Anashava is a unique method of meditation. It has been deviced by combining anapansati yog (mindful breathing technique) and shavasan (corpse yogic posture). Anashava literally means indestructible. It can help a seeker discover that element which is indestructible.

Before experimenting with anashava, it is essential to get familiar with anapansati. As important is to learn the subtle meaning of shavasan; otherwise, the practitioner would easily slip from shavasan into sleep.

Anapansati: This method was popularly used by the Buddha. Before him, it was found in Shiv's "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra", a book on meditation that contains 112 methods. Anapansati is the first of the 112. It is based on breathing. I learnt this method from Master Osho.

In this method, one has to observe one's breath. By observing, we mean feeling breath. When breath is coming inside, slowly...slowly...slowly, watch it. Inside, it pauses for a moment on a point because it has to turn around and go outside. When it is on its way back, observe it in the same manner as you did when it was flowing in. Outside, it again halts for a few moments just to resume its journey back. At the pause-points, the mind stops because breath stops. Then there are no thoughts. This thoughtlessness is meditation.

Remember: Just feel breath, neither think about breath nor this feeling; otherwise, a chain of thoughts would again start. Do not even say in the mind: "Now breath is coming in." "Now it is going out."

Most important thing is to let pause-points, where the mind stops, come naturally. Don't be in a hurry to reach there, nor create them forcefully. Generally meditators are always thinking about these pauses: "It's about to come." "It's coming." Because of it they miss the whole thing. If you are restless to feel these pauses, they will always slip away because they are so short in the beginning. Therefore, stay alert. Flow with breath, and when the pause-point comes, be there as long as it lasts. Don't crave for more. Because if you do, you won't be travelling back with breath, and will miss the pause on the other end. And the whole rhythm will be broken.

This ancient method is a supreme mantra of transformation, simply because it is based on breathing that is happening constantly, without a break.

Secondly anapansati is not pranayam, means you don't have to control your breathing. Neither make it deep nor shallow. Neither hold it nor release it. Just feel its flow naturally.

While practicing anapansati, thoughts with still bother you because the mind is used to thinking. But don't pay attention to them. Whenever there are thoughts and the attention is lost, bring it back slowly and softly to breathing again. Don't waste time regretting or cursing yourself: "Alas! How much time I have lost and forgot to observe breath." With practice the traffic of thoughts will thin out.

Shavasan (Corpse Yogic Posture): This is much harder a posture to practice than it appears. It doesn't mean merely to lie down and chill out. This posture is a way of supreme relaxation that is visible in a corpse: still and carefree.

To practice shavasan, one has to imagine that he is dead and behave like a dead body: totally unmoving. Generally people are so restless that they are always fidgeting, shaking, itching all over their bodies. All this comes from a restless body. To calm it down, hathayog is a must. It makes the body balanced and still. It also brings flexibility and awareness.
Every fibre is filled with energy, which keeps the body awake during the posture.

Having understood anapansati and shavasan, we will enter into anashava. Lie down in shavasan and leave your body completely relaxed. You will feel your breath going deep and slow. The more relaxed the body, the deeper the breath. Remember: don't control breathing, just let it flow spontaneously.

Gradually your breathing will be so deep as to reach the naval. You will feel breathing happening there. With a little more practice, you will forget that you are breathing through the nose at all. Breath will arise out of the naval and will go back there.

Master Osho has asserted that our spiritual centre is the naval itself. The way a child is connected to the mother through the naval in the womb; likewise, spiritually, every individual is connected to Existence through the naval centre. After birth as the child grows up, his energy starts spreading around. It is stored up in all the persons/things he loves or hates.

At the point of death this whole energy starts receding back to its origin. This whole process can be consciously created through anashava. While practicing it, create an intense feeling within yourself that your energy is returning to you. After a while, you will start feeling your own presence around the naval centre. In other words, wherever you are, you will feel centred around the naval, whereas generally this self-presence is inside the head.

This will help you experience death consciously. Since death is a very negative word for many, anashava experiment can scare you. However, as you go deeper into it, this experience of death will reveal to you something mysterious, an element which is separate from the body, and beyond it. Krishna has called it sakshi, i.e. witness. This experience will erase the fear of death forever.

Most importantly, thoughtlessness will emerge in an altogether different form. When you practice anapansati only and thoughts disappear for a few moments, the absence of thoughts is felt inside the head. First we feel thoughts inside the head and then their absence, too, in the same space.

But the thoughtlessness at the naval centre is absolutely unique and amazing. Such thoughtlessness is not merely the absence of thoughts, but one feels that thought was never there. A realm untouched by thoughts. Pure shunya! This opens up a new life within.

It is impossible to say anything about this realm. Whatever happens here is paradoxical. This realm is and is not at the same time. Here, you are and you are not. Most profound bliss happens here and it is beyond bliss. Here life and death are one.