Index
Practices
Methods — what one actually does, across traditions.
- Asana
The yogic practice of posture — traditionally a single steady seat for meditation; in modern usage, the broad world of postural yoga.
- Bhakti Yoga
The yoga of devotion — liberation through loving surrender to the divine.
- Centering Prayer
A modern Christian contemplative method developed in the 1970s — a simple, accessible door into the apophatic tradition.
- Contemplative Prayer
Christian prayer beyond words — resting silently in God's presence rather than asking, thanking, or thinking about.
- Dhikr
The Sufi practice of remembrance — repetition of divine names or phrases to orient the heart toward God.
- Dream Yoga
The Tibetan Buddhist practice of bringing awareness into sleep and dream — to recognize the dream as dream, and the waking as also dream-like.
- Fasting
The voluntary foregoing of food or drink — a near-universal contemplative practice for sharpening attention and loosening the body's grip.
- Hesychasm
The Eastern Orthodox tradition of inner stillness and continuous prayer — culminating in the experiential vision of divine light.
- Japa
Devotional repetition of a name or mantra — often counted on beads, continued until it continues itself.
- Jnana Yoga
The yoga of knowledge — liberation through direct inquiry into the nature of the self.
- Karma Yoga
The yoga of selfless action — doing one's work fully while releasing attachment to its fruits. The Bhagavad Gita's defining teaching.
- Kirtan
Call-and-response devotional singing — the public, ecstatic heart of the Bhakti tradition.
- Koan Practice
The Zen method of sitting with a paradoxical phrase or question until conceptual mind breaks open.
- Lectio Divina
Sacred reading — the Benedictine practice of slow, contemplative engagement with scripture in four movements.
- Mantra
A sacred sound, syllable, or phrase — repeated as a vehicle for concentration and as a presence in itself.
- Meditation
A family of practices that train attention and awareness — cultivated across every major contemplative tradition under many names.
- Metta
Lovingkindness — the Buddhist practice of generating a specific quality of unconditional warm regard for self and others.
- Pilgrimage
A deliberate journey to a sacred place — the oldest and most widespread contemplative practice, making the body trace what the soul seeks.
- Prajnaparamita
The perfection of wisdom — a body of Mahayana sutras and a central Mahayana practice, the direct seeing of emptiness.
- Pranayama
Yogic breath discipline — direct work with prana, the life-force, through regulated breathing.
- Raja Yoga
The "royal" yoga — the systematic meditative path codified by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras.
- Retreat
A deliberate withdrawal from ordinary life — for silence, for practice, for encounter — in a container that makes deep work possible.
- Satsang
Company of the true — a gathering with a teacher or community oriented toward awakening, itself held as a transformative practice.
- Self-Inquiry
The direct practice of turning attention back on the "I"-thought to investigate its source. Taught by Ramaṇa Mahāṛṣi as the shortest path to the recognition that what you are seeking is what you are.
- Seva
Selfless service — a core spiritual practice in Hindu, Sikh, and Bhakti traditions.
- Shamatha
Calm-abiding — the Buddhist practice of developing stable, tranquil concentration on a single object.
- The Jesus Prayer
The hesychast practice of continuously repeating "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me" — a central method of Eastern Orthodox contemplation.
- Tonglen
A Tibetan Buddhist practice of "giving and taking" — breathing in suffering, breathing out relief, as a compassion training.
- Vipassana
Insight meditation — the Buddhist practice of clear, sustained observation of what is arising in body and mind, leading to liberating seeing.
- Walking Meditation
Meditation in motion — attention held steadily on the act of walking itself.
- Zazen
The central practice of Zen — seated meditation upright, alert, breath and body fully present, not a technique for becoming anything but the expression of what is already the case.