The Quality Of Gentleness Pranayama

This is Living Lightly with Jenny Light Yogic philosophy,

Guided meditations and pranayamas Please subscribe for all future podcasts Welcome to today's session Enjoy Welcome to Living Lightly's podcast on the spiritual quality of gentleness It was Gandhi that said In a gentle way you can shake the world Shake the world Not through force but by gentleness We learn to embody gentleness when through meditation we can attune into a higher vibration of consciousness In spiritual consciousness we can only think and speak and act from a place of gentleness The 15th century Indian mystic Kabir expressed gentleness in the most beautiful subtle way He defines even finer states of God consciousness being attained by refining and cleaning the fibres of one's body and mind and soul to be increasingly more receptive to God He equates the process of refinement through the metaphor of a loom Ever increasing soul gentleness is the result of the process of spiritual refinement And these are his words I wave your name on the loom of my mind To make my garment when you come to me My loom has 10,

000 threads To make my garment when you come to me The sun and moon watch while I wave your name The sun and moon hear while I count your name These are the wages I get by day and night To deposit in the lotus bank of my heart I wave your name on the loom of my mind To clean and soften 10,

000 threads And to comb the twists and knots of my thoughts No more shall I weave a garment of pain For you have come to me,

Drawn by my weaving Ceaselessly weaving your name on the loom of my mind So you can see how the process of gentleness achieves so much Not by force,

Not by pushing But by changing our entire paradigm of being Learning to control the breath and the focus of the breath Leads us more ever inwards toward refining our spiritual being By combing out these knots of karma and resistance Until every thread is singing Singing to a higher and higher state of being Much like finely tuned musical instruments We'll learn to express our inner soul,

Song and harmony with all that is Then we can become mindful that we are a spiritual being having a human existence That we are not bound to this human existence Except by our karmic tendencies of past lives Samskaras,

These are what bind us back into an ever recurring reincarnation into another human form But we are not bound to that if we move beyond those karmic tendencies that keep bringing us back And the key process in this is the breath To use the breath To transport us beyond that And in the process,

Burning away in the spiritual fire Caused by the fineness of the breath Burning away those Samskaras,

Burning away those seed tendencies Roasting them in the spiritual fire And the key of all of this is gentleness For did Jesus not say on the Sermon on the Mount Blessed are the pure in heart,

For they shall see God Pure,

So we are working towards ever increasing pureness One breath at a time One gentle breath at a time So the practice that we are working on today is to do with refining the quality of that breath It is not just the physical process of breathing Being finer and smoother But also that we express gentleness in every aspect of that breath Starting by being aware that your spine is upright That you are balanced between the left and right sit bones That the neck is long,

The chin is level and that your gaze is toward And slightly between the eyebrows Eyes closed And tune into the breath Be aware that the body breathes Largely an unconscious process The spiritual path is about schooling that breath Becoming conscious of it And the yogic path is working with that breath to create an even finer state of being An even finer awareness of all that is And even transcending this human experience But we start with the physical breath,

So notice that the body is breathing Notice that there is a smoothness on the inhale And a smoothness on the exhale Being aware that the body breathes in A smooth inhale An inhale that rises up to the point between and slightly above the eyebrows The spiritual eye The brow chakra,

Asana Various names for this pivotal point raising our awareness Above the two physical eyes that keep us looking out into the physical world So the inhale arises up into the brow And then the exhale falls away from that point on the brow Inhale arises to that spiritual eye And the exhale falls away from that point In this exercise we're working more with the inhale than the exhale Although the whole of the breath is conscious And this is a process of cutting the breath To create a finer state of awareness This one is working with the inhale The process is to create a smooth inhale and then halt the breath Continue the inhale,

Halt the breath Continue the inhale,

Halt the breath And then continue the inhale until you have arrived on the brow And then a long smooth exhalation So it's breathe in,

Pause Breathe in,

Pause Breathe in,

Pause Breathe in,

Hold on the brow And a long smooth exhalation Remembering the focus is on gentleness Breathing in,

Pause Breathing in,

Pause Breathing in to the brow Holding And a long smooth exhalation Even to the very last puff of the exhalation Before starting your cutting the breath on the inhalation Arriving on the brow And a long gentle focused exhalation Breathing in,

Take your awareness into each and every pause in the breath as the most poignant experience,

Poignant beyond the physical And the long smooth exhalation Breathes away any karmic tendencies Breathing in,

Pause Breathing in,

Pause Breathing in,

Pause Breathing in,

Arriving on the brow And a long smooth exhalation Gentleness is key It is by gentleness that we move mountains Or tiny karmic seat tendencies Working with the pauses in the breath As we start to have experience beyond physical limitation And these open in the pauses in the breath Keeping the mind on gentleness Tieding through any sense of roughness Within the ego self Simply smooth them away Roast them away in the focused fire of the breath Making this one the last one I hope that you hold the pause for as long as you wish on each part of the breath Whether it's one second or four or five seconds on each part,

It's up to you And after you've completed the exhalation to the final puff Allow your breath to return to its normal inhalation and exhalation And take yourself as an objective observer on the process of the breath On how smooth the breath has become Notice the refinement process So we transform our inner state of being One gentle breath at a time But we also transform this world that we are having this human experience in One gentle breath at a time And finishing by reminding yourself I am pure spirit I express the gentleness of the Divine Mother In all that I do All that I think And all that I see And watching your words,

Thoughts and actions today To be those of expressing that gentleness Aum Shanti May you be in peace