relax first, and take a minute or two to release the tension you are holding. Settle onto your sitting bones, and gently lengthen the back, the neck, and the shoulders.
Notes from Harsh:
I actually added yoga into my day-to-day life to strengthen my asanas, and over time I realized there are many more benefits of yoga, which one would realize as they practice regularly. But over time, it helped me to understand this body and prana in a deeper way. And also I realized, straight away, when I’m sitting for longer meditation, it would be a good idea to do certain asanas to relax the muscles.
9. Yearning
Let there be genuine longing. “I really want God-realization” — that ache for the mighty, sweet Lord is itself the fuel of the whole practice.
Notes from Harsh:
Call it God Realization or Self Realization, but having that desire to be connected to your higher self could be really helpful. Especially, there are days when there are highs and lows of life. When we are actually connecting, when we are putting this desire every day, when sitting for meditation to connect with our higher self, it basically disconnects us from our worldly activity and brings us back to our inner self quickly.
So, after doing asanas and some pranayama before meditation, I usually pray to the higher self to bless me with their wisdom for this meditation. This is a daily practice. I try to do it every day. Instead of making it mechanical, I try to change the request for this connection.
10. Seek an enlightened person or company of wise, awaken, realised being
Come into the presence of a genuinely holy person, and hear the teaching directly from them.
Notes from Harsh:
In my Vipassana journey, when I was serving at the centre, it was really rewarding to be with the teachers. Many of the teachers who have been practicing meditation for a long time helped me to see things from a different lens. They also helped me to understand my own meditation practice and what changes I should be making, and that helps a lot in the meditation itself. But meditation is not only on the cushion, it is also off the cushion, and this is also what we learn when we are hanging out with the Self-Realized and Enlightened person or even the yogis/yoginis or the people who live a very sattvic life kind of echo the part of us which could be really rewarding for our spiritual growth.
Over to you:
I hope this article has helped you to learn about different things you can do before settling in for meditation to go into deeper aspects of meditation. I would also invite you to share your habits and techniques that you would like to share with me and the world.