What if meditation is more than stillness? I found a basket of colours and feelings waiting for me on my mat.

Today, my new meditation practice was focussed on peace.

The most evasive of intangibles: peace.

Can we define peace? Maybe the dictionary does give a hint, “the state of being calm or quiet”. Just like the blue sky where little white clouds glide away, welcoming colourful birds.

However, peace, like dhyan, is an evasive species. Blue does change shades often.

My eyes closed, I am listening to the instructor on YouTube and trying to visualise peace, cut off the noise, but peace only comes when I let nothing unsettle me. Which means I need a disruptor here too, someone or something which will cut off the noise so I can sink into peace. Well, since that’s a tough thing to find, I do have other colours in my heart and more techniques in my bag.

The one that makes me feel warm like amber is MSRT, Mind, Sound, Resonance Technique. On the surface, it’s easy peasy.

With the chants of Aum in the background, you let the rhythm of this sacred sound flow over each body part. Feel it permeating your hands, feet, face, head, arms, calves, inner organs. It’s like soaking in the entire cosmos, being enveloped in a cosy honey-coloured blanket. Personally, I feel it awakens a part of me that was probably sleeping.

MSRT is for my serious days.

On days the sun shines brighter, I give in to creative visualisation. I combine this with affirmations and feel the rainbow-coloured creative sparks engulf me from all directions. These little sparks often help me loosen a writer’s block, find an idea, or create an abundant identity full of happiness.

Once a week, I also do chakra cleansing, focussing on each chakra, feeling the chakra rebalance itself and glow in the colourful universal light. That’s like having all the colours on my plate, a sign of good health.

Grounding anchors me like brown roots going deep into Mother Earth. I normally sit on the ground, or do a barefoot walk before embarking on my meditation. I sometimes feel that I would come out of these sessions with lime-green branches.

Among the most likeable techniques is Yoga Nidra. I call it the true indigo experience. It goes right into the body to unknot the muscles and, if done with awareness, then the nerves also. I like doing this when I have more time on my hands. Sometimes, I drop off to sleep also.

Then there are the chants or mantras. I like the idea of taking a word or sound inward, repeating it silently until the mind begins to settle around it. These, for me, raise the energy, and I feel myself swirling in a silver spiral as the mantras begin changing my vibrations.

I like breathing in with ‘So’ and breathing out with ‘Hum’. That’s like taking in the sea green and breathing out the shiny turquoise.

Or even Aum, letting the sound travel through the body: A from deep within, U rising through the chest and Mmmm vibrating in the throat. If you’ve heard Buddhist monks chant Aum, you know how profound this can feel. This is my lavender experience. It makes me feel light and alive.

Sometimes, I practice naam japa, which is just silently chanting short, sacred words such as Ram, Radhe Radhe, even Jai Gurudev. Words carry enormous energy, so for me they are sometimes emerald, sometimes amethyst and most of the time orange.

Then, my absolute favourite is Vipassana, where you just watch your breath flowing in and out, and flowing within your body, head to toe in each and every body part, and then doing this practice in a dark room. I like the darkness because there is very little to distract me. There is nothing black in this, just the ability to absorb all the colours.

The days I get to go out in the morning, I meditate on bird songs and wind waves. If I am near a waterbody, then the sound of water. This is my green-blue gliding experience. The world and paradise melt into each other.

Everything is meditation if you put your awareness in it and start flowing with it, until you reach a point when you become one with it. I may not have become one, or still, but it fills me with colours of joy, and clarity of a mirror. There are no smokescreens.

Ambica Gulati is a journalist, senior editorial professional and storyteller with 26+ years of experience across India’s media landscape, including Swagat and Outlook Traveller. Her work spans travel, culture, environment, global affairs and visual storytelling.

Through Big World, Small Stories, she looks beyond the obvious to explore the people, places, encounters and ideas that reveal something larger about our changing world.

I also facilitate workshops exploring the art of journaling, understanding intuition, and cultivating our intuitive and creative faculties through reflective writing, creative exercises and simple practices for greater self-awareness.

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