Gateway Therapy offers classes and one on one sessions on meditation. The techniques are derived from many sources including Yoga (hatha and raja), Zen, and Taiji. Your technique will be based on a combination of personality, lifestyle and preference.

For those of you unfamiliar with those broader terms, looking to understand what that all meant, I added this lower section in:

Hatha yoga includes techniques found in popular yoga classes. Most of the focus is given to the position of the body (called asanas), breathing techniques (called pranayama) and settling the mind there-in.

Raja yoga is geared towards using the mind as a doorway to meditation. Techniques such as visualization, chanting, “feeling” oriented methods are focused on.

Zen is focused in the breath, but not in the pranayama sense that Yoga uses. Zen also uses chanting (typically ‘om’), but again not in the Yoga sense. Admittedly, Zen was born from the merger of Taoism and Buddhism so the techniques do overlap, though the mindset taken in Zen is somewhat different.

Taiji is similar to hatha yoga. The main difference being that Hatha/Raja yoga is typically associated with India while Taiji is typically associated with Asia. In Taiji you have 2 main branches: Qigong (breath focused while standing) and moving meditation. Even though the example brings chills to my bones and vastly underestimates the effectiveness of the style, you would have typically seen it done in the parks by “old men and women”. I would like to add though that is just not the case!

As you probably can see all these styles have much in common and it would be hard to see where one ends and the next begins. One thing I can tell you is that all the techniques are non-sectarian and nondenominational. While it is true that Buddhists do yoga or that Zen came to fruition in Japan, it does not mean that by practicing yoga you become Buddhist or by sitting in Zazen you suddenly become Japanese. Your religious beliefs are yours and yours alone and no posture, breathing style or movement have anything to do with it. And in my opinion, if you are practicing any technique and a “guru” mentions that you should change your religion, run.