Transcript
How to Meditate Properly: Instructions Before You Begin
Meditation · Jan 28, 2026 · 39:45 · 5,934 words · Tatyana Tsvetkova, Alexander Volchek
Translated from the Russian transcript, following the spoken conversation. Each timestamp opens that point in the original Russian video.
Tatyana Tsvetkova
Otherwise people will start going off: a blonde, and all that. Do not put me in a box. Can you meditate lying down? Yoga talks about a straight back and the flow of energy. I am just—
Alexander Volchek
I will explain that, quickly. We are doing a lightning round today, thirteen questions about meditation. We will get to the most interesting one, number thirteen. The most interesting one will definitely be the thirteenth. What do I want to say? Throughout my life, I have often heard people say you should meditate only in a particular posture. I knew someone whose Brahmin lineage went back a hundred generations. I told him, “All right, I need to meditate in a particular posture, but there is a catch: you will not be able to put me in it. I cannot sit that way. I cannot sit with a straight back without a chair. I simply cannot. My physical body will not allow it.” He said, “What do you mean, you cannot?” I said, “I cannot. Go on, put me in that posture.” He could not. He said, “Well, then we will not do that exercise.
For now, do it in a chair.” Speaking from actual achievements in true perception, I can say there are a great many layers of perception. There is vision that has absolutely nothing to do with your posture. Nothing at all. Yesterday we were driving along at speed. I was at the wheel, and we were driving without a roof. We had not lost it; we did not have one to begin with. We were driving with the top down. For thirty minutes I gave Vitalik—
Alexander Volchek
Without stopping, I gave him such clairvoyance—complete clairvoyance. It was an entirely pure meditative process. Vitalik, sitting beside me, entered the meditative process himself. He entered it, immersed himself in it. So the question is always what you want to perceive and what you want to get from it. Some things cannot be achieved sitting down. Some cannot be achieved lying down. But for a real expansion of perception, for truly perceiving things, it honestly makes no difference. You either have vision or you do not. The question is roughly like this: imagine a child, my four-year-old son, and me. Who will make money faster: him, moving around, or me, lying down?
Alexander Volchek
The answer is obvious: he will not make any money at all. None at all. He cannot even get around all that much. He cannot even get around all that much. Lying down, I can pick up my phone and make money perfectly well. That is enough for me. I can very easily make money lying down. This is an important point. What does it tell us? If you are in a certain state of perception, entering different states—and that requires a discussion of what meditation is—
Alexander Volchek
—entering certain states has nothing to do with that. It is an illusion and very often a deception. Unfortunately, it is often a deception. I am certainly not denying that some practices require particular positions. But truly entering a genuine meditative state is possible in entirely different spaces, systems and body positions. Can it be limited by time in some way? Is meditation five minutes, ten minutes? How do you understand time here? If someone sets themselves the task of meditating for at least ten or twenty minutes and measures it by time, that is not meditation. It is spending your time on a particular task.
That is not entering a meditative state. First, you cannot enter meditation simply by setting yourself the goal of meditating. That is the first point. Second, it has absolutely nothing to do with time. Time has no bearing on it. Some people are proud and say, “I have experience. I have spent ten thousand hours sitting in meditation.” I say, “I do not have that experience. I have not sat in meditation for ten thousand hours, but I can see this. Can you see it?” They say, “No.” You know what it is like? “I have business experience. I have been in business for forty years.” “I have been in business for six months and made a billion dollars. How much have you made?” “In forty years, I have lost everything and made nothing.” It is very much like that. Very much like that. In this case, time does not indicate quality at all. Not at all.
And yet, again, many things take time. Many things require repetition. It is very important to hear that many things take time and repetition. There are different techniques, different techniques, so people need a broader understanding. Sometimes a meditative state, or preparing for meditation, matters in terms of a minute or thirty seconds. Some people can do in thirty seconds what another person cannot do in thousands of hours. Other things take time, concentration, practice and work. But I can say one thing with certainty: as spiritual beings, people cannot be compared.
