Samyama: Alchemy of the Heart

Near your breastbone there is an
Open flower.
Drink the honey that is all around
that flower.
Waves are coming in:
There is so much magnificence near the ocean!
Listen: Sound of big seashells! Sound of bells!
Kabir says: Friend, listen this is what I have to say:
The guest I love is inside me!
~Kabir
     ~

Samyama is an ancient meditation practice from Raja Yoga that unexpectedly appeared in my meditation one day about 17 years ago. I was unfamiliar with this form of meditation at the time, so I simply followed the detailed instruction I was given on the inner levels in how to turn toward my heart. This radically changed my life and my work with others, and the lives of the many it has touched, as you will see when you read what others say about Samyama below.

It is a practice and a path of direct experience.

Samyama makes it possible to directly experience life as it is, be in the present moment, and meet ourselves in our own precious hearts, no matter what is happening in any given moment. It is also a path and a portal to the realization of our essential being, the pure awareness that is the unified field. The practice also offers a profound level of healing for our deepest wounds. From my own experiences, as well as witnessing so many others doing Samyama, I see that it is an amazing gift of Grace that keeps on giving, endlessly, and an exquisite vessel of receptive devotion.

Samyama is truly Alchemy of the Heart. This means that when we learn the skill and cultivate the practice, amazing changes occur within our hearts so that healing of painful emotional states occurs and we open to the silence and peace of our essential nature.

The instruction given to me was simple: no matter what was arising, I was directed to bring my attention back to my heart and hold my focus there on whatever what happening in my heart. It sounds simple, and it is, once you learn the skill involved. We all can feel what is in our hearts, and we do. What we don’t understand are the subtlties of attention that are involved to activate the Alchemy of the Heart.

Once I began using the practice several times a day, I became more peaceful in general, and this was remarkable to me at the time, as I was going through a divorce. Ever since, I have used Samyama daily for meditation, self healing, for simply being with what is. My center of consciousness has shifted from head to heart, as it does with most of the people who practice Samyama daily.

Twelve years ago I suffered an unspeakable loss with one of my children, and it is by the grace of Samyama that I was able to meet it and continue to live with it. I truly don’t know what would have happened for me had I not had this precious gift of Samyama to get me through the hard moment. Still, when times are stressful, for me and for those I know who use Samyama regularly, it is the one thing that can take us to peace, whatever is going on. When we are peaceful, we have clear seeing, we are able to make better decisions and not take action from fear. Every action or decision that we make from the Heart, is imbued with love and presence.

In the first six months of practicing Samyama, I noticed that I began to automatically drop my attention into my heart, even when I was not sitting in meditation. I was doing it when I cooked, when I was impatient in the checkout line at the grocery, and with my clients. I began to direct my clients in the practice when they were experiencing emotional or physical pain. They were quick learners, they practiced at home, and they asked me for classes so that they could get better at this so-far unnamed practice.

I was using it for meditation as well as healing for myself and with my clients and students. I began teaching it to them, and eventually created and held two-year training programs for professionals in the healing arts. Before long, others in other professions wanted to join in and we found ways for them to adapt the practice for their work situations.

Now, 17 years after my first experience of Samyama Heart Alchemy, I can say that Samyama is a true practice of Alchemy. The Great Heart, the spaciousness which is formless and boundary-less, is accessible through the heart chakra or even the physical heart. When the sperm of attention penetrates the womb of the heart center, it will activate the Alchemy of the Heart and the magic begins. This is not spiritual bypass, as the purpose and possibility here is to feel everything fully, as it is, whatever it is, without having one’s attention split between feeling and the story line going on in the mind. This is where learning the skills of alchemy are essential to the alchemy unfolding.

Samyama is actually something we all do naturally at times without realizing it. It is easily learned and with practice, it deepens and becomes bottomless in its possibilities. It is also a very practical practice, in that we can do Samyama anywhere, any time, without formal sitting. Before long, it stops being a ‘practice’ and becomes a way of life, a way of seeing and being in our own human lives with all that Life brings. We can meet the mundane, the holy, and the horrible with grace beyond imagining.

It was a few months after I began working with this practice that I was reading the Patanjali Sutras and came across a few lines that described exactly the practice I had been guided to in my meditation. The description did not include the subtleties of direction and fine tuning that I was given in my meditations, but the general outline was there. The Patanjali Sutras called it samyama! I was so surprised to discover there was a name for this and that it was an ancient Raja Yoga practice. The three stages the Sutra outlines are:

1. Dharana – concentration, one-pointedness of mind
2. Dhyana – meditation, where consciousness shifts to become more diffused
3. Samādhi – the quiet state of blissful awareness, peace, spaciousness.

What Do People Say About Samyama?
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What Can Samyama Offer You?
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Training in Samyama Meditation & Healing
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© Sheila Foster 2009