Sura Flow: 3 Steps to Effortless Meditation & Unexpected Miracles

Sura Flow

The information provided in this book is for general information about health and meditation. This book is not intended as medical or health advice, nor is considered a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. If you have any health concerns, please be sure to consult with your medical professional.

The author is not responsible for any health issues, advice, or guidance provided in the book, nor is liable for any physical, psychological, emotional, or health damages. The use of the information provided in this book is solely at your own risk. You are responsible for your own actions and decisions.

Sura Flow

3 Steps to Effortless Meditation

& Unexpected Miracles

Sura

Copyright © 2023 by Sura Dahn Kim

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN Paperback: 978-0-578-82668-4

ISBN Electronic: 978-0-578-80963-2

Printed in the United States of America.

Sura Center, LLC (Sura Flow)

Sura Kim suraflow.org

Acknowledgements

To my mother, who first taught me

about energy healing.

To those who feel called to bring peace

and healing into the world.

To my sisters, Chela Rhea Harper & Leah Meyers.

PREFACE

When I first started meditating, I was in a lot of pain. Back when I was climbing the corporate ladder in New York, I suffered from not only lots of physical pain but also deep emotional pain. Living a fast-paced, high-stress lifestyle took a toll on my health. The lifestyle eventually led me down a dark path of depression.

Meditation brought me back to life. It had such a profound effect on me, all I wanted to do was meditate. However, I wasn’t discerning in what technique I practiced and with whom. For years,

I stayed at different ashrams and spiritual centers, traveling throughout Asia and North America.

Eventually, I hit a wall. My health suffered, and I was going nowhere. I wasn’t progressing — in my life or spiritual path. There was something clearly amiss in my meditation practice. It took me years to discover that what I was missing was a woman’s perspective.

During my travels and studies, everywhere I went, I noticed a predominant pattern in spiritual practice: male teachers, masculine teachings, and perhaps more notably, male tendencies in meditation practice. Nearly all meditation tradition styles are authored by men. Because of this androcentric focus, there’s a misperception in mainstream society about meditation — that it’s a difficult practice that requires discipline in order to control the mind.

If you think you have to meditate a certain way, follow the rules, or limit any part of your practice, you may want to consider a more relaxed approach. If you’ve ever felt restricted or held back by traditional forms of practice, you may enjoy a more intuitive, feminine approach — one that is creative nurturing, and healing.

In this book, I share my personal experiences and how I came to embrace the creative feminine in meditation. This restorative, more surrendered flow has transformed my understanding of spirituality. It has helped me develop my gifts as a healer — one of the real benefits of meditation.

Today we see a predominance of masculine traits in all systems of life, including healthcare, government, business, and politics. We especially see it in religion. It is affecting the health of our world on every level, from climate change to our own homes and workplaces. This is reflected by patriarchal organizations and spiritual practices that are imbalanced.

It is time to move beyond traditional forms of meditation. It is time for us to expand our consciousness to include Her creative feminine energy. Her wisdom, Her power, Her healing magic... Her creative expression. It is the medicine the world needs. Now is the time to evolve meditation beyond its beginnings more than 5,000 years ago. We have different lifestyles today that call for a practice that aligns with our modern lives, for both women and men.

What I am called to present through Sura Flow is a balanced approach to meditation, one that is disciplined yet gentle, relaxed yet focused — one that allows us to embrace both our masculine and feminine nature fully. A universal, secular approach that anyone can practice. Through balance, we discover more of our true selves. Through balance, we become more whole.

This book is a guide on how to empower your meditation practice so that you feel truly restored and free. When you’re truly aligned you experience a sense of effortless flow. Synchronicities manifest as unexpected miracles. Stress falls away and life takes on an exciting, new dimension.

Sura Flow is intended for men and women alike and is inclusive of all backgrounds, ages, religions, and orientations.

I hope this guide offers you inspiration on how you can develop your own meditation practice so you can feel free to live your true self.

May Sura Flow bring you a greater sense of peace and wonder. May it encourage you to follow your joy, and may it offer you true liberation.

Love, Sura.

INTRODUCTION

Why read this book?

Learn a softer, effortless practice that cultivates energy, intuition, and creativity.

Experience Sura Flow™ — a universal, secular practice that helps you develop your life force energy.

Learn new concepts and acquire new tools that empower you to become more intuitive, emotionally aware, and connected to the mystery of life.

Embrace both the creative feminine and the focused masculine to help you balance and boost your energy.

Learn how to be in the zone through a relaxed, effortless approach to meditation.

Develop soft skills and subtle awareness to deepen your practice and enhance your healing abilities.

Experience greater flow, harmony, and purpose in your everyday life through synchronicity.

Learn tools to gain more energy, slow down your aging process, and feel more healthy and vital.

Receive practices to help you tap into your human potential and realize your life goals.

PART I

A JOURNEY THROUGH TRADITIONAL PRACTICES

"If you follow the classical pattern,

you are understanding the routine, the tradition,

the shadow ― you are not understanding yourself."

— Bruce Lee

CHAPTER 1

MY PERSONAL STORY

A First-time Meditator

When I first started meditating, I was working on Wall Street. In my late twenties, I lived a hard and fast life, which revolved around the stock market — and hedge funds. It seemed I was always living on the edge; everything I did felt urgent, and I was always moving fast. Addicted to the fastness, I was constantly spinning myself into a frenzy. My life revolved around how much I was doing and making, and this eventually drove me into the ground.

Having grown up below welfare in a poor immigrant family, most of my time was spent chasing money and security. I sought the things I thought were supposed to make me happy: a stable job, a romantic relationship, and a lucrative career. But inside, I was growing increasingly empty.