They cannot be compared. Because people cannot be compared as spiritual beings, one person may spend sixty years in a meditative state to feel what someone else feels every thirty minutes of their life without meditating. It is easy to compare ourselves in business, isn't it? In professional work, it can be easy. In family life, you can compare the number of children, or the floor area of a house or apartment, how expensive the furniture is, the size of the property. There are things you can compare. Comparing spiritual beings is another matter. There is also the question of what you meditate on. If you say, from within the material world, “The spiritual world does not exist. Meditation exists in the material world. I meditate from the material world,” you are meditating within that box.
Someone beside you says, “I know there is a spiritual world and a material one. I meditate from the spiritual world.” A minute of that person's meditation from the spiritual world cannot be compared with this meditation in the material world. Meditate in the material world as much as you like; you will remain in the material world.
Tatyana Tsvetkova
Images, visions and bright light appear during meditation. What does that mean? Here is an extra question from me. You say everyone is a spiritual being. Does everyone have the capacity for vision? Clearly, not everyone has it.
Alexander Volchek
Look, absolutely anyone, anyone—although, again, there are always exceptions. When I say anyone, there are exceptions. But within the overall picture, please do not assume you are one of those exceptions.
Alexander Volchek
Everyone perceives something spiritually. Everyone has flashes of vision, perceptions of colors and all the rest. Spiritual vision goes by many names: intuition, clairvoyance, inspiration, imagination—a whole spectrum. I will not go into it now; that is not the subject of this meeting. But what matters is that absolutely everyone perceives. The question is whether, when they perceive it, they understand that they have seen an energy, spaces of color, the present, the future or the past—or think it is just some odd thing they saw on television. Something they saw on television or here: do they recognize it as perception or not? The fundamental point is not to focus on identifying what you see, but to immerse yourself in that vision, that perception.
These are slightly different things. Everyone immediately wants to describe, identify and examine it. But describing and identifying it is a separate matter, one that not everyone may even like. One important step toward moving forward is learning to remember everything you perceive. Once you learn to remember all of it, you will begin to distinguish what was true from what was false. I remember someone giving me a simple exercise, probably ten or perhaps twelve years ago. He said, “When you are traveling along a road…” I was sitting in the back seat with a driver, as I have done for almost my entire life, constantly seeing cars around me. I did not like working. I always liked simply looking out the window, doing nothing at all, just looking out the window.
You keep seeing license plates. Sometimes you are riding along and think, “I knew just now that I would see that plate or that car.” He said you need to learn to compare: did you really see that car in advance, or did you just make it up? Everyone has had something like this happen in their life: “Wait, didn't that just happen?” These things come up sometimes. You are riding in a car, thinking about something, and your wife says it aloud. You think, “Oh, I was just thinking that.”
Alexander Volchek
Here is an interesting point, an interesting point: perhaps you did not pick up what she was thinking. Perhaps you thought it, she picked up your thought and said it before you did. There are different possibilities. Learn to notice it. Start noticing it, simply noticing it, neutrally, and relate to it calmly. Interpreting these things is difficult and specialized. Someone asks, “You see colors—what are they?” It is like this: imagine we downloaded five million SKUs from Amazon and threw them into a pile. We say, “We saw this. What is it?” But we do not know how to sort through these SKUs. The person has asked, “What is it?” Well, it is five million, fifty million SKUs. Am I supposed to start listing everything that could exist in the energies? I cannot list it all.
What did you see? You looked out the window. Imagine that question: “I looked out the window and saw something. What did I see?” Just, “What did I see?” I do not know where you are. Perhaps a tree, a river, a person, a hand. I do not know what you saw. Perhaps a bird.
Tatyana Tsvetkova
Yes. Next question: how is meditation different from ordinary relaxation? Is it the same thing? Sleep, rest and meditation—those three concepts.
Alexander Volchek
When we talk about relaxation, we are using the language of the material world. In this case, we are discussing meditation from the standpoint of the material world. How is meditation different from a massage? How is a massage different from working at a computer? That is roughly the same sort of question as how meditation differs from a massage. How is working at a computer different from kissing my wife?
Alexander Volchek
It is roughly the same question: how is meditation different from relaxation? If we look at it from the standpoint of actually perceiving spiritual spaces, it is exactly like asking how a massage is different from my earning five thousand dollars. You would say, “Sasha, how is it different? In every way.” Well, how is it different—
Alexander Volchek
Look at how the question is framed. If you sit down to meditate in order to relax—or rather, if your goal is to relax—there are different ways to get there.
