The first time I sat down to meditate, really meditate, not just sit with my eyes closed and think about what to make for dinner, I lasted about ninety seconds before I was convinced I was doing it wrong. My mind was a circus. Thoughts stampeding through. Plans, worries, song lyrics, random memories from third grade. It was absurd.
What I didn’t know then, and what I wish someone had told me, is that there’s a technique designed specifically for this. Not a vague instruction to “clear your mind” (which has caused more meditation dropouts than probably any other phrase in history), but a precise, practical method for training your attention. It’s called Hong-Sau, and it comes from Paramahansa Yogananda’s lineage of teachings.
I’m going to walk you through it tonight in enough detail that you can sit down and practice it. No initiation required. No special equipment. Just a chair and ten minutes.
What Hong-Sau Means
“Hong-Sau” (sometimes written “Ham-Sa”) is a Sanskrit mantra that means “I am He” or “I am Spirit.” But in this practice, you don’t need to think about its meaning. The words function primarily as anchors for your attention, something to tie your awareness to so it doesn’t blow around like a leaf in the wind.
Yogananda taught that Hong-Sau is the natural vibration of the breath. With every inhalation, the subtle sound “Hong” is occurring. With every exhalation, the subtle sound “Sau” is occurring. You’ve been breathing this mantra your entire life without knowing it. The technique simply makes it conscious.
Before You Begin: Posture
Sit on a chair or on the floor, whichever allows your spine to be straight without strain. If you’re in a chair, sit forward slightly so your back isn’t leaning against the backrest. Feet flat on the floor. Hands resting palms-up on your thighs, at the junction of thigh and abdomen.
Your spine being straight isn’t about rigidity. It’s about allowing energy to flow freely. Think of it as a garden hose, if it’s kinked, the water can’t run. Same principle with your spinal column and the flow of prana (life force).
Close your eyes. Lift your gaze gently. Not straining upward, but directing your attention, behind closed eyelids, toward the point between your eyebrows. This is what Yogananda called the “spiritual eye” or the “Christ center.” Don’t cross your eyes or create tension. Just incline your attention upward and forward, as if you’re looking at a spot on the horizon from a high hill.
Take three or four deep breaths to settle in. Inhale slowly through the nose, tense the whole body, then exhale and release all tension. Do this two or three times. Then let the breath return to its natural rhythm.
The Technique Itself
Here’s the practice, step by step.
Step 1: Let your breath flow naturally. Don’t control it. Don’t try to breathe deeply or slowly. Just let it do whatever it wants to do. Your only job is to watch.
Step 2: As the breath flows in naturally, mentally say “Hong” (rhymes with “song”). Don’t say it out loud. Don’t synchronize it forcefully with the breath, let the word follow the breath, not the other way around. The breath leads. The mantra follows.
Step 3: As the breath flows out naturally, mentally say “Sau” (rhymes with “saw”). Again, let the word gently follow the natural exhalation.
Step 4: Simultaneously, concentrate your attention at the point between the eyebrows. This is where you’re directing your awareness. Not on the breath in your chest or nostrils primarily, but at that still point at the center of your forehead.
Step 5: If the breath naturally pauses, either after inhalation or after exhalation, don’t force it to resume. Rest in that pause. Enjoy it. These natural pauses between breaths are, according to Yogananda, the doorways to deeper states of consciousness.
That’s it. That’s the whole technique.
When Your Mind Wanders (Not If, When)
Your mind will wander. I want to be very clear about this: it is not a question of whether your mind will wander. It will. It will wander a hundred times in a ten-minute session if you’re new to this. That is completely, perfectly normal.
Yogananda was blunt about this reality. He addressed it directly in Man’s Eternal Quest:
“The mind is like an elastic band. The more you pull it, the more it stretches. The restless mind resists all attempts to concentrate, and plays tricks to draw your attention away. Never give up. Never accept defeat.”
