they say pack the bowl in bunches of three, and equate the pack to a hand shake, gravity fill the bowl to the top and then lightly pack it down with your finger think of shaking a baby's hand, and then gravity fill it again and tamp it down with your finger a little firmer like you would shake a woman's hand, and then fill to the top again this time packing a bit firmer like you would shake the hand of a man.
now it does take some practice and the more you do it the more second nature it seems to become, don't worry about relights as this is common and expected with a pipe, usually the first two or three lights wont stay lit anyways, the first light is the "charring " light to basically start toasting the top of the tobacco preparing it to burn, and during the first couple of lights you may need to tampen down the top of your tobacco as the heat makes it expand, and since the ideal way to smoke a pipe is to have the tobacco burn as cool as possible the pipe often snuffs out, if you push a tobacco to stay lit 3 things will happen, the fist is possibly burning your mouth or tongue, the second is you will build up excessive moisture in your pipe causing it to gurgle, if it gurgles run a pipe cleaner down the shank and dry it out and then set the pipe down to cool off completely, and the third is burning up all those delicate flavors of the tobacco you only taste if the tobacco is burning nice and cool, at any time you feel your pipe getting too hot set her down and let it cool off, then one thing I noticed when I started smokin a pipe was that I seemed to get the most flavor from the tobacco on the relights, so after a while they don't bother you as much...lol