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To use the Upaaya, select the appropriate weekday for the Planet you wish to do Uppaya, then choose a process (fasting or donation or Mantra, or whatever), then thing to be eaten or donated and a duration. One-time honored Upaaya is to give donations once a week, either once or for a certain number of weeks, to the living beings ruled by a particular planet on that Planet's day of the week.

Thus to appease Shani's image and the psycho-emotional spiritual factors that he activates, you could
--give your old clothes to a homeless person on a Saturday or
--give a laborer an iron implement that is useful for his trade on a Saturday
--feed crows on Saturday for several Saturdays in a row

To appease Soorya Dev, you could offer
--coarse cloth to the underprivileged on a Sunday, or
--feed wheat to deer on several Sundays

This sort of approach can be followed for any Planet and can be extended to the practice of immersing the metals sacred to the Planets in a flowing water, or burying them in the earth on the Planet's weekday. This type of donation gives back to nature that it gave us and is useful as an act of non-attachment - particularly when you think of dropping real gold into a river to propitiate Brihaspati. One remedy for Soorya could thus be to offer copper either to a powerful person or into flowing water on a Sunday.

To make a vow on a Sunday not to speak back to your superiors is to please the Sun by partially donating your pride. Since one powerful all-purpose Upaaya is to lovingly serve your parents, elders, saints and holy places (temples, churches or  mosques), you could serve your father each Sunday as an Upaaya for the Sun. If you are an eager beaver, you can even go so far as to vow (on a Sunday) to serve your father daily for the rest of his life.

Likewise, you can begin Upaaya on the appropriate weekday and continue them consecutively for 3, 7, 11, 21 or 40+ days. For the Sun, you would therefore begin on a Sunday and continue each following day (instead of once a week) until the vowed number of days is completed. In serious Kaarmik situations, even longer rituals are called for and may become life-long in cases in which the desired results may occur only in the next birth.

It is usually a good omen if the being to whom the offering is made sees the offerer, and the offering flows directly from the donor to the recipient without an intermediary. To appease Budh (Mercury) by making a direct offering to students, therefore, is more efficient rather than to simply contribute to a scholarship fund. Also donations should be desirable, not insulting or ridiculous. Do not create a scarecrow on a dead branch and attempt to donate it to a funeral parlor to try to please Shani Dev. Instead of giving a monk a dead or withered tree in order to appease Shani, volunteer to clean out the deadwood at a monastery on a Saturday. Donations may be made to plants and trees, for example plant and maintain a fruit tree to propitiate Brihaspati

Donation and Feeding
Since sweets is most life enhancing of the tastes, many Upaays involve donating sweet food to living beings. For example, for Chandramaa (Moon) you can prepare rice pudding on a Monday and offer it to suitable people. The rules for donation can be quite specific, but in general it is advisable to make your offerings in the morning, especially if they are to be made to dumb creatures, who are more likely to be in a receptive mood then.

There are some variants occur in the creatures or offerings listed in the Table. For example, "cow" is listed under Shukra (Venus), but is often used for Soorya Dev (Sun) as well. The Lal Kitab advises one to offer wheat or jaggery to a cow on Sundays to remedy afflictions of the Sun.

OR note that crows are mentioned both for Saturn and Raahu. You can feed Rotee (wheat Chapaatee or Torttillas) with mustard oil and salt to crows on Saturday to make Saturn happy, and sugared Rotee fried in Ghee to crows on Saturdays for Raahu. Each case must be judged on its merits

Fasting
Another old tradition says "Fast on the day of the Planet that rules the desired effect or indicates to obstruction". Since the point of a fast (and of all other Upaaya) is to make things better, not worse, in your life, you should select a fast according to your capacity and circumstances. The best fast is to abstain from everything, including water, but if your physical condition does not permit this, do  not try it. Next best is to live on water only, and the next on fruits only. Thereafter we enter the realm of mono-diets; some of these are inclusive (such as "milk only"), while others are exclusive (such as "no salt"). Another type of fast is to give up a certain food for some number of weeks or months for the Sun.

Fasts and donations are often performed for the number of days or weeks equal to person's age. A 39-year old who fasts on a Tuesday will therefore need to fast for 40 Tuesdays to have a significant effect on the image of Mars which lives within him. Setting up such a program  also helps to infuse the ritual with life. The chief rule is here is that if the string of the consecutive days or weeks is broken you have to start it all over again. - and they will tend to get broken because that is the beauty of Karm.

--to be a lifelong student, you might fast on Wednesday for the rest of your life;
--to pass the final year of your University education, you could fast on the number of Wednesdays that equals your age and
--to pass an interim exam you would fast on each Wednesday that falls before the exam.

When to Start Upaaya
Sometimes, when feasible, it is useful to commence your Upaaya during the astrological season appropriate to the Planet it targets. According to classic Jyotish they are:--
--March 20 - May 19 for Venus
--May 20 - July 19 for Sun and Mars
--July 20 - September 19 for Moon
--September 20 - November 19 for Mercury
--November 20 - January 19 for Jupiter
--January 20 - March 19 for Saturn.