Alexander Volchek
Listen to music, breathe, jump around, go for a walk, go to a particular place, eat a particular kind of food. Look—
Alexander Volchek
A whole range of things. Talk to certain kinds of people. A whole range of things. The goal is to relax. Does a meditative state relax you? It does, guaranteed. It relaxes you. Just like that—you are relaxed. It relaxes you. Now consider something else. What does meditation lead to? Relaxation. Do you like that? Do you like relaxation? You do. Reading thoughts. A change in consciousness. And a whole range beyond that. It is very important: if you want to relax, do so and choose what you need for that. If you want to explore and arrive at other possibilities, a massage will not help you.
Tatyana Tsvetkova
You have partly answered this already. Maybe there is something to add. How do you measure your progress in meditation? What measures success: the depth of the feeling, the number of minutes, or the effects?
Alexander Volchek
Four minutes. That is it. First, the number of minutes. Second, the number of birds that flew past outside. Third, the vividness of the images. But again, if you are in the material, physical world and meditate within that physical world, you can find a whole range of measures: how long you sat, how many places you sat in, how many people you sat with, what kinds of meditation you did. Group meditation, lying down, eyes closed, eyes open, with light, without light, in the dark, meditating on a candle, on vinegar—and on a borzoi. Meditation with children, without children, half lying down, half sitting, doing push-ups, walking, with headphones, without headphones, with music, without music, with aggressive music—
Alexander Volchek
Without aggressive music, and so on. There is a whole range of parameters you can invent for yourself. Go ahead, invent them. But right now you are talking about meditation in the material world.
Alexander Volchek
Again, meditation in the material world. Can you understand how to measure the quality of meditation while operating from the desires of the material world? Think about it. Do you want quality or a result? Look: do you want quality or a result? Decide at the outset. Are you building a business so that four years from now you can take ten million dollars out of it? Or so that it will have exactly fifteen thousand people and you will have spoken with every one of them? Think about it. Choose. Decide what matters to you: quality or a result. Besides, that quality is an abstraction you invented. Or do you need the end result? “I measured the quality of my meditation, but I feel bad. I did the meditation, I did the meditation, ten thousand steps.”
Then—divorce. A child dies, then another, a third, a fourth. My arm is torn off, and I fall into a coma. So what are we measuring?
Tatyana Tsvetkova
Can you meditate to music? Many people wonder whether music interferes or, on the contrary, helps you get into the right state.
Alexander Volchek
Let me explain meditating to music a little better. Let's put it this way. Can you meditate when Tanya is nearby? Can you meditate when Vasya is nearby? Can you meditate when there is a projector shining nearby? If Tanya is there, you can meditate.
Alexander Volchek
Can you meditate when the computer is on? Can you meditate when the bed is turned down? Can you meditate while you are in the United States? Can you meditate while you are in Belarus? Can you meditate during the day, at night, can you meditate—
Alexander Volchek
With loud music? Can you meditate with quiet music, with rock music, to Taylor Swift, to Lana Del Rey, to Leps? You can. Can you meditate while someone recites Pushkin's poetry? I am saying something very important. People bring up music because they place it alongside meditation. But there are a great many other things in our lives. If someone brings music into the picture, they need to consider a great many other things, too. Can you meditate with the sound of the ocean or not? Can you meditate while driving, on the road? Can you meditate with a cemetery across from you? Can you meditate in a fifteen-story building?
Now I am giving examples that matter. Before, I was giving silly examples. Now I have begun naming things that matter.
Alexander Volchek
For example, a cemetery outside, or a fifteen-story building with you on the second floor. And the building is wide, the building is wide. Can you meditate when people are drinking in the next rooms? When you drank yesterday? When you yelled at fifteen people today? When you hit a woman today? When you stole today, or deceived someone yesterday? When you have harmed a great many people over the past ten years? When someone has harmed you? There is an enormous range of circumstances. But this is a material question, an exclusively material question. It is simply the human ego sitting there saying, “We certainly do not need to meditate properly.”