– Paramahansa Yogananda
Here’s what to do when you notice your mind has wandered: nothing dramatic. Don’t scold yourself. Don’t sigh and think “I’m terrible at this.” Simply, gently, bring your attention back to the breath and the mantra. Hong… Sau… Hong… Sau…
Every time you bring your attention back, you’re building the muscle of concentration. The wandering isn’t the failure. Staying wandered, not noticing that you’ve drifted, is the only thing that even resembles failure. And even that isn’t really failure. It’s just unconsciousness, and you were doing that anyway before you sat down to meditate. At least now you’re training yourself to wake up from it.
What to Do With Your Eyes
Keep your eyes closed and gently directed upward toward the point between the eyebrows. You might see darkness. You might see swirling colors. You might eventually see a circle of light, blue, gold, or white. Whatever you see or don’t see, just keep your attention there, relaxed and watchful.
Don’t strain. If your eyes get tired or start to twitch, relax them briefly and then gently redirect them. This is a practice of patient, steady attention, not forceful concentration. Think of it as gazing, not staring.
How Long, How Often
Start with ten or fifteen minutes. If that feels like an eternity, start with five. The duration matters less than the consistency. It’s far better to practice for ten minutes every day than for an hour once a week.
Yogananda recommended meditating twice a day, morning and evening. Morning meditation sets the tone for the day. Evening meditation processes and releases whatever accumulated during it. If twice a day isn’t realistic for your life right now, once a day is fine. Just make it non-negotiable. Same time, same place, every day.
The SRF (Self-Realization Fellowship) publications offer additional guidance on this. In their teachings, it’s emphasized that the quality of concentration matters more than the clock:
“The purpose of meditation is to quiet the mind so that the light of the soul can shine through. It is not a matter of how many hours you sit but how deeply you go.”
– Paramahansa Yogananda, SRF Lessons
What Happens Over Time
In the first few days and weeks, it might feel like nothing is happening. Or worse, it might feel like your mind has gotten noisier. It hasn’t. You’re just noticing, for the first time, how noisy it always was. That noticing is progress.
Gradually, you’ll start to experience moments of stillness between the thoughts. Brief, fleeting spaces where the mental chatter stops and something quiet and alert remains. Those moments are the beginning of real meditation.
Over months of regular practice, those gaps lengthen. The breath itself starts to slow down, sometimes dramatically. You might have moments where the breath seems to stop entirely, and instead of panic, there’s only peace. This is what Yogananda described as the breath becoming “unnecessary”, not because you’re suffocating, but because the life force is being sustained directly rather than through the gross mechanism of respiration.
I’ve experienced this a handful of times. It’s strange and wonderful. The body is utterly still, the breath has whispered to a halt, and there’s a kind of luminous awareness that doesn’t need anything from the outside to sustain it. It doesn’t last long for me, not yet. But it’s enough to know that Yogananda wasn’t exaggerating.
Try It Tonight
Here’s your assignment, if you want one.
Tonight, before bed, sit in a chair with your spine straight. Close your eyes. Take three deep breaths, tensing and releasing the body with each one. Then let the breath go natural.
Follow the breath with Hong-Sau for ten minutes. When the mind wanders, gently bring it back. When it wanders again, bring it back again. No judgment. No scorekeeping.
After ten minutes, stop the mantra but don’t open your eyes. Sit in whatever stillness is there for another minute or two. Just be with what’s present.
Then open your eyes. Notice how you feel. Notice the quality of the silence in the room. Notice whether something, however subtle, has shifted.
You may not feel fireworks. You may feel restless and distracted and think the whole thing was pointless. Do it again tomorrow. And the day after that. Hong-Sau is a seed. It doesn’t sprout the first day you water it. But if you keep watering it, faithfully, patiently, it will grow into something you can’t imagine right now. Yogananda staked his life’s work on that promise. Millions of practitioners have confirmed it.
Your ten minutes start whenever you’re ready.
