The Time Has Come

If you are praying alone, then it is usually best to be doing it in exactly that way: alone. Try to find a quiet time alone, away from everyone and in a pleasant atmosphere.

A prayer circle (if there is more than one person involved) or single person prayer session should be a pleasant, even if different, experience. Take a lesson from churches, they have years of experience. Have a special place, one where the atmosphere is pleasant, calming and a regular time so that it can be anticipated and prepared for. Dimmed lighting and gentle incense are nice touches. Many congregations have refreshments (even complete meals up to and including feasts) and socialization after the ceremonies. This is a great practice with many benefits. For one thing, you should not attend the ceremonies with a gluttonous bloated stomach so that all you want to do is sleep off the effects; anticipating food afterwards should assure that most people do not eat beforehand. Making a prayer session a fun, pleasant experience can add much to its success.

On a strictly personal level, try to make sure that your body is not out of sorts when you approach prayer. This is not too different from having the right calm time to take a meaningful blood pressure reading, where the following suggestions were reworked from.

• Try to be relaxed before you start. Take five minutes to just sit quietly if needed.
• Sit in a chair that gives you good back support. Sitting lotus position on the floor is not something westerners are accustomed to nor comfortable in. There is also no special reason for sitting cross-legged or in any other special way, it is just another culture's custom. Take a hint from fast food restaurant research, have a chair that is comfortable but not so comfortable that you want to spend hours just veggied out in it.
• Don't start a prayer session when you are hungry. The field of dieting has reinforced how strong hunger can be in redirecting thoughts: the diet field's admonishment being to never go grocery shopping when hungry. You want a clear concentrated mind, not one that is constantly being diverted.
• Wait after eating a large meal. This advice also comes from swimming. Give your body time to do its work. After eating much of your body becomes dedicated to digesting and absorbing the food, so don't stress yourself by trying vying activities. After a heavy meal, wait at least half an hour and increase this to about two hours as you approach sixty, the older you are the longer it takes for your body functions to do their work and naturally slow down.
• Heavy physical exercise is as disruptive as heavy eating and so try to give yourself a break here too. Just being excessively tired is also not an ideal condition.
• A full bladder, indigestion, recent alcohol or drug consumption, experiencing pain or anxiety, or you are otherwise in a position where your body is under stress constitutes a bad time to engage in prayer. Smoking, caffeine consumption, licorice, prescriptions, to name only a few things can also cause undue stress. Examine every aspect of your lifestyle to see if something might be causing undue stress. You want to be as concentrated and centered as possible when praying.

Wimages (here spiritual harmonics of mental images - see the W-Universe Unfolding section of the Ontic Manifesto PDF for more information) are created from the total person. If a person is under stress, this is reflected in the Wimage and can have deleterious effects. A Wimage attracts its own kind, you really do not want to attract any more stress than you have to.

Consider Ablutions

A soothing bath, shower or whirlpool along with a sauna feels great. There are many cultures and philosophies that recommend a sauna type experience. Modern science says that a sauna is a great way to help the body get rid of its wastes. Reviving an old tonic remedy of lying on a slant board is a great way to finish up (and you can actually do meditation this way at other times). Use of a slant board is just as effective as a yoga head or shoulder stand but does not require any of the physical dexterity to do. A slant board is simply a board big and strong enough to lie on where one end is lower than the other. You lie down on the board with your head at the lower end. The reversal of gravity on your circulation system is quite overall beneficial but be careful on getting up as the extra blood flow to your head can temporarily make you dizzy. Start slowly for very short durations and don't overdo it if you are not used to it or do it at all if you have a medical problem that might be aggravated. Whatever you do, there should be benefits and no harm.