It inserts that question. Fundamentally, that does not matter. In reality, of course, entering different states has limitations. If I put on headphones and play a lot of music, I will enter a restricted state. In fact, I can tell you this about any headphones. There is a very well-known person who does meditation by the ocean with headphones. I can tell you right away that wearing headphones closes off a person's perception. Closed eyes close off perception, while in some cases closed eyes open it up. You can achieve certain meditative processes with your eyes closed, but you block other processes. You block them. Some processes are possible only with open eyes. As for music, I can say right away that music—again, I am not going to say never—
Alexander Volchek
I am not going to say never, but I will tell you honestly: music cannot add anything to meditative states. It cannot add anything to meditative states. It can take someone into certain spaces they do not need. Someone will say, “Sasha, you probably mean rock.” But then there is—
Alexander Volchek
Certain places. Look, some things support particular structures. I play the piano myself, for example, but obviously I am nothing compared with great musicians who can bring people into extraordinary states, including meditative ones. You need to understand why one person's performance of a piece brings you into a state and another person's does not. You also need to understand what state you are entering. Having goosebumps does not mean something good is happening.
Alexander Volchek
Feeling euphoric does not mean good things are happening. This matters. So we come to the next point: it depends on what you want to get from meditation, what you want to achieve. Do you want a quick death? A quick death, a peaceful death? Do you want to live harmoniously in happiness and balance, to accelerate your karma? Or do you want to relax? What do you want to achieve? Choose what you want to achieve. You want to expand your flow. You want to quiet your conscious perception involving a great many people. People go into all kinds of meditations, very often without any control. But they understand, for example, that they have connections in the world. A great many connections break down in any genuine meditative space.
A great many connections break down. A person controls that breakdown. They know what is happening and are ready for it. They have a destructive connection, and it breaks down. But that destructive connection brings them a million dollars every month. They break it, and the million dollars disappear. You ask, “Shall we break it?” They say, “Let's keep that connection. We will not break that one…” Look, that is the person's conclusion. That is the point. Offer someone that choice. I can honestly say I have seen this; I have offered people many things. Very few agree. I was not offering to do it. I was asking a question, and many would not even agree in response to the question. Do you understand? Nine out of ten do not agree even when it is only a question. Only a question.
Never mind doing it for real. Just the question! They are afraid to agree even to the question. They are afraid because they realize things could start unfolding in a way that would require them to do it all.
Alexander Volchek
As for choosing the best time of day, sometimes, in certain circumstances, it matters for certain people. But a great many factors come with the time of day. How does it relate to how long it has been since you slept? What smells are in the room? Whom have you been talking to? What country are you in? Here we go again. Are you on the second floor of a twelve-story building? Are you next to a cemetery or not? Did you go out for coffee four days ago or not? And so on. There are a great many circumstances. Time matters, but so far all the questions in this lightning round have been asked from the material world. From the spiritual world, this question is impossible, because its very goal—pay attention, this is important—is meditation and its result: a good meditation.
Choose what you want. Do you want a good meditation or a harmonious life? A good meditation or a state of equilibrium? A good meditation and expanded perception? A good meditation or a state of balance in life? A good meditation or a state in which you perceive people? Choose what you want. Do you want the label “good”—
Alexander Volchek
Proper, worthy. Then write on Instagram, “I meet the criteria for a good meditation.” Next question.
Alexander Volchek
Switch off the flow of thoughts. The thing is, truly entering a meditative state is not directly connected to that question. Let me explain why. To address it, we need to understand what exactly we want to switch off. What are these thoughts? There are true thoughts, and there is clutter. In spiritual science, the latter is called words. Words are simply words: Tanya, skirt, chair, table, girl, meat, sausage, two plus two, five, six, seven, eight. Just a collection of words. In fact, people very often exchange collections of words when they talk. If people have been drinking, for example, their conversation is guaranteed to be in words, not thoughts.
Thoughts are real, true information that comes to you through your soul. This is very important, and you will never want to switch off a true flow of thoughts. I guarantee you, no one in the world will ever want to switch off a true flow of thoughts, because that flow is truth pouring into you. Truth. A person spends ninety-nine, a hundred percent of their time in words and hears almost nothing. When the true flow comes, you experience a simultaneous state of silence. You have no reason to fight it. If you tell yourself, “Slow down,” it slows down. If you say, “Go,” it flows.
More precisely, you can often say, “Go,” and nothing flows. The true flow is a very particular thing. So when a person enters a genuine meditative state—and you can enter these states, though rarely through the intention to meditate—they need to enter a state without that verbal conversation and enter a flow of true transmission. That is the point of meditation. When you enter a meditative state, you begin observing spiritual worlds. As you do, you inevitably begin perceiving a great many things, some of which are interpreted as words and can be described.
