What is a Sadhana and Why Do I Need One in My Life?

A sadhana brings joy and presence… Photo Credit: Pete Longworth

By Kara-Leah,

Regular readers will well remember I started a forty day sadhana (spiritual practice) oh… a few months ago. It was an Infinite Wealth and Prosperity meditation, and I was loving doing it.

But then something happened.

I found out I was pregnant, and as this particular meditation involved stomach pumps (a no-no for pregnant women), I had to stop.

But I couldn’t write about it immediately, because I had to wait to tell people I was pregnant. Now I can tell people… so I can finally write about what happened to that meditation!

I know some of my students have been doing the Infinite Wealth and Prosperity meditation, I don’t know if any of them finished the sadhana (forty days of continuous practice). If you have been doing it, whether you finished it or not, please, leave a comment and share your experience.

So what is this sadhana thing anyway?

• A sadhana is simply a daily spiritual practice designed to allow oneself to turn inward and perceive life as it truly is.

But I’m not religious at all – why would I want to do a spiritual practice?

• Being spiritual is not about religion at all – although it might mean you have a personal relationship to God, the Divine, the Universe, Allah, the Goddess, Shiva, Shakti… whatever word you like to use to describe something that is omniscient.
• Many people find connecting with nature is a spiritual experience, it makes them feel more in tune with life, and with themselves.
• A spiritual practice is simply a practice that connects You to you. That is – your ego self, which is small, limited and separate from everything else, to your Higher Self, which is infinite, unlimited and connected to All that Is.

A sadhana could be:

• A mantra meditation
• A specific yogic asana practice like surya namaskar (sun salutations)
• A particular kriya (set yoga practice which can include asana, pranayama, meditation, asana, mantra, mudra…)
• A visualisation
• Reading a spiritual text
• A daily walk in nature

Why do we practice a sadhana for forty days?

• A sadhana doesn’t have to be for forty days, it may be just every single day for an indeterminate length of time, or it may be a set time.
• Forty days is usually the minimum, it’s a number with significance in many spiritual texts, including the Bible ( Lent is for forty days)
• One reason for this is when you do something every single day for forty days, it ingrains the new discipline. It becomes part of who you are and what you do and it’s actually difficult to stop at the end!

What are the benefits of practicing a sadhana for forty days?

• Commitment – a sadhana may only be ten minutes a day, but just doing it every single day no matter what says that you care about your spiritual evolution. You are putting yourself first and you are growing.
• Discipline – the mind and ego are wily, tricksy things and will use all kinds of excuses to try and keep you from doing your sadhana. Doing it every single day builds discipline as we learn not to listen to the mind and the ego, and to just DO what feels good because we know we truly want it.
• Evolution – you’re either changing and growing as a person, or you’re stagnating. Do you want life to get better, or not? Doing a daily sadhana is one small way to make sure that every single day is just a little bit better than the last one, no matter what else is going on in your life.
• Foundation – at just 10 minutes, a sadhana is like planting a tiny little seed in the garden. Every day you practice you water it and it grows… and as you get used to dedicating ten minutes a day to your evolution and growth, you’ll naturally discover you want to make more and more time for yourself. That tiny seed blossoms and grows and bears fruit and one day you turn around and discover your whole life has become a sadhana.
• ‘cos it feels GOOD. Enough said.

Ok, I’m convinced, I want to start my own sadhana. How do I figure out what to do?

• Set an intention based on what aspect of yourself you want to evolve, or what aspect you’d like to let go of.
• Find a practice that supports that.

Examples of Sadhanas:

• Want to open your heart and increase the amount of compassion you feel for other people? Try this heart-opening kriya every day for forty days. It will work MAGIC on you.
• Want to find greater mental clarity, increase your intuition and open your third eye? Try this simple Om meditation.
• Want to get rid of old mental and emotional behaviour patterns? Try this powerful technique.
• Want to build a daily yoga asana practice? Practice surya namaskar (sun saluations) every single day, starting with five a day and building up to 30 a day. Or more.

I have personally used all of these examples above, and been amazed at the effect on my body, mind and soul. Spiritual practice is best if it’s daily, and if it’s consistent. Committing to a sadhana creates exactly these conditions.

No matter what the mind says, no matter how we feel, no matter what is going on in our day and our lives, every single day for a set time we turn up to the mat and do exactly the same thing.

In doing so, we start to see how much our minds and emotions do fluctuate, and how much we allow these endless fluctuations to govern our lives.

We discover that after our sadhana we feel centred, calm, strong, certain, blissed out, joyful, loving, compassionate and happy.

Yet despite knowing that doing our sadhana makes us feel great, still we witness the mind coming up with all sorts of excuses day in and day out to avoid it.

We start to realise that we can’t trust our thoughts to have our best interests at heart.

We start to dis-identify with the mind and instead follow our spirit, our heart, our soul.

Life begins to shift, to open up, to change.

The world looks brighter, lighter, more beautiful.

Events and people that once upon a time knocked us for six, or made us feel awful, no longer have the same effect.

We’re building equanimity and balance.

We’re finding our core, our centre.

That place where nothing can touch us, nothing can hurt us, nothing can harm us.

We realise that thoughts and emotions and events and people will always come and go and change. We realise it’s not by controlling these thoughts and emotions and events and people that we make ourselves happy.

It is by being at our centre, our core, our heart.

And now we know how to get there.

So we do our sadhana.

And we wonder why the whole world isn’t practicing sadhana…