This is a guided 12-fold lower belly breathing practice led by Dr.
Reginald Ray,
Spiritual director of the Dharma Ocean Foundation.
This is a more vigorous practice where we work with the energetic pathways of the body through breathing into the space of the lower belly.
It builds on previous guided meditations that Regi offered in this series for Insight Timer.
This practice is done in a lying down posture.
We lie flat on our back,
On a carpet,
Mat or cushion.
Knees up and tied together with a yoga strap or belt to reduce pressure on our lower back and psoas muscle.
Feet are flat on the floor,
At least hips width apart to provide stability.
Head in a comfortable position,
Either flat on our mat or on a small pillow.
Our hands rest at our sides.
So we're going to do a practice now called 12-fold lower belly breathing.
Some of you have done this practice before and some of you haven't.
There are many purposes for this practice.
This practice is one of the basic ones in Tibetan yoga,
Tibetan meditation.
We're going to just use it in a basic level to clear out the stale prana or the stale breath from our energy system.
According to Tibetan yoga,
Our awareness is located,
Spread throughout our body.
Our body is 100% aware,
All the way down to the cells.
The cells are aware.
The nature of the cells is Dharmakaya.
Their basic awareness is space.
The awareness of the cells is connected by energy pathways that run throughout the body.
These pathways get clogged.
They get clogged because of all of our karma,
All of our discursive thinking,
All of our left brain circular mental activity disconnected from the body.
What happens is the sludge builds up in these energy pathways so that the conscious mind actually is unable to contact the fundamental awareness of the soma.
Through the 12-fold lower belly breathing,
We are able to clean out the energy pathways and open our bodies so that our awareness is much more available and free flowing.
So that's what we're going to do now.
We're going to do the practice first of all lying down.
We'll do two sessions that way,
Two repetitions,
And then we'll sit up and do one that way,
And meditation posture,
And then we'll go from there.
Okay,
Everybody settled.
So at this point,
Let's just relax,
Put your attention in your lower belly.
Just breathe gently as we have been.
Okay,
So the way the practice works is the whole time we do the practice,
Our attention is in our lower belly.
It doesn't go anywhere else.
It's always in the lower belly on both the in-breath and the out-breath.
The practice is also done very slowly,
And even though at the end of the out-breath you're going to exert some vigorous contraction,
There's an overall feeling of gentleness to the practice as a whole.
So on the in-breath,
We're going to take a medium to full breath into the lower belly,
And imagine that the dantian,
Lower dantian,
Or the hara is a balloon that is filling up on the in-breath.
It's very gentle,
Medium to full,
Very gentle,
Slow.
And then on the out-breath,
We're going to contract our lower belly.
We're going to squeeze the balloon down to nothing so that all of the stale prana that's clogging up our pathways can be emptied out.
So the in-breath is medium to full,
And the out-breath,
Which is also slow,
We're going to breathe out and we're going to empty out,
Empty out,
Empty out,
Empty out,
And squeeze our lower belly down to nothing.
Pause for a moment,
And then breathe,
Breathe in.
So we're going to do 12 of these lower belly breaths,
And again,
Remember to keep your attention in the lower belly throughout the whole practice.
Okay,
So 12 breaths,
Please begin.
Each out-breath should be a little bit more full as your lower belly warms up,
A little more complete.
Pause for a moment,
And then breathe,
Breathe in.
Pause for a moment,
And then breathe,
Breathe in.
Pause for a moment,
And then breathe,
Breathe in.
If your lower belly muscles get a little bit sore,
That means you're doing it right.
Pause for a moment,
And then breathe,
Breathe in.
And if you get done,
Keep going,
Do a few more,
If you can come before me.
And then let's do one more all together.
And at the end of the out-breath,
Keep breathing out,
Keep imagining,
Keep tightening down as if you're still breathing out,
Even if you don't have any more actual physical breath.
And then hold the breath out for a few seconds,
And then breathe.
Okay,
So one more together,
Holding the breath out.
And then just breathe naturally.
Okay,
So we're going to do that one more time,
And this time that breath,
That final,
That single out-breath all the way out,
Out,
Out,
Out,
Out,
Out.
You come to the end of the physical breath and you keep imagining,
You keep tightening down,
And then you hold it out for a few seconds.
And when you're holding it out,
I want you to look at the space in your body,
Which is the same as the space in the room.
I want you to look there and see if you notice a total gap.
Okay,
So here we go,
One more breath.
Please begin.
Hold the breath out for a few seconds,
And then breathe.
And then hold the breath out for a few seconds,
And then breathe.
And then hold the breath out for a few seconds,
And then breathe.
And leaving behind our conventional ideas of what meditative awareness is,
Or even just what awareness or consciousness is,
We're setting those aside and we're really kind of taking a look at what is the actual situation with my awareness.
Experientially,
What do I see?
Okay,
Relax,
Let your body just totally let go.