You asked how to describe what you see. You have an interpretation. Rather than fight that, you need to know how to interpret. Many people who enter a particular state know that they have no words for it. They cannot interpret it, generate or activate that flow, or truly receive it. Should you fight that first state? No. Fighting the state itself is a struggle within the material world, a kind of roulette with yourself. It leads nowhere. To receive a true spiritual flow, you have to meditate from the spiritual world. If you do, a verbal flow may remain. You might have an injury, an injured finger; someone might be disturbing you, buzzing, there might be a drill. All sorts of things. Yet a large part of your system will be connected to the spiritual world, and you will be in a meditative state, a state of perception.
You may still have a verbal flow, a cluttered flow, let's call it, or a distraction about something bothering you somewhere. That does not mean you cannot be in a genuine meditative state. That is the whole point. I now lead meditations every week, on Friday and Saturday, on YouTube, and post them in the Live section. Someone who also participates in our Life group asked, “Sasha, do I need to do or watch any other meditations besides these?” I said, “For now, just watch these meditations and reach a point where, in different situations throughout the day, you enter a meditative state without trying to.” What is a meditative state? It is when you begin to hear the spiritual world.
That does not require a posture or a particular time. You do not need to set anything aside for it. To learn, of course, you have to experience it and go through it, but you do not need to allocate time to it. It works automatically. Anyone will tell you that. Imagine throwing a ball to a basketball player. Does he need to set aside time to learn to catch it? No. He will catch it automatically; his reflex will work. Being in meditative states does not require setting aside time. It happens constantly. That is the whole point: for a person to expand their perception and be in that meditative state.
Alexander Volchek
Thirteen and a half questions. Focus as fully as possible on what is being explained through these thirteen and a half questions. That is one part, the first solution. The second solution—I want to say that it is very difficult.
Alexander Volchek
Difficult. What does it mean not to give up meditation? How do I keep from giving up perceiving the spiritual world hundreds or thousands of times a day? How could I give that up? It is my life. Naturally, I live in it. I do not even ask myself that question. But reaching that state, making it harmonious—harmonious. As I have said in some videos, my wife has read books to our children every evening for fourteen years. Do you think she asks herself how to keep from giving up reading books? She does not, because there is no goal, no task. There is a particular impulse she lives in and acts on. If you are in a state of perceiving the world, the wish to give up will not come to you. You will want to perceive more, to see more.
The problem is that people want to enter a meditative state when they feel bad. They feel a little better and jump out. That is one of the traps that make people give up. They give up when transformation happens. A window opens a little and a breeze comes through. Transformation begins, and they already feel they need to stop. The whole world around them resists. You need a very strong intention and the strength for it. Some people will not be able to do this in this lifetime. Some will not. Certain spaces have to align for you to encounter certain people. I publish many more meditations, and they are extraordinarily, deeply transformative. If you watch and participate in them, they will help you expand your state to a point where this becomes normal for you.
But “How do I keep from giving up meditation?” is, for me, like asking how not to give up living. How not to give up breathing. How not to give up breathing. That is what the question means to me.
Tatyana Tsvetkova
What results does meditation bring, and how long will it take to feel them? Many people are concerned about the benefits: reducing stress, improving sleep, developing intuition. How long do you wait for these effects?
Alexander Volchek
Let's go over this again. Do not look at meditation simply as meditation. Look at what you want to achieve. If you want better sleep, list the factors that influence it. Something other than meditation may help faster. For example, consider a snoring husband beside you, going to bed late, stress at work, and so on. If you want to relax your body, examine those factors. Perhaps you should stop hauling forty-kilogram sacks all day and do something else. Examine those things. Do not approach meditation as a way to obtain simple material benefits. Someone who lives from the material world does not understand the perception of the spiritual world.
Alexander Volchek
If they do not understand the perception of the spiritual world, they will see the result only when they reach it. It is like a blind person asking about the difference between red and green. They were born blind and say, “I have been blind for forty years. You keep insisting there is a difference between red and green. Explain the difference. What will happen when I start seeing? What is so special about sight?” Do you understand that it is an equivalent question? An equivalent question. The blind person says, “Explain why I need to see.” You can tell them anything, but they do not know. They cannot even come into contact with it or experience it. They do not understand what it means to see another person. They do not understand what it means to see another person.