I was vice-president at my company, earning more than I could have ever imagined. Even with plenty of money to buy a 5-star life, I felt hollow. I couldn’t bear pretending that the life I had was the one I really wanted. Yet I didn’t know how to be happy.

My life was falling apart at the seams. I tried to hold it together and keep the happy facade going, but it grew increasingly heavy. Every day I lived in indescribable pain. After a brutal break-up when I discovered my ex-boyfriend had deeply betrayed me, I hit rock bottom. I spiraled into a deep depression.

I resorted to a desperate prayer: "Please, God, please help me find a way to be okay. Help me find a way to live here."

A few months later, I came across a book on Zen meditation at a bookstore. I learned to count my breaths from 10 to 1, over and over. This seemingly simple, yet difficult practice, saved my life.

In Zen, it’s said that you should train as though your hair is on fire. That described exactly how I felt. I fell in love with the practice.

All I could think about was training in meditation. After eight short months, I decided that I would dedicate more of my life to the practice.

Leaving It All for Asia

A year later, I took a leap of faith. I quit my job, rented my New York apartment, and sold all of my belongings. After attending a 200-hour yoga training in Costa Rica, I decided to get a one-way airplane ticket to Asia. I wanted to learn meditation from the source, so I went to India with my backpack.

In the beginning, I had no context for what I was really learning with meditation. I simply did as I was told. But after some time, I noticed a pattern as I traveled through various spiritual centers across Asia.

The biggest pattern I noticed was the rigor and intensity. Many meditation centers followed a structured schedule that was highly disciplined. It was quite strict in some places. There was a silent pressure to sit still in a certain way. When I first learned meditation, I was very rigid. I sat perfectly still but with a lot of tension. I wasn’t sure what I was doing most of the time. But I knew I wanted to sit the right way and do the right thing. Inside, I was still very competitive. At that time, people often asked why I was traveling.

When I said, to learn meditation, they all seemed to respond with a mix of awe and admiration, as if what I was doing was an extremely difficult task, like becoming a Navy SEAL. I guess I viewed meditation study that way, too, as something of a major military training! And that’s exactly how I approached it. I was very intense about practice and stayed up until all hours of the night studying the ancient texts.

People often see meditation as an unattainable practice where you give up all your worldly belongings and sit in a perfect lotus pose for hours on a mountaintop. This was my initial impression, too, and I was willing to endure any level of pain and hardship in order to learn.

Arriving in India

In 2005, I went to India to learn yogic meditation. When I arrived, I stayed at a yoga ashram in Tiruvannamalai, near Chennai. We woke up before the crack of dawn and practiced on pure concrete outside when it was still dark. The cold crept right into my body, but I couldn’t do much about it.

Forty of us sat for hours at a time. Often, it was excruciating sitting cross-legged and perfectly still on cold concrete. The cold dampness crept into my bones, but I didn’t dare move or say anything about it.

Every hour of the day was planned. Each day consisted of seven to ten hours of yoga and meditation. This included karma yoga, such as cleaning and conducting duties around the ashram. We had a small break in the afternoon. For the most part, our days were filled with practice from morning until evening, and then it was lights out at 10 p.m. Both men and women wore the same uniforms every day.

The schedule was rigorous. Even more intense were the practices of spiritual purification, like drinking gallons of salt water at one time to flush out toxins. These types of practices not only moved physical toxins, but often triggered deeper feelings and emotional toxins. The more we meditated, the more we purged our past emotional wounds. My old stuff constantly rose to the surface. Sometimes, all I wanted to do was bawl my eyes out. But there was never any time or space to cry, or just be.

This austere, militaristic approach to meditation was something I witnessed in many places. I also watched how this strong approach scared people away. Usually in the middle of the first week, people would break down and cry. It wasn’t uncommon to see them pack up and quietly leave. The people at the ashram seemed to know this would happen and would peacefully let them go.

After witnessing this at myriad centers, I began to wonder why spiritual practice had to be so hard. It seemed harsh in the sense that only hardcore people endured such intense practices around the clock. Why did we have to learn at such a rigorous pace? Why was every hour of the day so full?

It made me think of the military and how a person’s ego is worn down through constant practice and discipline. It shapes them and gets them in order. People who couldn’t cut it had to go. However, at the time, I didn’t question the ancient system of yogic meditation. It was the reason I had come to India. I just wanted to learn. So, I accepted that it would be hard.

There were days when I wanted to give up. My body hurt. I couldn’t move some days. I was absolutely exhausted. I just wanted to curl up like a baby in bed, but I had to keep going, no matter what. There was no time to rest. I would wake up early the next day and do it all over again.

Having come from Wall Street, I was used to doing things at a constant, sometimes unreasonable, pace. I knew how to suppress the need for sleep and rest. That was my MO. I went fast and hard, then burned myself out and totally crashed. So, this type of practice didn’t faze me much, until one day something changed.

Unexpected Loss

In India, I practiced yogic meditation religiously every day on my own. I learned the language of Sanskrit with my teacher in India and studied the yoga sutras written by Patanjali. During that time, I lost about 15% of my body weight. I was happy about this initially — I had always been a curvy woman — but after some time, I stopped feeling like myself.

My sense of voluptuousness and sensuality disappeared, and I began to feel dried up and sexless. When I looked in the mirror, I felt more like a man than a woman. The rigorous yogic practice was changing my hormones, along with my sense of femininity.

In yoga, the practice of brahmacharya is emphasized. Loosely translated, it’s considered celibacy. I had noticed that separating men from women in spiritual contexts was important so as to avoid sexual desire between the two genders. Women were made to cover our bodies — even arms and legs — when we entered sacred temples. It seemed that sexuality wasn’t considered spiritual.

Slowly, I began to distance myself from the idea of being a sexual person, so I shut down my sexuality because