Brief Collection of Simple Exercises

1. Close your eyes and visualize a perfect square. Make it any colour you want (it is traditional to use Yellow first, making the tattwa symbol of Prithivi- see Golden Dawn). Try to hold the image in your mind for as long as you can without having it waver and lose its shape or colour. The first few times you do this you may find yourself having to trace around the outer edge of the square several times to keep it still, and colours might not look as vivid as you'd like. Practice this exercise every day if possible and try to hold the image steady and vivid for as long as you can. This exercise is good for developing your mental visualization skills. You can use any of the Tattwa symbols or other geometric shapes for this exercise.

2. Close your eyes, take a normal deck of playing cards and try to guess which colour each card is as you draw it off the top. If you can, try to mentally see which number and suit the card is too. Red cards usually feel 'warm' and look mentally red to me, and black feels 'cooler' and looks dark.

3. Use a large quartz crystal and try to feel the outer edge of its energy field with your hand. Everything has an aura, and strong, clear, quartz crystals are often easier to feel and will hold an energy charge very well. Hold your hand out a couple feet away from the crystal and slowly bring it closer until you feel a very gentle resistance. As you get better, you might even feel a sort of energy bubble around the crystal. With practice, you can even visually see an aura around it.

4. Spend a day at home blindfolded. Try to feel your way around the house while going about your daily activities. The point here is to learn to rely more on your body's sense of touch, and less on your sense of vision. Try to feel where the objects in a room are with your body before you get to them. Don't try to see anything and don't think about seeing or visualizing your environment. Just allow yourself to 'feel' the energy of objects around you with your body only. Be very careful not to hurt yourself during this exercise! An assistant may be necessary to avoid personal injury.

5. This one may take quite a while to get the hang of. Use a person or animal for best results since living things will tend to have much stronger and more complicated auras or energy fields. Stare at the person (or animal) and don't look directly at any one portion of it. Use your side or peripheral vision. Allow your mind to relax and almost zone out for a while. At first you might start to see something like smoke slowly appear around the person. Then maybe a dim colour band will appear. When you become proficient at shifting gears in your mind like this, then larger and more colourful bands may become more visible. Everyone's aura is different. Doing some work to help open up and activate the '3rd-eye' or 6th chakra will be helpful in seeing auras.