Tatyana Tsvetkova
Are there any contraindications? Can meditation be harmful, especially for people with psychological trauma or an anxiety disorder? To quote directly: meditation can make you lose your mind.
Alexander Volchek
Someone asks whether meditation can have a bad effect. That is like asking whether life can have a bad effect. Whether breathing can have a bad effect.
Alexander Volchek
For me, asking whether meditation can have a bad effect is like asking whether breathing can have a bad effect. Can breathing make you lose your mind? Can you lose your mind… I am walking down the street and get shot, and someone says, “You were shot because you were breathing.” I was breathing at that moment, and I was shot. When something happens to a person and they are told it happened because their perception expanded, that is a very particular issue. Can expanding perception lead to certain states—
Alexander Volchek
A worsening of your condition? Of course it can. Just as any day can make your condition worse. Getting married, meeting someone new, traveling to another country for tourism or work, going to a store, eating, opening a business, closing one, taking a new job—all can worsen your condition. But again, you are speaking about an abstraction and treating it as an ordinary material, physical action. Simply a physical action. Can playing basketball make your condition worse? Easily. You can break a leg, get hit in the head by a ball, or have a heart attack. Anything can happen anywhere. Can walking down the street make your condition worse? Just walking? It can. Can breathing? Of course it can.
Tatyana Tsvetkova
Unusual states and crises during meditation. Some people experience powerful emotions, tears and frightening sensations. Panic attacks.
Alexander Volchek
People are living their lives, and something happens to them during an exercise. They say, “It is the meditation.” I say, “You simply played basketball yesterday. You went to that job. That is how your husband or wife is, or you had a child.” People start connecting certain periods of their lives. Imagine a person's life moving along, and at this point they are meant to start a family. Right here. Before that, they begin meditating, keep practicing, and then start a family. They tell everyone, “Look, I started meditating and started a family.” Someone says, “Those things are not connected at all. You could have skipped meditation and had a family anyway. Or you began meditating because you would be starting a family in the future and needed to arrive at a certain state.”
This is an entirely selfish construct of the material world, designed to lead a person away from genuine perception and what is real. But I am talking about true meditation, not meditation to relax, to make money, to put the evil eye on someone, to cast a love spell on someone, or to make my life feel great. That is not what I mean.
Tatyana Tsvetkova
Can a Christian or a Muslim meditate? Many people over thirty from post-Soviet countries wonder whether meditation is some kind of sectarian religious practice—
Alexander Volchek
That is a very interesting point. Earlier, we were talking about a state where you simply sit down to relax. Practically every teaching includes a state in which a person reads a particular text.
Alexander Volchek
There are states in which a person reads a text. For example, someone recites a prayer. Is prayer meditation? Because meditation is a term—a term, a term—that is supposedly unrelated to Christianity, for example, people see it as some occult activity outside their religion. Yet I am amazed that people ask this and then, as Christians, check their horoscope or fear a black cat crossing their path. Or they wait until someone dies before deciding to go to church and do something. They perform various rituals because they are afraid something else will happen. Or they lie, steal and deceive people while talking about how meditation will cause a problem. We are talking about a person living in the spiritual world. Imagine that within that world they are connected with certain spiritual energies, connected with certain energies.
When we say meditation expands your own perception, does it interfere with your work with other energies? It does, but in only one way. It interferes with the work of people who want to take you over and who want to be your guides to pure worlds. I say, “I want to hear myself.” They say, “No, no, no, stop! For you to hear yourself, I must be present. You must pay money, bring it in. You must have spent forty years in a particular initiation to hear yourself. You cannot be in a particular teaching or tradition and hear yourself on your own.” Of course, some teachings and traditions are quite relaxed about this. Others say nothing about it at all. They have no problem with it.
Alexander Volchek
I recommend this to everyone. As I said, I lead meditations through livestreams on my YouTube channel, usually on Fridays and Saturdays. There are also recorded meditations—a great many of them—which you can watch again. The descriptions identify meditations with incredible power, the power of connecting and joining with yourself. Some can be watched every day, and each day something entirely new will open up for you.