Restrictions
--because each of the directions space possess qualities, North and East are auspicious directions to face.
--regard to menstruation, Upaaya involving visiting temples should be temporarily interrupted for the duration of the flow.
--if you are preparing a Mantra intended to invoke a specific Deity for a specific purpose, it is best not to repeat Mantra while you bleed but simply to pray to the Deity during that time, maintaining the continuity of your ceremony by burning incense etc. Repetition of the generic Mantra (like Mool Mantra) can be continued.

Some Other Rules for Upaaya
Some Upaaya can be done on behalf of others also. In each circumstances the intention of doing it for the other person must be clearly kept in the mind, so that the results accrue to the right person. Normally Upaaya should be performed personally, while doing Upaaya, the strong desire is necessary to change the Destiny.

In most cases, whenever possible, should be done in secret to prevent other people from generating obstructive energies that might disturb the process. It is usually good to be silent and not to speak to others while on the way to perform an Upaaya.

Items used for Upaaya should be new or should have been acquired for the exclusive purpose of the Upaaya or should be personally meaningful in some way. They should be acquired or created by you yourself and paid from your own pocket or purse.

Select an Upaaya that you feel strongly about it, that you have confidence in it, but remember your chosen aim should not be one which will act to the detriment to any, living being or of nature in general.

Though pleasing the Planets can be and are often used for objectionable ends, but Upaaya is meant to heal. Jyotish no more intends Upaaya be used to injure anybody.

Should you decide to immerse copper in flowing water on a Sunday for the Sun to obtain benefit from the Government, you need to focus on this outcome both at the time of purchasing the copper and at the time of flowing it into the river.

Establishing the Direct Relationship With the Graha

The above written remedies are simple and almost magical, but they require faith and not the knowledge of the Planets. They work because The One wants to help people when they sincerely ask for help. But if you can get nearer to God, He will transmit His energy in a more efficient way. These Nine Grahas are the Nine Rays of light (7 color rays of the rainbow, plus infrared and ultraviolet rays). "Jaatak Paarijaat", a classic Jyotish text, explains that the Sun is the essence of the soul of the Universe, and the Moon is the essence of the Mind, Mercury is the essence of Speech and worldly know-how, Jupiter is the essence of all knowledge and happiness, Venus is the essence of the Desire and the Saturn is the essence of all miseries. We can scent Mars in such incidents, such as a crocodile's attack, a bolt of lightening, and a nettle's poison.

The Nine Rays, though pure, when they emanate, recombine, and interfere with each other as they spread throughout the Universe become progressively weaker. The further a thing is removed from the Source, the less its essence reflects the Source. Think how a sentence changes its meaning when it is passed from one mouth to another - when it reaches the 10th ear, the whole sentence is transformed in something else.

For example, Mars is one ray of God and he displays himself in red lentils, red cloth, the vulture, the ram, the jackal, thorny trees and copper. Each of these items reflect the energy of Mars, but being complex (mixed with other planet's item also) the Martian energy they reflect is only fragmented through the interaction of the other planets. Thus red lentils reflect Martian energy as well as the Moon's energy as the Moon rules all food. Thus every item reflects mixed energy and is less useful as an Upaaya for a good Upaaya for a specific Planet.

So a better Upaaya will be to connect directly to Mars by opening yourself to Mar's rays. Worshipping Mars will establish this direct contact with him. This relationship will be more profound. To use the medical terminology, ordinary Upaayas are like ordinary remedies which cure diseases. You take them when you are ill, and when you are cured you stop taking them. So worship of the Nine Graha is one form of spiritual rejuvenation.

Through Mantra
My Jyotish Guru says that "Upaaya is an act of faith in two ways - faith is required to make the Upaaya work, but more importantly, you have to have faith that the Upaaya actually worked. There is no way to confirm whether or not it did anything at all, and you will never know what would have transpired, had you not done the Upaaya. But when you establish the direct relationship with the Graha, you can know, or at least you can sense, what is going on. One way to do this is to recite his Mantra. Mantra which are Deities in verbal form, are therefore excellent Upaaya. A Mantra accomplishes the apprehension of what is not or cannot be seen, imparts the strength of a definite conclusion to what is apprehended, removes doubt when two courses are possible, [and] leads to inference of an entire matter when only a part is seen."

Unfortunately, unless you recite a Mantra with perfect intonation and use it within its appropriate tradition and ritual context; it either will not work or will give you wrong results. Mantras are clearly superior remedies but they are not always to perfect.

Through Myths
Another method of gaining success is via their myths such as this [18 chapters of Shani Dev). Those people who can enter into mythic reality become able to interact with the Nine Grahas in a way that is more elegant, simpler and closer. They are an effective Upaaya only if you can tap into the deep knowledge that lives within it, otherwise it is no more useful than is a Mantra extracted from a book. It is not always easy to recognize living wisdom, for the myths which we read today are not those that the Seers sang. Myths get transformed by tellers and the germ of the Vaidik lore that remains in these derived tales lies buried beneath deep. Intellectual dialectic is useless as an extraction tool for living wisdom, for it does not dig deep enough. Deep knowledge is deep because there is no practical way to exhume it with the intellect or to express it in superficial terms.

Some are given here --  Vrat Kathaa;    Vrat Kathaa for Jupiter

Others are given in   Extra Section