Totally surrender into the earth.
For the conventional mind,
Giving up and surrendering is a sign of defeat.
But for the awakened mind,
Giving in and surrendering and giving up is a preparation.
So we're going to do another round of 12-fold lower belly breathing,
Medium to full in-breath,
Very,
Very full exhalation.
And this time on the in-breath,
You can roll,
You can puff out your lower belly on the in-breath,
And you can roll the top of your pelvis forward so your back lifts off the floor a little bit.
And on the out-breath,
Roll the lower back into the floor as you exhale,
Exhale,
Empty,
Empty,
Empty,
Empty,
Empty.
And as you do so,
Tighten the anal sphincter and pull up on the perineum.
And this time we're going to do this practice with a slight rolling motion,
Which actually helps loosen and clear the energy pathways even a little bit more effectively when combined with the breath.
So please begin,
Medium to full in-breath,
12,
12 breaths.
And Don't be afraid to work your lower belly on the out-breath now.
And if you get down before me,
Just do a few more.
And then let's do one more,
Breathing all the way out.
Continue beyond the emptying of the physical breath,
And then hold the breath out for a few seconds,
And look at the space in the room,
And see if you can see the fissure.
There's a fissure in our known reality.
See if you can see it.
This is not mental.
It's a physical fissure in the darkness.
Okay?
Take one more breath and look.
And then just breathe naturally,
And totally relax.
And take a few moments,
And when you feel ready,
You can sit back up.
Good.
Okay,
So we're going to do one more set of 12-fold lower belly breathing right now.
In the sitting up posture.
And once again the attention stays in the lower belly throughout the practice.
And in terms of the working with the pelvis,
On the out-breath you can imagine that you're pulling your pubic bone back toward your spine,
Pulling your lower belly in and the pubic bone rolls back toward the spine on the out-breath.
On the in-breath it rolls forward.
So you're still having a little bit of that rocking motion.
Okay,
So 12 breaths,
Please begin.
Okay.
Okay.
When you're doing this you might notice a little shutter as you're doing the out-breath and that's the prana entering the central channel.
That's what we want.
And if you get done before me just do a few more.
And then let's do one more altogether.
And again breathe out,
Breathe out,
Come to the end of the physical out-breath and then keep tightening down for a couple more seconds and imagining that you're still breathing out and then hold the breath out and this time just look into your body and see what you see.
Okay,
One more breath.
And then just breathe naturally.
So we're going to come back to our posture.
Feel the central channel now come just straight there.
And notice the space along the backside of the body.
It's like a field.
It's not quite a channel,
It's a field right along the backside of our soma.
And it's very,
It's tingly even though it's dark.
There's a sense of brightness actually,
Strangely kind of as if the space is electrified.
It's electric,
It's alive.
Just notice that.
And lean into it.
Lean along the backside of your body.
Lean into that field.
Just inside the spine,
Just on this side in the body,
Right in front of the spine.
The space right there is,
It's alive,
Powerful in a way.
It's bright.
Lean into it.
Lean back into it.
Don't come forward.
Whenever you come forward and you start thinking,
Just move back.
And notice there's a kind of warmth to it also.
It's almost as if it's warmth is filling forward.
Meantime it's very bright,
It's very energized space.
But it's so bright that there's a warmth that is filling forward.
So we're leaning back into the very back margin of our soma,
Of our somatic awareness.
And when you lean into it,
You let go of yourself,
You let go of your front part,
And just lean back.
There's a moment where it's timeless.
Is it dark?
Is it light?
Is it bright?
You can't tell.
It's both.
It's both.
If you feel very sensitively into this field along the back margin,
You can see it illuminates your body.
There's some kind of illumination that fills forward.
It's not visual exactly.
It's what's known as the inner light,
The brightness of awareness.
This brightness is you.
And when you identify with it,
It's your life.
You project the brightness of you into the world.
But you don't have to project it,
It projects itself.
So resting along the back margin in the brightness of the top of the head down to the perineum,
All the way at the back of our awareness.
There's no problem with you.
There never was.
The only problem was you had a problem with your brightness.
It's a bit scary because it lights up the world.
Your inner light,
Your true timeless nature lights up the world.
It's pretty scary.
I want to be small.
I want to be little and puny and insignificant.
Unfortunately,
That's not an option.
Let's try.
Our inner light illuminates our being,
And our being lights up the world.
That's the deal.
We signed a paper way back in the beginning,
Before we were born,
But we forgot about it.
And now we discover it.
We discover what we agree to.
Take a break.
We're just going to sit here and feel your body in the space.
How are you feeling?
How is the space feeling?
What is it like being here in this way?
What's that feel like to you?
That's very peaceful.
Very,
Very beautiful.
Very intimate.
So I'm going to lead a bow,
And you don't need to move.
And I'd like to invite you to sit here as long as you like.
Okay,
So let's bow.
