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Self-Help: Meditation

We've got our chakras aligned, our third eye wide open and we're sitting cross-legged on the floor. Next stop, total inner peace.
Last updated: 2015-11-09
In an attempt to reverse the downward spiral of your mental and physical wellbeing, we bring you suggestions of classes, sporty things, team events, volunteering and educational stuff that might just pull you out of that boozy tail-spin.



Week 2: Meditation


This week we checked out Darshana, a yoga school set up about a year ago by the people who own Annamaya, the vegan restaurant on Taojiang Lu. Darshana is right behind the restaurant, through the white gate on the left there.



They run yoga every day, but there are meditation classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, and a 90-minute session of Sanskrit chanting every Sunday morning. The owners also arrange foreign yoga and meditation trips – a recent one went to Nepal – and monthly meditation gatherings. Plus, Annamaya’s vegan food is an edible continuation of the wellbeing principles that are taught out the back.

We joined a Monday class, which is pranayama meditation – that’s a Sanskrit work that means “extension of breath” or “extension of life force.” For those who haven’t seen Star Wars, the force is the energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.



What you need


Comfortable clothes. Clothes you can sit down in without squeezing your bits and bobs. Clothes that are warm enough – it’s a bit chilly in the room.

Who goes


Our class had four other people, three Japanese girls and a Chinese girl. We’d guess they were regulars at Darshana’s yoga classes. They were young and focused – on life’s journey, but traveling on a more healthy and spiritually connected path than the road of excess that most of us walk.



What happens


The Darshana studio is inside an old lanehouse. Take off your shoes and head upstairs to a candle-lit attic. The teacher will have laid out some yoga mats. Sit and chill while the other people arrive. Cross legs. Purse fingers. Contemplate the void.

When everyone’s arrived, the teacher leads you through some breathing exercises. He’s a Slovakian guy called Matej Jurenka who also teaches yoga at Darshana. The first half of the 90-minute class is spent on various breathing and stretching exercises. Quite a lot of it looks, to my untrained eye, like yoga.



Jurenka explains what we’re doing and why. These are exercises that will open our bodies and minds and prepare us for meditation. He talks of chakras. He hands out crystals and we hold them to our foreheads and visualize beams of brilliant white light. Traffic rattles past outside.

Warmed up and ready, our bodies are prepared to connect with the life force that created the universe. We sit cross-legged and visualize a flow of energy rising up in our bodies and forming points of light around us. Breathe. Visualize. Points of light. We sit like that for 20 minutes. The room is quiet and dim. It smells of aromatic oils. It’s been a long day and it’s hard not to nod off.

For the final 20 minutes of the class, we lie underneath blankets with our eyes closed while Jurenka plays soothing music with Tibetan singing bowls and a twangy thing like a Jew’s harp, instructing us to clear our minds or visualize patterns of light. It’s relaxing and warm under the blanket. Too relaxing. Sleep overcomes me.

Afterwards I felt calm and chilled, happy and positive. Oneness with the universe remains tantalizingly illusive, but this is just one class, and every long journey begins with a single step.



How much of your life will this take up


Jurenka says even one 90-minute session a week will help foster a steady mind, strong will-power and sound judgment. Whether you think aligned chakras are the gateway to life’s impossible mysteries of not, it feels good to lie still in a dim room and give yourself half an hour of peace.

Of course, you could spend 90 minutes at home sitting quietly by yourself but, as we all know, it takes an unusual amount of willpower to sit somewhere quiet and do nothing. Sometimes it takes a paid class to make you do that.

How much does it cost


Drop-in for 200rmb or buy a month pass that gives you unlimited access to all Darshana’s yoga and meditation sessions for 1580rmb, 3300 for three months or 7888rmb a year. There are some March promotions on now that get you a month unlimited for 1380 or drop-in classes for 168rmb.



Plus points


Don’t need any kit. Don’t need to get sweaty. Possibility of achieving total inner peace and spiritual enlightenment: tick. Classes are genuinely relaxing and offer a brief window of calmness and quiet, and this has got to be good for you, long term.

In addition, you’re going to meet some gentle people here, and hanging out with this crowd might lead to other lifestyle changes, a better diet, less booze, vegetarianism, increased levels of goodwill to your fellow man. All that good stuff.

Minus points


You’re exercising your mind, but you’re not going to burn off any calories so this won’t replace the gym. Clearly, this is not an activity for the cynical and you’ll need to go in with an open mind and a positive attitude. It’s also sort of pricy for what you’re getting, but the money goes to a cool community of people who are clearly more interested in making the world a better place than minting hells coin, so you can assume the cost finds its way to something worthwhile.


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