Brilliance From All Sides
This is Episode 18 of Awareness at Play, found here and on Apple Podcasts.
In this episode we’ll do a guided meditation. In it we’ll focus on our breath, but more specifically we’ll pay attention to the space between the breaths.
And we’ll expand on this kind of practice by adding a a focus on where the breath comes from and returns to. We’ll switch that up throughout the practice. It can open up parts of us that might be more neglected
If this makes no sense, no worries, you’ll be guided through it.
Listen to the prompts. and also use your intuition to adjust as your system calls for it. If you don’t resonate with pausing between both breath transitions, pick one. Top of the inhale for bottom of the exhale.
We will have a nice bit of quiet space between prompts so you can have time to settle back into the open space between the breaths if that’s available to you. If you like to hear someone talking the whole practice, this might not be your jam.
The space between the breaths is where movement dissolves into quiet stillness, even if it’s for a fraction of a second. This place is ripe for a weightless state where everything dissolves.
In yoga and pranayama this is called kumbhaka, meaning the sacred retention.
Be open to what can arise in that space. Some yogis say it can be the key to inner transformation, that is one of the most direct means of effecting changes in consciousness.
Christopher Wallis has written commentaries and translations on the VBT, an ancient Hindu text, and he says, quote, this space can bring about a state of profoundly still emptiness that is paradoxically filled with the quiet intensity of pure Presence
The teacher Swami Muktananda called this the God Space.
Hearing all this may or may not help you open to a deeper experience in this practice. It’s best to drop expectations and simply be open to what’s occurring for you.
This meditation was taught to me many years ago and it remains one of my favorites.
Sit Stably:
Start with a straight spine and relaxed body.
Observe Breath:
Watch the natural, unforced flow for a few minutes. Relax a little more with each breath, allowing the body to settle.
Bring your breath into a smooth natural rhythm, as if in deep sleep: very smooth and steady.
Feel as if it’s not the lungs making this happen but an allowing of the the universe to breathe us.
You’re not just breathing air, you’re receiving nourishment and freshness from the Divine Source.
Every exhalation melts contraction from the body.
As fresh inhales of Prana fill you, and each breath relaxes you more, you feel more present and at home in the body.
Lengthen Breath: Deepen the breath. Breathe deeper into your lower lungs. And fully exhale. Even though it’s deeper, allow it to be a patient breath, just as smooth and natural as before so you can pay attention to the subtly of both the inhale and exhale.
Pauses: Now at the peak between both inhale and exhale, start taking a little pause. They can be really short or you can lengthen each of them as you feel comfortable.
Front Body: Now we’re going to move the focus of where we’re inhaling from. We’ll start with the front of our body. With the same relaxed breath and the same pause, Breathe in vibrant, energized Shakti from the open space in front of you. And exhale out through all the cells in the front of your body. The space between the breaths can still be the ground of your attention, the space you melt into. Inhale from the space in front, pause, exhale out to the spaciousness in front of you, pause.
If it helps to have an anchor in the inner body, inhale into the base of the heart, near the sternum for your pause. If it feels better to just fill the whole body in general, allow that to be your inner space.
Back Body: On the next exhale, breathe out into the space behind the body. Same relaxed breath, same pauses. Our back body tends to get much less attention than our front body. It might feel very nourishing and comforting to give our back body this space to breathe. Feel free to relax into the idea that Shakti is always there behind us, she has our back. Again, let the space between the breaths open naturally.
Side body: On the next exhale breath out into both the right and left of the body together, pause, and inhale back into the body. Pay special attention to the space between the breaths as they pause inside you and outside you.
Below body: On the next exhale breath out below you, deep in the Earth, Pause, then breathe back up into the body through your seat, pause. Notice that breathing from below might have a different flavor, but the pauses can still have the same, open, free, quiet sense of being.
Above body: On the next exhale breath out into the space above you. Pause, then Breathe in from the open spaciousness of what we might call the heavens, pause inside the body, and exhale back up through the crown of the head. Allow the space between the breaths to open in to emptiness spontaneously.
All sides: Now inhale from all sides: front back sides below and above. Feel every cell taking in breath from the open spaciousness around you, pause, and exhale and let it fill you body and beyond, pausing after the exhale into the intimate core of emptiness.
As you continue to breath this pattern, allow the inhale, the exhale, and the space between the breaths to become more subtle. There’s no words for allowing and following awareness into this non-conceptual space. Rest in the momentum of this rhythm, letting go of whatever wants to drop away.
The breath may become very subtle, thoughts may become very subtle or gone.
Bask in the vibrant peaceful emptiness of pure presence.
