Candle Meditation: Ignite Your Inner Light
To achieve inner peace, we can harness the power of candle meditation to truly spend time with ourselves. Through communication with the candlelight, we can connect with our inner softness, embrace ourselves, and treat ourselves with compassion and kindness.
What is Candle Meditation?
Candle meditation (Trataka & Candle Meditation) is a traditional practice from “Hatha Yoga” that involves gazing steadily at a candle flame. Trataka is a Sanskrit word meaning “gaze” or “fixate,” which explains the essence of candle meditation. Hatha Yoga describes this as focusing your gaze on a single point until your eyes begin to tear up.
The act of gazing improves blood circulation in the eyes, and the tears help clear out impurities. Scientifically, under professional guidance, this practice can improve conditions such as myopia, astigmatism, early cataracts, as well as headaches and insomnia.
The candlelight also represents the fire element, which corresponds to the third chakra—the solar plexus chakra, the center of willpower. Meditating on the flame brings warmth, lightness, and an uplifting feeling. For those who often feel dull, lazy, pessimistic, fearful, or overly indulgent in sensory pleasures, it provides spiritual guidance that fosters positivity and vitality.
Tips for Practice
- Control Blinking: Normally, we blink frequently, but during candle meditation, the practitioner needs to consciously try to keep their eyes open for as long as possible without blinking. This prepares the mind for internal focus and deeper meditation.
- Candle Placement: Position the candle 1 to 1.5 meters away, at the same height as your brow center (third eye).
- Stage 1: Gently gaze at the flame.
- Stage 2: Focus intently on the candle’s core.
- Stage 3: Expand your vision to the halo around the flame.
- Stage 4: Expand your awareness, and in the latter half of this stage, close your eyes and focus on the third eye.
- Eye Sensitivity: Tears or a feeling of strain in your eyes is normal. Avoid touching your eyes with your hands during this sensitive time—let the tears flow naturally.
The Significance of Meditation
Through candlelight, communicate with your inner self, using its energy to understand your inner softness, embrace your true self, and treat yourself with compassion.
Meditation holds significance on three levels: physical, mental, and spiritual.
- Physical Benefits: It cleanses the eyes, removing impurities, and improves blood circulation around the eyes. It helps relieve eye fatigue and addresses conditions like myopia, astigmatism, trachoma, and glaucoma. With regular practice, your eyes will appear brighter.
- Mental Benefits: It helps treat depression, anxiety, and insomnia, promoting emotional stability, inner peace, balance, and natural relaxation. It also enhances concentration and helps increase resilience in the face of life’s challenges.
- Spiritual Benefits: When the eyes become still, the mind naturally stabilizes. Consistent practice allows us to break free from the limitations, worries, and suffering of the self, gradually transforming from a life constrained by the environment into a creator of our own life.
Just like every life that comes into this world, no matter who you are or where you are, you burn in your own way, continually shining your gentle light until the very end!
